As I was growing up, I always had a special love of NFL football, but it was recently that I’ve begun to be fascinated with the inception of the National Football League way back in 1920. It all started when an Ohio doctor, Jim Thorpe, along with another football man named Joseph Carr, started the American Professional Football Association on August 20, 1920. That was later re-named to the NFL in 1922.
When I think back on it, I can only imagine how different the NFL was in that decade. I’m sure the rules and regulations for the players were quite different. With so much change happening, I’m sure there must have been a clash between those who wanted to play more traditionally and those who wanted to look ahead. It was certainly a pivotal moment for the league and the team owners who had to decide which rules and regulations they would go with.
I’m also sure the players had different expectations than they do today. I imagine what it would be like to be a player in the late 1920s. Would the players have been paid less or more than they do now? Would they have needed more training or less?
It’s also interesting to think about how they kept up with the sport back then. I’m sure they’d relied on newspapers, as the first televised football game wasn’t televised until 1935. They would have been following the NFL with regular reports and news articles from the papers, but at the same time, it would be a bit of a guessing game for them.
Culturally, the NFL was probably a lot different too. By the 1920s, the first of the several generations of “new Americans” was beginning — immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe who would have been looking for a piece of American culture to call their own. I’m sure the culture surrounding the NFL would have been a bit more diverse than it is today.
Obviously, technology has evolved a lot since then. You have to remember that in 1920, most people didn’t have electricity or cars. The NFL schedule would have been planned months out in advance with players and teams having to plan their travel and accommodations far ahead of time. That would have been a huge challenge, considering how primitive the technology was.
Then, there was the matter of equipment. It would have been a lot harder to keep up with fashion back then and so I would imagine the players wearing outdated uniforms, possibly hand-made. Considering the age of the sport, they may not have had access to the latest sports equipment, either.
Clearly, the NFL has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 1920. Back then, it was a small operation, but now it’s a multi-billion dollar corporation. It’s truly amazing how far it has come in just a hundred years — from the small, local American Professional Football Association to the global phenomenon it is today.