The Kokomo Tribune from Kokomo, Indiana • Page 28

28 Kokomb (Ind.) Tribune Thursday, Nov. 22, 1979 i reminisces about Editor's note: Among the giants of pro football, no figure stands taller than George Halas. He was there at the creation and remains a major force today. Founder and owner of the Chicago Bears football team, Halas Is a charter member of pro football's Hall of Fame and, although not elected as such, he was the only Hall of Famer who qualified in three categories player, coach and owner. Following is the first of three articles in which Halas looks back over the birth and growth of the sport.

By George Halas With Gwen Morgan and Arthur Veysey I was coach of the Decatur Stal- eys in 1920, a team owned by the A.E. Staley Company. (The team moved to Chicago the following year and I became its owner. Out of respect to William Wrigley and William Veeck who allowed us to play in Wrigley Field, I was going to rename our team in honor of their baseball franchise, the Chicago Cubs. But if baseball players are cubs, football players must be bears and that is how the Chicago Bears was Paid football was pretty mucn of a catch-as-catch-can affair in those days.

Teams appeared one week and disappeared the next. Players came and went, drawn by the pleasure of playing. If others came to watch, that was fine. If they bought tickets, or tossed coins into a helmet passed by the most popular player, that was helpful. "We needed an I wrote to Ralph Hay, the manager of the Canton (Ohio) Bulldogs, one of the best-run and most prominent teams.

I mentioned our need for a league. He had already discussed the idea with Stan Cofall, a former Notre Dame star who was running the Massillon (Ohio) Tigers. They met with Frank Nied and A.F. Ranney of Akron and representatives from Cleveland and Dayton on Aug. 20 in Akron.

Hay was appointed temporary chairman. He called a meeting for Sept. 17, 1920, at his automobile showroom in Canton. Twelve teams were represented: Canton Bulldogs; Cleveland Indians: Dayton Triangles; Aki'on Professionals; Massillon Tigers; my team the Staleys of Decatur, Chicago Cardinals; and teams from Rochester, N.Y., Rock Island, 111., Muncie, Racine, and Hammond, Ind. The showroom, big enough for four 'cars Hupmobiles and Jordans occupied the ground floor of the three-story brick Odd Fellows building.

Chairs were few. I sat on a running board. We all agreed on the need for a Judge requested to dismiss case PHOENIX (AP) A judge has been asked to dismiss former Arizona State punter Kevin Rutledge's lawsuit against the school, the state Board of Regents and his former coach, Frank Rush. There was no immediate indica- tion of when U.S. District Court Judge William Copple would rule on the motion filed Monday by lawyers for Rush, the regents and ASU Athletic Director Dr.

Fred Miller. It asks Copple to dismiss the suit on grounds that a resident of one state cannot- sue agencies of another in federal court. Rutledge now resides in Nevada, where he attends the state university at Las Vegas. The complaint asks for $1.1 million in damages, claiming that Rush punched Rutledge after a poor kick during ASU's Oct. 28, 1978 loss to Washington in Seattle, and forced him to quit the team.

league. In two hours, we created The American Professional Football Association. To give the association some financial standing, we voted-to issue franchises on payment of $100. All 12 teams were awarded franchises on the spot, but Massillon withdrew for the upcoming season. The association heeded someone with a name if it was to get recognition by the public, Our minds turned to Jim Thorpe, the biggest name in sports.

Unanimously, we elected the absent Thorpe our president. For four years, Thorpe served us gaining publicity, but he was no administrator, nor did he pretend to be. The American Professional Football Association had many weaknesses. With the sport growing, we needed a man who could direct the development of our organization, help design rules and enforce them. Such a man was Joe F.

Carr of Columbus, Ohio. He was a born organizer. He had organized employees in the Panhandle workshop of the Pennsylvania Railroad into powerful baseball and football teams. He also had organized professional baseball in Ohio. At the association's annual meeting in 1924, we unanimously elected Carr as our new president.

I lacked enthusiasm for our name, the American Professional Football Association, In baseball, "association" was applied to second-class teams. We were first- class. Also, the Chicago Cubs baseball club belonged to the National League, not the American. League, and I wanted no less for my Chicago Bears. And "professional" was superfluous.

So I proposed we change our name to the National Football League. My fellow members agreed. The problem most on Carr's mind, he told us at that meeting, was the casual relationship between players and teams. A. fellow would play for a team one week and against it the next.

Ask him why and he would say: "They offered me five dollars more." Some teams would dump players at will, often owing them money. We agreed no team would hire a player from another team until that team had declared him a free agent. The arrangement basically survives to this day. At subsequent meetings, we considered establishing limits for the number of players and salaries! I though 16 players were sufficient and $100 a game a good average salary, with star players getting more and merely satisfactory ones less. Both figures were adopted.

