To be fair, I read right past it, too

Funny stuff. "National League Football". That's how they probably wrote back then, unless it's a hed-bust.

I also like how the Phillies played soccer.

 

That's probably just how they wrote back then. I've seen several old stories that refer to the "World's Series" as well.

 

Argh. That's what I get for posting past my bedtime ...

 

Me too. Nice work.

 

The NFL made the Cardinals play two extra games (to boost their winning percentage ahead of Pottsville's) against teams that had disbanded for the season. One team even used high school players and was kicked out of the league.

Those games were bogus and the Cardinals' ownership at the time acknowledged it. They wouldn't accept the champions title.
It was when the Bidwills took over the team that the Cards changed their minds. After years (with the exception of a couple seasons in the 1940s), the claim to the '25 title was about all the organization had. The elder Bidwill fought hard against any recognition for Pottsville, including writing an insulting letter about the city's contribution to a Civil War battle lost by the North.
Yes, the Maroons made a mistake playing Notre Dame, but the Cards aren't exactly innocent victims.

 

I take it you just read "Breaker Boys" too?
I didn't see it get a lot of traction in the week leading up to the Super Bowl, but more than one person wrote a story about a "Curse of the Maroons" on the Cards.

 

The Maroons have been widely talked about in my neck of the woods for many years. The "Breaker Boys" brought it onto a national stage. Did read the book, and it pulls together many of the things I already knew about it quite well.

Anyway, a person professing love for the Cardinals in the coal region will likely get hit over the head with a Yuengling bottle.

 

Bull. O'Brien scheduled those games BEFORE the Pottsville-Notre Dame All-Stars game took place. Carr had nothing to do with it. Did you bother reading the linked article?

And for what it's worth, I'll put the research of Joe Horrigan, Bob Braunwart and Bob Carroll up against Fleming's any day, and twice on Sunday.

 

No question: Joe Horrigan is a well respected authority on pro football history as well as a heckuva nice guy. Which is why it’s important to note that in April, during a public forum on the debate about the stolen 1925 NFL championship, Horrigan admitted there is no record of this so-called “territory” rule, that one likely never existed and that the league not only invented it but then arbitrarily applied it to excessively punish Pottsville for, essentially, putting the fledgling NFL on the map by beating the iconic Four Horsemen at a time when college football was king and pro ball was dismissed as barbaric and disorganized.

If a territory rule had actually existed, by my count seven NFL teams in 1925 would have been in permanent violation of playing their games within the so-called protected territory of another club. On top of that, there are dozens of examples from that era of games being scheduled and sanctioned by the NFL between two ‘outside’ teams playing in another franchise’s territory (Chicago versus Columbus, played in Cleveland—for example).

Ya know, I started out as a fact checker at SI, although I realize this is probably the wrong post to make note of that fact. But during several years of research for the book (all of it, vetted, fact checked and painstakingly sourced, unlike some of the opposing opinions that have been referenced here) I also uncovered two sworn affidavits from witnesses of the phone call during which the Pottsville owner was granted permission to play ND by the person he believed to be the acting commissioner (Joe Carr was in the hospital at the time.) From a legal standpoint it is reasonable for the Maroons to have assumed that they had the league’s blessing before signing the contract to play in Philly. The league’s warnings are irrelevant since they came retroactively after the contracts were signed, when to back out of the game would have meant bankruptcy for Pottsville.

There has never been any proof that Carr ordered the Cardinals to schedule those extra games. What’s far more important to note, however, is that when the Milwaukee team did not have enough players, members of the Cardinals coerced local high school players to pose as members of the Milwaukee team. These were not, as the Pro Football Researchers put it, “unfamiliar players” but teenagers who eventually lost their amateur status and were denied college scholarships. As you can imagine this was major news at the time, splashed across every sports section, and therefore, easily verified -- one might say -- any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

Carr ordered that the bogus win be stricken from the record books. It never was and that’s why Chicago’s winning percentage in the standings remains above the Maroons, who, by the way, beat them 21-7 in Comiskey Park. (This is also why the Cardinals owner refused to accept the 1925 title and called it “bogus” when the league tried to award it to Chicago.) Yet, for the extreme rules violation of using high school players in an NFL game the Cardinals were fined, put on probation and then named the 1925 NFL champions, whereas the Maroons were kicked out of the league for, one could argue, helping to legitimize the NFL. No matter where you stand on all the other points, it's nearly impossible to argue that the Maroons punishment fit their so-called crime.

In the end, both original arguments – Pottsville’s side of the story and the group of researchers defending the actions of the NFL – were flawed, distorted, incomplete and amateurish and they only served to reduce an important historic debate to name calling, ego-driven standoffs and ... oh, I don’t know … anonymous, inaccurate Internet postings.

The real losers, of course, are the pioneers from Pottsville. The Maroons (a team that outscored its first seven opponents 179-6) were one of the most dominant, influential – and controversial – teams in NFL history. A team and a cause supported by, among others, Red Smith, Red Grange, George Halas, John O’Hara, The Rooney family, Jeff Lurie, Paul Tagliabue, Ed Rendell, Roger Goodell and George W. Bush, who, believe it or not, sent me a hand-written note after completing Breaker Boys.

This is a debate that begs for compromise, but because of misinformation, ego and, frankly, the Bidwill’s interference and influence (hence, the Cardinals Curse), the Maroons – and players like running back Tony Latone, who was forced into the coal mines at 11 but went on to run for more yards and more TDs than Red Grange -- have been denied the honor, respect and place in history that they earned on the field.

Here’s hoping the movie changes all that.

flem

 

To be fair, they were talking about Bruce Feldman's book