Who Were The Los Angeles Buccaneers?

The Los Angeles Buccaneers were a traveling team in the National Football League during their one season 1926, ostensibly representing the city of Los Angeles, California. Like the Los Angeles Wildcats of the first American Football League, the team never actually played a league game in Los Angeles. It was operated out of Chicago with players from California colleges. The historian Michael McCambridge has stated that the Buccaneers originally planned to play in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and became a road team only after the Coliseum Commission banned pro teams from its stadium. However, the difficulty of transcontinental travel in the era before modern air travel must have been a major factor in the decision to base the team in the Midwest. The last game of the Buccaneers' existence was an exhibition game against the Wildcats in San Francisco, with the Buccaneers being shut out, 17-0, on January 23, 1927. Its lone "home game" was an exhibition game against the AFL's New York Yankees in January 1927.