I spoke out at every opportunity against the evils, of gambling and its danger to sports. I persuaded the NFL to draw up a statement df principle: "Members are expected to behave as gentlemen and sportsmen. Any flagrant violation of the principle may subject the offender to fine and suspension." At best, it was what I call a toothless bite. The truth was that other managers and owners did not see the dangers in gambling thai I did. The league took more positive action in other areas.

It organized scheduling and, to improve officiating, authorized our president to appoint the referees and pay, them, but not more than $35 a game. We also dealt with many small i ems -the color of socks and jersey), cancellations, the ball to be used (the Spaulding), the number of passes a team could give away, admission prices, an'open gate to kids. We upgraded our championship by authorizing the NFL to present the champion club with a pfennant and each of its players with a small golden football to cost nq more than $10. (For winning Super Bowl XIII, each Pittsburgh Steeler took home $18,000 and a ring heavy with diamonds.) Over the next quarter-century, professional football's prospects grew. By 1950, league membership settled down at 12, a workable number, providing two divisions leading to playoffs and a championship.

Planes made travel to our new West Coast clubs easy. The prospect of big money from television brightened. Promoters and enthusiasts took new interest. But the NFL was vulnerable. Apart from Los Angeles and San Francisco, it was confined to toe New York-Chicago industrial belt.

Cities were growing fast in the Siiri Belt, in the mountain states, in the Northwest. For generations, Minnesota had been a collegiate powerhouse, but Minnesota fans still hald to go nut of the state to see pro football. The league considered expansion, but lacked the required unanimity. I argued that football would spread into new cities and past experience had shown the best course would be to have the growth come within the league. I In Texas, Lamar Hunt was moving into sports.

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on U.S. 6 JUST 2 BLOCKS West of Amish Acres He was a formidable rival. His oil money gave him a rare ability to absorb losses for a long time and to support other teams; The decade moved on. Suddenly, we old-timers decided the league must grow. We gave a franchise to' Clint Murchison Jr.

and Bedford, Wynne for Dallas. They called their club the Dallas Cowboys. Tex Schramm became manager, Torn Landry its coach. Play would begin in 1960 in direct competition to Hunt's Texans. We convinced the organizers of a team in Minnesota, the Vikings, that they should come with the NFL and begin play in 1961.

We gave both the Cowboys and the Vikings extra draft choices and veterans from our own teams. The league also authorized Vi Bidwill to move the Cardinals to St. Louis, a virgin area. Hunt, meanwhile, found organizers in five open cities Denver, Houston, Buffalo, Boston and Oakland as well as in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas, where the new teams would directly compete with NFL teams. They called themselves the American Football League and hired Joe Foss, a World War II Marine Corps flying ace and former governor of South Dakota, as their commissioner.

The battle was on. It was fought most fiercely in the selection of new players. The AFL organized a draft of collegians'in direct competition to ours. They signed undergraduates. Signing became wild.

The Baltimore Colts' Carol Rosenbloom recalls what happened next: "In 1963, Hunt moved his Dallas team to Kansas City, Sonny Werblin became major owner of the AFL New York team, and the Los Angeles team moved into San Diego "In 1964, Sonny Werblin pulled a Muffler back-talk? Silence it at Midas. It pays to Midasize. 452-0031 1706 E. Marfcland Across from Mall coup. His business was radio and television.

He had been a top man for the Music Corporation of America and very close to David Sarnoff of (the National Broadcasting Company), All Sonny had to do was say, 'Look, I want a television contract for the AFIV and he would get NBC agreed to pay that league $36 million over five years. That was about $900,000 a year per club. Our CBS contract that year gave each NFL team just over a million "The league asked me to try to negotiate a merger "In 1966, we came to an agreement. All nine AFL teams would come into our league, making 26 after New Orleans and Cincinnati were formed. Pete Rozelle would be the commissioner.

We would have one draft. We would divide into two conferences, National and American, each with a president. The conference winners would meet in a Su- football per Bowl, a world series of foot- The first Super Bowl was played In 1967. Our NFL GJteett Bay club beat Hunt's Kansas City team. next year, our Green Bay beat AFL Oakland club.

We prided this proof of our superiority. In 1968, Baltimore Was oUf Wln-2j ner, the New York Jets theirs. Rosenbloom recalled: "We were favored to win by 16" points We played so poorly, It was a joke. To my disgrace and hor- ror, the Colts became the first NFL team to lose to an AFL club. The i score was 7-16." Excerpted from "HALAS BY HALAS: The Autobiography ol George Halas," by George Halas, with Gwen Morgan and Arthur Veysey Copyright, 1979, by George Halas Reprinted by permission of Me-.

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