The National Football League was in its infancy in 1925 and so were the Pottsville Maroons. A team in Pennsylvania that joined the NFL in 1925. Playing at Minerville Park near another NFL team called the Frankford Yellow Jackets. In their first game they shut out the Buffalo Bisons. Even though they had three NFL HOFers in 1928 but their best season was in 1925 where they went 10-2, second best in the NFL. The controversy of the season is a historic event that hasn't happened since nor before to an NFL team.
However, before the season ended, the Maroons were suspended by NFL commissioner Joseph Carr, ultimately denying them the championship title. This has been the subject of controversy ever since. Controversy surrounds who actually won the 1925 NFL Championship. Officially, the Chicago Cardinals are listed as the 1925 NFL champions because they finished with the best record; however, many Pottsville fans at the time claimed that the Maroons were the legitimate champions. The Maroons and the Cardinals were the top contenders for the title, with Pottsville winning a late-season meeting between them, 21–7. But the Maroons scheduled a game against a team of University of Notre Dame All-Stars in Philadelphia, Pottsville won 9–7 on the same day that the Frankford Yellow Jackets were scheduled to play a game in the same city. Frankford protested, saying that it was violating their protected territory rights that they had. Commissioner Carr warned Streigel several times that Pottsville's franchise would be suspended if they played in Philadelphia. Not wanting to give up on a potential financial windfall for his team, Streigel went ahead with the game. He would later claim he had received verbal permission from the NFL by telephone, though he gave inconsistent responses as to which official he had spoken to. Pottsville considered it a major win for professional football, but the match only attracted about 8,000 fans, a major financial disappointment. As threatened, Carr suspended Pottsville and removed them from the NFL, preventing them from finishing their schedule.
Meanwhile, Chicago Cardinals owner Chris O'Brien hastily scheduled two games against the Hammond Pros and the Milwaukee Badgers, both of whom had already disbanded for the season. Obviously playing the games to increase their record and it appears to secure the championship by improving their record. The game against the Badgers spurred a scandal of its own, when the Badgers filled out their roster with four high school players, which is against NFL rules. Both teams were sanctioned by the league. Regardless, with Pottsville out of the league, the Cardinals had the best record (11-2-1), and were awarded the championship by the league. For his part, O'Brien refused to accept the title, and afterward the league never officially awarded it at all. Later both the franchise and the NFL would claim the Cardinals as the 1925 champions. The Cardinals did not attempt to publicly take credit for the title until 1933, when it was acquired by Charles Bidwill whose descendants still own the modern-day franchise now Arizona. The Cardinals have won only one further NFL title, in 1947, leading to discussion that the franchise might be cursed as a result of this controversy. The NFL reinstated the Maroons the very next season. The league feared that the Maroons would jump to the threatening American Football League, sometimes called AFL I, AFLG, or the Grange League, was a professional American football league that operated in 1926. It was the first major competitor to the National Football League. Pottsville still feeling they were the rightful champions created their own trophy made out of coal. The Maroons coal trophy would later go on display at the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton. The City of Pottsville still celebrates the Pottsville Maroons stolen championship, while a request to re-examine the 1925 championship was declined in 1967 on a 12-2 vote with then St. Louis Cardinals leading the opposition. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell lobbied the NFL in 2003 to reverse the decision, with President George W. Bush even writing in favor of the Maroons, but the title remained with the Chicago Cardinals. Still to this day the Chicago Cardinals are the 1925 NFL World Champions.
The NFL reinstated the Maroons the very next season. The league feared that the Maroons would jump to the threatening American Football League. In 1926 Red Grange and his manager C. C. Pyle wanted an NFL franchise in New York City. However, that move would have infringed on the territorial rights of the New York Giants. Pyle and Grange were turned down, so they decided to start their own league, the AFL. To keep independent teams from joining Grange's league, the NFL hastily expanded to 22 franchises. The Maroons were one of the teams added, or in this case reinstated.[8] That year the Maroons were once again in the thick of title contention until late in the season. Pottsville's shutout victories over the Buffalo Rangers and Akron Indians led to the team finishing with a 10–2–1 record and third place in the final standings. 1926 also saw the signing of George Kenneally, a rookie out of St. Bonaventure University, who earned all-pro status and was named team captain in just his second season, and would later become part owner of the club.
However, towards the end of the season, the Maroons management struggled to meet its financial obligations, and there were published reports of a strike among the team's players.
The 1927 season saw a decline in the team's on-field performance. Pottsville lost several of its stars, and others were growing older, and finished the season with a disappointing 5–8–0 record. Doc Striegel relinquished operational control of the team for the 1928 season by "loaning" it to a group of three players: Herb Stein, Pete Henry and Duke Osborn. Henry took over the coaching reins but the downward spiral continued. The Maroons ended what turned out to be their final season in Pottsville with a dismal 2–8–0 record. At the end of the season the players were given a small football made of anthracite coal, a memento of the last season played in Pottsville.
Striegel sold the club during the offseason to a New England-based partnership that included Maroons' standout, George Kenneally. The new owners relocated the franchise to Boston prior to the 1929 season, where it was renamed the Bulldogs. The Bulldogs would be the first of a string of unsuccessful attempts at establishing an NFL team in Massachusetts and would be followed by the Boston Redskins in the 1930s and the Boston Yanks in the 1940s. Not until the American Football League's Patriots (established in 1960) joined the NFL in 1970 would the league be able to establish a permanent presence in New England's most populous market (and even that team required a hostile takeover to prevent being relocated in the 1990s).
Six veteran Maroons players made the move with the team. Dick Rauch also returned to the fold, resuming his position as head coach. Based at Boston's Braves Field, the Bulldogs nonetheless had a two-game swan song in their old stomping grounds, defeating both the Buffalo Bison on October 27 at Minersville Park and the Orange Tornadoes on October 29 at Mitchell Field.[9] The team folded at season's end with a 4–4–0 record.
Because the Washington Football Team began in 1932 as the Boston Braves, some Pottsville backers, with help from a few writers, have suggested that the team descended from the Maroons by way of the Boston Bulldogs. The 1932 Boston franchise, however, had no relationship to the 1929 Bulldogs (that team instead descended from the Tornadoes, by way of the 1931 Cleveland Indians).
A dedicated website of the Pottsville Maroons.
http://www.pottsvillemaroons1925.com/
Video on the story of the 1925 Pottsville Maroons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBHu8id_tm0
