Forgotten to time: 1925 Pottsville Maroons

In 1925, for the first and last time in NFL history, a team won the championship game and still lost the championship.

The NFL was in its sixth season, and the Pottsville Maroons had stormed to a 5-1 record, the only blemish a 6-0 defeat to the Providence Steam Roller in Week 2.

By late November, the Maroons were 6-2 and about to play three games in seven nights. After demolishing the Cleveland Bulldogs 24-6, Pottsville welcomed the Green Bay Packers four days later and won, 31-0. Only 72 hours later, the Maroons played the Frankford Yellow Jackets, who led the league in wins that season with a 13-7 record. The Maroons won 49-0.

Going into their Dec. 6 game against the 9-1-1 Chicago Cardinals, the Maroons were 9-2-0. Before 1933, the league recognized the team with the best winning percentage as world champion. In essence, this was the title game.

The setting was a windswept day on the south side of Chicago, with 5,000 people braving the cold at Comiskey Park. After a scoreless first quarter, Pottsville broke the tie with a Barney Wentz touchdown run. The length of the jaunt has been lost to history. Later that period, the Maroons doubled their lead on a 30-yard run by Walter French. At halftime, the visitors led 14-0.

Chicago cut the deficit to seven with a touchdown in the third, but saw its chances evaporate when Wentz barreled over once more from three yards out. When the final gun sounded, the Maroons ran off the field in celebration of a 21-7 triumph.

Pottsville had won the NFL championship. Or so it thought.

A quaint village in eastern Pennsylvania, nestled along the Schuylkill River within the Appalachian Mountains, Pottsville is little more than another small-font name on a map, as outdated as the map itself. It is best known as the home of the D.G. Yuengling & Son Brewery, an institution since 1829, the oldest of its kind in America.

In the early 20th century, Pottsville was a coal and textile hub. Van Heusen was a large part of the town’s economy, while bleaching and dying companies thrived alongside the brewery, which survived Prohibition by producing near-beers and dairy products, including ice cream.

The brewery sits on scenic Mahantongo Street, next to St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church, founded two years before Yuengling existed.

Mahantongo Street is lined with homes and dotted with clues to what the town once looked like. Almost every residence has a brick chimney and is painted white, with trees lining much of the corridor. There is a charm about the place, but there is also a sadness. The beautiful brick sidewalks that adorn portions of the street have begun to loosen, allowing for grass to sprout up in the gaps.

“It’s a typical small town American city,” said Ed Rendell, former two-term governor of Pennsylvania. “It’s dependent on one industry in coal, and it’s been fighting for the last 25 years to come back. It’s fighting hard, it’s trying to keep its head above water.”

Jim Heller played football at Pottsville High School for the Crimson Tide under head coach Bill Flynn in the late 1960s. Both sides of his family were from the coal region, which he eventually left to star with the Penn State Nittany Lions as a 235-pound defensive tackle for coach Joe Paterno. While in Pottsville, a town he left for good en route to Happy Valley, Heller remembers the impact of the Maroons.

“You were fairly aware of it,” said Heller. “At that time there were still old timers around who remembered going to the games and things like that. My grandfather talked about going to the games. They had a huge following.”

Heller’s barber, John Graziz, had a shop in the Yorkville section of town with photos of Maroons players adorning the walls.

Pottsville was not new to professional football when the Maroons became a power. The town had been home to the independent Pottsville Eleven, which joined the Anthracite League, named after the type of coal that sustained the area, in 1924. That same year, the team became the Maroons, a nickname that would stick until the franchise’s move to Boston in 1929 (when they became the Bulldogs). During its time in Pottsville, the team played at Minersville Park, a high school field that now lies under a strip mall with only a historical marker to remind patrons what once was.

The team was a mix of local boys from the coal mines and stars from outside the area, helping to bring fans both wins and local flavor. It was owned by John G. “Doc” Striegel, who settled on a purchase price of $1,500 in 1924.

Meanwhile, the town continues to offer glimpses into its storied past. At the corner of Centre and Mahantongo stands the Necho Allen Hotel, named for the man who discovered Anthracite coal. Once a dwelling as decadent as any in Manhattan, the beautiful boarding stop has become Section VIII housing for the elderly. In its glory years, the Necho Allen was a postcard-worthy structure. It had grandeur in its famous Coal Mine Tap Room and posh lobby, decorated with expensive rugs and Greek Corinthian architecture atop the columns.

Today, little in Pottsville would suggest a town once worth a well-circulated picture. The textile jobs that once defined a region have disappeared, largely due to foreign manufacturing at a cheaper cost. Yuengling and generational religion remain, but the town built on seven hills is only a whisper of the roar it once was.

“It’s a town with an unusually rich history because of the wealth it had from Anthracite coal mining in years back,” said Barbara Adams, 65-year-old former resident of Pottsville. “But since wealth has completely disappeared it is very rundown and depressed. A lot of people still stay there because there’s Appalachian syndrome, but a lot of people had to leave because there were not jobs. Even those who stay, with more means and education, moved out of the town itself and now live in suburban Pottsville.”

