Researchers Find Trivia Treasure in NFL Past

They are football’s dedicated detectives, historians who enjoy the sport not only on television, but on microfilm monitors that transport them to the halcyon days of professional football.

There are 150 members of the loosely knit Professional Football Researchers Assn. scattered across the country. Most are mere spectators, some, including former all-pro guard Joe Kopcha of the Chicago Bears, are former players. All are fans.

Bob Carroll, for instance, is a Pittsburgh-area researcher and illustrator with an encyclopedic knowledge of football’s forgotten heroes. Lido Starelli, a San Francisco plasterer, has missed only one 49er game in 43 years--and has every game program to prove it.

The amateur researchers specialize in debunking the myths and mysteries of the sport’s sometimes nomadic and often-misunderstood past.

“It’s amazing how much of the myth and lure associated with pro football don’t stand up under research,” said Carroll, 49, the editor of “The Coffin Corner,” the PFRA’s semi-monthly newsletter. “Much of what has been written even in encyclopedias isn’t always that accurate.”

For example, it has long been accepted that the National Football League was formed Sept. 17, 1920 as the legendary George Halas and other founding fathers squatted on Hupmobile running boards in a Canton, Ohio, auto dealership. An illustration of the historic meeting hangs in a prominent place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton.

But, Carroll said, Canton newspaper headlines blared “New League Is Formed” more than a month before, and that the car dealer meeting may have served merely to finalize plans for a league that later would capture the imagination of the nation.

Carroll, citing the fruits of research, also offered these tidbits:

--Only several years before the historic 1958 Baltimore Colts-New York Giants overtime championship game, “pro football was only about as popular as indoor soccer is today.”

--Just six years before that game, “the turning point in NFL history,” the Colts were called the Dallas Texans and “were so bad, they wound up finishing the season in Hershey, Pa.”

--Even in the early 1950s, newspaper columnists frequently wrote that an average college football team could beat any pro team.

--Pro football’s first great passing quarterback wasn’t the revolutionary Sammy Baugh, but a highly underrated former Michigan All-American named Benny Friedman who once threw 18 touchdown passes in a single season with a ball “more like a watermelon than a football.”

Friedman coached Yale University while still playing, and an opponent once purchased Friedman’s entire team just to acquire the quarterback’s services. “He really was a franchise player,” Carroll said.

--An NFL franchise once could be purchased for $50.

--Jim Thorpe, the most storied of football’s early stars, didn’t have an outstanding NFL career. He hung on for eight seasons after his talents began to deteriorate, although he played in an era where players often retired after a year or two to pursue more-lucrative careers.

--The NFL’s true 1925 champion, either the Pottsville (Pa.) Maroons or the Chicago Cardinals, has never been determined. League standings incorrectly list Chicago at 11-2 and Pottsville at 10-2; both teams were 10-2. Pottsville beat Chicago, but was suspended by the league for playing an exhibition game against a Notre Dame alumni team.

--The first pro football game was played not in 1895 in Latrobe, Pa., but in nearby Pittsburgh three years before. The first all-professional team was Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Athletic Assn. in 1896.

The researchers have recently traced the sport’s numerous franchise shifts and compiled the first comprehensive list of all-pro teams. The tedious fact-finding process has determined that some NFL teams, like the Indianapolis Colts, have played in as many as eight cities.

The Colts were originally called the St. Mary’s College Collegians when formed in Dayton, Ohio, in 1916. They later landed in New Jersey, Brooklyn, New York City (they were called the Yankees and were owned by Dan Topping, the baseball team’s former owner) as well as Dallas and Hershey.

“But many people think pro football’s early days were sheer chaos,” Carroll said. “There were games not reported, but the NFL was better organized than one would think. There were published schedules and as early as 1922, the players had insurance. A franchise that cost $50 in 1920 was $1,000 in 1922. Sure, things weren’t done in a modern style, but they weren’t bad.”