December 31, 1902: The World Series of Football

 

The 2nd Madison Square Garden, 1891-1925

December 31, 1902: The 1st World Series of Football is held, at Madison Square Garden in New York.

This might be a little confusing. The term "World Series" was first used for a baseball championship in 1884, although the current event of that title did not begin until 1903. And this was the 2nd Madison Square Garden, built in 1891 on the site of the 1st, in 1879, at the northeastern corner of 26th Street and Madison Avenue, overlooking Madison Square Park, closed in 1925.

So the game was held indoors, on a field too short and too narrow for American football as we now understand it: 70 by 35 yards. The event was the idea of Tom O'Rourke, a boxing manager who was then the manager of The Garden, who wanted an event for what was then a slow time of the year for sporting events, as basketball and hockey were not yet major sports in America, much less in New York. 

O'Rourke is 2nd from the right.

2nd from the left is George "Tex" Rickard,

also a boxing promoter, who took over

management of the 2nd Garden, and built the 3rd Garden.

He decided to invite several professional and college teams to The Garden for the series, envisioning a series of games, showcasing the best in college and pro teams, eventually leading to one climactic game, crowning the "champion of the world."

But he had a tough time finding teams to play in the tournament. The colleges refused, due to increased pressure from the Amateur Athletic Association (AAU) to stop participating in professional games. The Philadelphia baseball teams, the Phillies and the Athletics, had sponsored football teams, but had disbanded them.

In the end, only 4 teams competed: The Knickerbocker Athletic Club of Manhattan, the Warlow Athletic Club of Queens, the Orange Athletic Club of New Jersey, and the Syracuse Athletic Club of the city of the same name.

O'Rourke did finally get a fifth team to join the series when some players from the Phillies and Athletics got together and formed what was called the New York Club. In calling them the "New York" team, O'Rourke expected to give his patrons the pleasure of watching a "home team" win.

He was wrong. In the 1st game, on December 29, Syracuse beat "New York," 5-0. On December 30, Knickerbocker beat Warlow, 11-6. On New Year's Eve, December 31, Syracuse beat Knickerbocker, 36-0, and clinched the title. On New Year's Day, January 1, 1903, Syracuse beat Orange, 36-0.

O'Rourke planned another series for 1903, planning 15 football games in a span of 6 days, something that wouldn't be physically possible with players the size the would become in the mid-20th Century. Knickerbocker and Orange returned, but it would be the Franklin Athletic Club, of northwestern Pennsylvania, that won the tournament. With crowds too small to maintain the event, O'Rourke never scheduled another "World Series of Football."

One note of interest: The Orange Athletic Club had been founded in 1887, and in 1929, they entered the NFL, as the Orange Tornadoes. In 1930, they moved a few miles and became the Newark Tornadoes, playing at what became known as Newark City Schools Stadium.

They had to drop out of the NFL due to declining revenue in the Great Depression, and moved back to Orange for the 1931 season. In 1937, the Tornadoes moved back to Newark, and renamed themselves the Newark Bears, after the city's baseball team, in 1939. They remained a semi-pro team, in the Atlantic Coast Football League, through the 1965 season. From 1966 to 1969, they competed in the ACFL as the Orlando Panthers, and then folded.

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December 31, 1902 was a Wednesday. There were no other scores on this historic day: Baseball was out of season, professional basketball barely existed, and while there was professional hockey, no games were scheduled.

Roy Goodall was born that day. The defender captained Yorkshire soccer team Huddersfield Town to the 1922 FA Cup, and then to 3 straight Football League titles, in 1924, '25 and '26.