November 26, 1925: Red Grange Makes His Professional Debut

November 26, 1925: Red Grange, just 5 days past his last game for the University of Illinois, plays his first professional football game. (That was within the rules at the time, as there was no NFL Draft, let alone restrictions connected to it.)

I don't think I can underestimate how big an event this was considered to be. This was "The Golden Age of Sports," and, what Babe Ruth was to baseball, Jack Dempsey to boxing, Man o' War to horse racing, Howie Morenz to hockey, Paavo Nurmi to track, Bill Tilden to tennis, and Bobby Jones to golf, Red Grange was to football. He had Peyton Manning and Tom Brady levels of hype at a time when the only real form of mass media was newspapers. Radio broadcasting was in its infancy, television was still in the experimental stage, and newsreels weren't much yet.

It is the annual Thanksgiving Day tussle between Chicago's NFL teams, the Bears and the Cardinals, and Cubs Park -- which was renamed Wrigley Field the next season -- is packed to the gills, 39,000 people, to watch the Galloping Ghost put on his Number 77 jersey for the Bears -- in the same colors as UI, dark blue and orange, and the first truly famous uniform number in North American sports. The game ends in a scoreless tie.

(The NHL already had uniform numbers, but was still not thought of as an American game, so Howie Morenz's 7 was not yet famous outside Canada. And Major League Baseball wouldn't adopt numbers until 1929, so Babe Ruth hadn't yet begun wearing 3.)

Both Chicago teams finished 9-2, but the Cardinals had only 1 tie, while the Bears had 3. Under the rules then in effect, the standings were decided by winning percentage, with a tie counting as half a win, and not every team played the same number of games against in-league opponents. So the Cardinals had a winning percentage of .846, and the Bears .643. And that wasn't even the most controversial part. The Pottsville Maroons went 10-2, with no ties, so their percentage was .833. I described how the title was settled in the Cardinals' favor in a separate post.

The uneven scheduling was a big reason why the NFL was not exactly "major league" yet, and also a big reason why it needed a big name like Grange. Even having Jim Thorpe didn't help. The Philadelphia-based Frankford Yellow Jackets played 17 games. The Bears played 14. The Green Bay Packers played 13. The Cardinals, the Maroons, the Cleveland Bulldogs played 12. The New York Giants, the Detroit Panthers, the Rock Island Independents played 11. The Providence Steam Roller played 10. The Buffalo Bisons and the Columbus Tigers played 9. The Kansas City Cowboys, the Dayton Triangles, and the Canton Bulldogs -- not to be confused with nearby Cleveland -- played 8. The Rochester Jeffersons played 7. And struggling teams that soon went out of business played fewer: The Milwaukee Badgers 5, the Indiana-based Hammond Pros 4, and the Minnesota-based Duluth Kelleys 3.

Grange is one of the greatest all-around players in football history, a sensational running back and one of the best defensive backs of his era. He is also, by far, the most important player in the history of the NFL: If he had failed, the NFL might never have become bigger than it was in 1925, and likely would have gone out of business during the Great Depression, and another sport would have had to fill the gap between the end of the World Series in October and Opening Day in April. Maybe it would have been that other "football."

But Grange did succeed, and, along with his coach George Halas and his contemporary Jim Thorpe, he was one of the first 3 men elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

*

November 26, 1925, as are all Thanksgiving Days, was a Thursday. Also on this day, the New York Giants, an NFL team in its 1st season, won 7-0 over the Staten Island Stapletons, a non-NFL team founded in 1915, and played in the Stapleton neighborhood of Staten Island. The game was played at the Stapes' home, Thompson Stadium, which stood from 1924 to 1933, and the attendance is listed as 10,000, which might be a sellout.

The Stapes did not join the NFL until the 1929 season, and the Great Depression knocked them out in 1932. Berta A. Dreyfus Intermediate School is now on the site of Thompson Stadium, at 101 Warren Street.

The Kansas City Cowboys and the Cleveland Bulldogs, neither of them drawing very well (which would shock later fans in those cities), played at Clarkin Field in Hartford, Connecticut. The Cowboys won, 17-0. Since New England was then, and remains now, a big region for high school football on Thanksgiving, the attendance for this game was listed as only 1,000. The Cowboys played 1 more season before folding, the Bulldogs 1 more after that.

The Pottsville Maroons beat the Green Bay Packers, 31-0 at Minersville Park in Pottsville. The Maroons lasted until 1929.

And the Rock Island Independents beat the Detroit Panthers, 6-3 at Navin Field (later renamed Briggs Stadium and Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Both teams lasted 1 more year.

Among the major college rivalry games played that day:

* Virginia and North Carolina played to a tie, 3-3 at Emerson Field in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

* Alabama beat Georgia, 27-0 at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama.

* Kentucky beat Tennessee, 23-20 at Stoll Field in Lexington, Kentucky.

* Texas A&M 28 beat Texas, 28-0 at Kyle Field in College Station.

* Colorado A&M (which became Colorado State) beat Wyoming, 40-0 at Colorado Field in Fort Collins.

* And Utah State beat Utah, 10-6 at Cummings Field in Salt Lake City.

Not rivalries, but also (in my opinion) noteworthy:

* Syracuse beat Columbia, 16-5 at Baker Field in Upper Manhattan.

* The University of Pennsylvania beat Cornell, 7-0 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* The University of Pittsburgh beat Penn State, 23-7 at Pitt Stadium in Pittsburgh. (It had opened 2 months earlier, on September 26, with a 28-0 win over Washington & Lee University.

* Nebraska beat Notre Dame, 17-0 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.

* Oklahoma beat Oklahoma State, 35-0 at Memorial Stadium in Norman.