Following their victory in the Windy City, the Maroons rode the rails into Pottsville. All that remained was an exhibition against the Notre Dame All-Stars, a game organized to bring some financial stability to Pottsville ownership.

Notre Dame was then in its heyday, having gone 10-0 while winning the national championship under head coach Knute Rockne. The contest was scheduled to take place on Dec. 12, six days after Pottsville vanquished the Cardinals.

However, NFL commissioner Joseph Carr was keeping a close eye on the proceedings. The Maroons were permitted to play against Notre Dame at Minersville Park, which had a capacity of 5,000, but were forbidden from hosting the All-Stars in Philadelphia’s Shibe Park due to territorial infringement against Frankford. Ownership decided to play in the nation’s original capital anyway, testing Carr’s authority. Pottsville won, 9-7, in front of a disappointing crowd of 10,000 fans.

Back at the league office in Columbus, Ohio, Carr was furious. The Maroons had defied his decree, and he would make them pay. Instead of having the team forfeit the gate or pay a separate fine, Carr levied a punishment never seen before or since in the NFL.

The commissioner stripped the Maroons of the 1925 title, and removed them from the league.

“They were over-penalized,” said Ray Didinger, Pro Football historian and Pennsylvania native. The punishment didn’t fit the crime. Did they deserve to be sanctioned? Yes. … A fair punishment would have been Carr coming in and fining them a big share of the gate. They thought they would fill Shibe Park and they wound up drawing eight thousand [the official figure is 10,000]. It turned out not to be the financial windfall they thought it was going to be and wound up getting, basically, the death penalty. They lost everywhere but on the scoreboard.”

Pottsville was irate. Striegel claimed he had verbal consent to play against Notre Dame in Philadelphia, despite protests from Frankford over the territorial rights. Carr stood his ground, claiming the league had made its stance well-known, only to be disregarded by the first-year NFL club.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals were at 9-2-1 on the season, sitting a half-game behind the Maroons for first place in the standings. Despite having already completed its schedule, Chicago quickly arranged a pair of games against the Milwaukee Badgers and Hammond Pros. Both teams were league doormats, and the Cardinals rolled to a pair of victories with a combined score of 71-0.

The win over Milwaukee only added fuel to the fire for Pottsville supporters. The Badgers played against Chicago with four high school players on the roster, something against league rules, according to David Fleming’s Breaker Boys: The NFL’s Greatest Team and the Stolen 1925 Championship. Carr promised to remove the win from the standings, but never did.

Although both teams broke league rules, the championship remained stripped from the Maroons. Chicago owner Chris O’Brien refused to accept it, believing it would be disingenuous, and the championship remained unclaimed until 1933, when Charles Bidwell bought the Cardinals and claimed the title, the team’s first, as their own.

The Cardinals relocated to St. Louis in 1960, and once more to Phoenix in 1988. Throughout all that, they have won only two championships, with the second coming in 1947. Perhaps a more successful team would be willing to acknowledge the Maroons and the city they hailed from. Unfortunately for Pottsville, the Cardinals are in little rush to cede their victory from 93 years ago, despite clear evidence the better team is without its rings.

“They’ve owned the team forever and only have two championships,” Didinger said. “They aren’t going to give one away. You can make a case for this, you really can, if you look at the facts, and the season and the records. There isn’t much doubt that the Maroons were the best team in the league that year and deserved the championship. I think that’s true. If you look at it and study it, they were the best team.

” … If it hadn’t been a team that was owned by the same family, if it was the Providence Steam Roller or the Duluth Eskimos, a franchise that was defunct and no longer existed, they would have a far better chance of getting this overturned and getting the championship.”

Since Bidwell claimed the title as Chicago’s, there have been multiple attempts to right a perceived wrong. In 1962, the citizens of Pottsville petitioned the NFL to reexamine the case against their defunct Maroons. Then-commissioner Pete Rozelle formed a committee on the subject and put it to a league vote the following year. The Maroons and their fans were denied by a 12-2 margin.

The matter remained dormant for four decades until Rendell, an avid football fan, did research on the subject and spoke with league owners and officials. The project resulted in Rendell making an in-person appeal.

“I appeared at an NFL owner’s meeting in Philadelphia in 2003 and the owners turned us down,” Rendell said. “We only got two votes. My plea was not to take the title away from the Cardinals, even though the Maroons beat them in the championship game, but to make them co-champions with the Cardinals that year. Bidwell, who was the owner at the Cardinals [the grandson of Charles], was the main opponent. It failed. It was a great injustice.”

With each passing year, the hopes of Pottsville continue to dwindle. Eventually the town will be far enough removed that its days as an NFL city are more folklore than fact. Still, there are those who believe firmly in the cause of recognition.

“It was a disgrace,” Rendell said. “The facts were so clear. They crushed the Cardinals in a game played in Chicago, and then they went and established cred for beating Notre Dame. The NFL should have been happy because that was the first step convincing people that the NFL was better than college football.”

