December 18, 1926: Philadelphia's 1st NFL Championship

Henry "Two-Bits" Homan

December 18, 1926: The Frankford Yellow Jackets can only manage a 0-0 tie against the Pottsville Maroons, despite being at home at Frankford Stadium in Northeast Philadelphia. But it's enough to win them the NFL Championship.

The Yellow Jackets were founded in 1899, as the Frankford Athletic Association. This was a community-based non-profit organization of local residents and businesses. In keeping with its charter, which stated that "all profits shall be donated to charity," all of the team's excess income was donated to local charitable institutions. The beneficiaries of this generosity included Frankford Hospital, the Frankford Day Nursery, the local Boy Scouts, and the local American Legion Post 211. The officers of the Association never received a salary or compensation for their work on behalf of the team.

In 1922, Frankford absorbed the Philadelphia City Champion team, the Union Quakers, and won the unofficial City Championship. Over the course of the 1922 and '23 seasons, they compiled a 6-2-1 record against teams from the National Football League. The NFL thus offered them a franchise for 1924, making them the 1st Pennsylvania-based team in the League.

They played at Frankford Stadium, a small stadium located at 6101 Frankford Avenue, also bordered by Devereaux Avenue, Hawthorne Street and Benner Street. It was 8 miles northeast of City Hall.

They were coached by Guy Chamberlin. The Nebraska native, just 32 years old, also played end on both offense and defense. He is the only man to play on 4 consecutive NFL Champions: The 1921 Chicago Staleys (who became the Bears the next season), the 1922 and '23 Canton Bulldogs, and the 1924 Cleveland Bulldogs. So the Jackets made it 5 in 6 years. And he was player-coach for all but the 1st of these.

His best player was his smallest: At 5-foot-5 and 150 pounds, quarterback and safety Henry Homan was known as "Two-Bits." He only played 6 seasons in the NFL, all for Frankford, but there are those who believe there is an unfair bias against the pioneer players of the NFL when it comes to voting for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and that Homan should be among the players elected. If he ever is, he will be the smallest player in it.

They were immediately one of the NFL's better teams, going 11-2-1 in 1924, to finish 3rd; and 13-7 in 1925, to finish 6th. They began the 1926 season on September 25, with a 6-6 home tie against the Akron Indians. To get around Pennsylvania's "blue laws," they often scheduled back-to-back games: A home game on a Saturday, and an away game against the same team the next day, Sunday. They hosted the Hartford Blues, beating them 13-0; then went to Hartford, and beat them again, 10-0.

They beat the Buffalo Rangers, 30-0 at home, then swept a home-and-home with the New York Giants, winning each game by a 6-0 score. They beat the Canton Bulldogs, 17-0 at home. Then came a home loss to the Providence Steam Roller (no S on the end), 7-6, followed the next day, Halloween, by a 6-3 win in Providence.

The loss to Providence would prove to be the only one of the season. They beat the defending NFL Champions, the Chicago Cardinals, 33-7 at Frankford. They beat the Duluth Eskimos, 10-0 at home; then the Dayton Triangles, 35-0 at home. On November 25, Thanksgiving, they hosted the Green Bay Packers, and won, 20-14. Two days later, they beat the Detroit Panthers, 7-6 at home.

The demand for tickets was too much for Frankford Stadium, and so their December 4 game with the Chicago Bears was moved to Shibe Park, home of baseball's Philadelphia Athletics. (It was later home to the Phillies and the Eagles as well, and renamed Connie Mack Stadium.) The Jackets won, 7-6, and that game effectively decided the title.. They avenged their loss again by beating the Steam Roller, 24-0 at home, before closing the season with the tie with Pottsville.

The day after that game, the Bears and the Packers played to a 3-3 tie at Wrigley Field in Chicago, but it wouldn't have mattered: The Yellow Jackets were 14-1-2, while the Bears were 12-1-3, and a win would only have brought them to 13-1-2. Under the format that was put in place in 1933, the Jackets and the Bears would have met somewhere in Philadelphia in the NFL Championship Game. (This being an even-numbered year, the Eastern Division Champions would have hosted.) But the Championship Game hadn't been developed yet, and the NFL was still a single-division League, so the Jackets were the Champions. Philadelphia had its 1st NFL title.

Guy Chamberlin was offered more money by the Cardinals, and so he left for them for 1927. The Jackets fell to 6-9-3 in 1927. They bounced back, going 11-3-2 in 1928, to finish 2nd; and 10-4-5 (that's right, 5 ties) in 1929, to finish 3rd.

Then came the Great Depression. The Jackets were just 4-13-1 in 1930. On July 27, 1931, Frankford Stadium burned down. Retail shops are now on the site. For the 1931 season, the team played their 1st 2 home games at Municipal Stadium (later renamed John F. Kennedy Stadium), and their last 2 at the Phillies' Baker Bowl, and finished only 2-6-1. Their last home game was, appropriately, on Halloween, a 14-0 loss to the Portsmouth Spartans. Their farewell was on November 8, a 13-0 loss to the Giants at the Polo Grounds. The Frankford Athletic Association turned ownership of the team back over to the League.

Under the belief, confirmed in November 1933, that Pennsylvania would legalize professional sports on Sundays, former University of Pennsylvania teammates and assistant coaches Bert Bell and James Ludlow "Lud" Wray bought the rights to the NFL franchise in Philadelphia; while Art Rooney did so for Pittsburgh, which had not previously had one. Rooney named his team the Pirates, and renamed them the Steelers in 1940. Bell and Wray named their team the Eagles, for the "Blue Eagle" logo of the National Recovery Administration, and the original colors were blue and yellow, before switching to green and white in 1935.

Contrary to popular belief, although playing in the same city, and their 1st home being Baker Bowl, the Yellow Jackets' last home, the Eagles are not the same franchise as the Yellow Jackets: Bell and Wray had bought only the right to operate an NFL team in Philadelphia, not the team itself. They never approached the Frankford Athletic Association with an offer to buy the Yellow Jackets' name or any of the team's assets, and no player on the '33 Eagles had ever played for the Yellow Jackets. 

The Eagles won the NFL Championships for the seasons of 1948, 1949, 1960 and 2017, but they properly do not claim the Frankford title of 1926, any more than the Philadelphia Phillies claim the Pennants and World Series won by the Athletics, or the Philadelphia 76ers claim the 1947 and 1956 NBA titles won by the Philadelphia Warriors, or MLS' Philadelphia Union claim the 1973 NASL title won by the Philadelphia Atoms.

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December 18, 1926 was a Saturday. There was 1 other football game, a college game: The University of Utah beat the University of Hawaii, 17-7 at Honolulu Stadium. That ballpark was brand-new, and UH would play there until the opening of Aloha Stadium in 1975, while the Pacific Coast League's Hawaii Islanders played there from 1961 to 1975, before also moving to the new stadium. It was demolished in 1976.

Baseball was out of season, and the NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New York Americans lost to the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-2 at the Chicago Coliseum.

* The Ottawa Senators and the Montreal Maroons played to a tie, 0-0 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 3-0 at the Boston Arena (now the Matthews Arena, used by Northeastern University, the oldest remaining arena in the country).

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-0 at the Mutual Street Arena in Toronto.

* And the New York Rangers and the Detroit Cougars -- forerunners of the Red Wings -- were not scheduled.