Grange Helped Carry the NFL to Prominence

JAN. 16, 1926 More than any other player, Harold “Red” Grange turned the NFL into a major league.

On this date 73 years ago, at the Coliseum, he took the NFL off high school fields and put it in major stadiums. It was an era when NFL players made $250 per game and laundered their own uniforms.

He had played college football at Illinois, and his name was magic in the ‘20s, like Ruth and Dempsey’s. He was 5 feet 11, 175 pounds and had the agility of a gymnast and speed of a sprinter.

On his greatest day, against Michigan in 1924, he scored four touchdowns in the first quarter. Handling the ball four times, he returned a kickoff 95 yards, then had runs of 67, 58 and 44 yards.

He signed with the Chicago Bears immediately after his senior season, and his first NFL game, at Wrigley Field, drew 36,000. Two weeks later, 65,000 paid to see him at New York’s Polo Grounds.

Grange and the Bears came to Los Angeles to play a West Coast all-star team. Coliseum capacity then was 65,270, and that’s how many showed up--the largest crowd ever to see an NFL game in America at the time.

The Bears beat the Los Angeles Tigers that day, 17-7. Grange didn’t break any big runs, but gained 75 yards in 16 carries. The game’s star was Washington’s George Wilson, called “The Grange of the West.” He gained 157 yards.

Grange had a much better contract, though.

His share of the gate receipts that day was $49,000. In his first three years with the Bears, he earned about $1 million.

Within a few weeks of the game in L.A., Grange had lifted the NFL from outposts such as Pottstown, Beloit, Canton, Racine, Rock Island and Decatur.