To understand why the Maroons have had such trouble re-writing the record book, it’s important to understand the environment they played in, a far cry from today’s NFL. The National Football League was founded in 1920, but was known as the American Professional Football Association until 1922. Fourteen teams played in that inaugural season, including the Rock Island Independents, Dayton Triangles, Hammond Pros, Rochester Jeffersons, Muncie Flyers and Columbus Panhandles.

On Sept. 26, 1920, the Independents beat the St. Paul Ideals 48-0. The winners would survive six NFL seasons, including one that featured Hall of Fame back Jim Thorpe.

Thus was the beginning of professional football’s long, hard road into the American consciousness. Teams often joined and folded within a few years, if not months. Most were from small towns, with players routinely jumping from one team to the next in order to make an extra hundred dollars in a weekend.

During the first decade of NFL play, there were a staggering 44 franchises which played in at least one season. The games resembled a rugby scrum more than anything seen today, with the forward pass legal but rarely used. In 1920, the entire 14-team league threw 31 touchdown passes. Early on, championships were won by the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Frankford Yellow Jackets and Providence Steam Roller.

This was the world five franchises joined in 1925. One was the New York Giants. Another was the Pottsville Maroons.

In the league’s infancy it was legal for APFA/NFL teams to play against independents and count the contests in league standings. On occasion, teams played against high school and college opponents, with teams mocking up their own schedules.

“It was really just one step up from sandlot football,” said Didinger. “To call it pro football was giving it far too much credit. It was pro only because guys got paid. It was a loosely-structured situation. It had very few rules and standards. Teams would spring up and play for one year and go away. Players would come and go. They would just leave and go somewhere else and play for a few teams simultaneously, playing under one name for one team and then another name for another team.”

Through 1932, the first year the league was split into Eastern and Western Divisions, there wasn’t an official championship game.

Until 1934, the league champions were given the Brunswick-Balke Collender Trophy. The hardware was described as a “silver loving cup” in the Akron Evening Times. It remains cloaked in mystery, however, with the trophy’s whereabouts unknown. No photos of it exist.

Finally, in 1936, the league took measures to make sure all games were played between two NFL teams, with each having a 12-game schedule. It was also the first time the NFL didn’t have a team join or fold in the middle of a season.

In both the immediate and elongated aftermath, Pottsville remains shortchanged. The Maroons were reinstated by Carr before the 1926 season, but they were never the same. After going 10-2-2 and finishing in third place that year, things went south. Pottsville went 5-8-0 in 1927 before limping to a 2-8-0 mark in 1928, its final season with the Maroons. The franchise folded the following year after a forgettable campaign as the Boston Bulldogs.

For now, all is quiet on the Pottsville front. It seems the effort made by Rendell 14 years ago might have been the final gasp of a forgotten team and a tight-knit town, looking for the recognition it deserves from big-time America.

“I think that was it. They’ll keep trying if you know the folks in Pottsville,” Didinger said. “They’ll keep trying, they aren’t going to quit. Ed Rendall was the big push in ’03 and it was probably the last best chance to get it overturned. … I thought if there was anybody who could go in that room and make a case, as a district attorney in Philadelphia, I thought it could pull it off. … The fact it came back 30-2 tells us it ain’t going to happen.”

For his part, Rendell believes this was an opportunity missed for both Pottsville and the NFL. In an age when headlines are dominated by domestic abuse, CTE and what constitutes a reception, the league would be well-served to find some warmer stories. Taking up the cause for the Maroons and the town they played for seems like an easy choice. Yet it hasn’t happened.

Heller hasn’t been to his hometown in more than a decade. Yet the 66-year-old still receives a hard copy of the local newspaper, the Pottsville Republican, at his residence in Columbia, South Carolina. Although far removed, he maintains that it would be hugely significant for Pottsville if the NFL were to put things right.

“I’d care because I have some connections to people who knew them,” Heller said. “Of course I would be proud. Everyone that lives in Pottsville is proud and proud of what happened. Certainly I would be happy for them.”

As for the men who played on the 1925 Pottsville team, they remain a small, hidden part of NFL history, nameless and faceless to most who enjoy today’s game. They earn almost no mention as one of the great teams to ever play, coming well before television and radio broadcasts of the league. The Maroons are nothing more than a phantom, same as the Steam Roller, Yellow Jackets, Triangles and Pros. The only difference is the controversy that endures, albeit only in a small swatch of America.

With the passing of time, the true champion has been left in the dust, buried beneath decades of ambivalence from the NFL. For most, the story doesn’t exist because they are unaware. For those who are, it seems a moot point to fight over a trophy given to the wrong team almost 100 years ago.

The illegitimate champion is still playing with a banner of lies hanging above its field. The deserving has faded into oblivion, with its town being just another stop on Interstate 81. Almost all pass by on their way to a larger city, something not hard to find. The former NFL king has just 14,324 inhabitants, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.

Now the fight quietly rages through the night, with a sleepy town from a bygone era seeking justice for its team. The spirit to continue fighting remains a source of pride for the people of Pottsville, even if all around them have moved on.