JRN/SPS 362 - Lecture Twelve (October 1, 2025)

Here is the presentation that accompanied Lecture Twelve.

1. JRN /SPS 362 Story of Football Rich Hanley, Professor Emeritus Lecture Twelve

2. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football

3. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Review College football in the southern United States had been an after thought on the national stage until the defining moment on January 1, 1926, when Alabama beat Washington in the Rose Bowl.

4. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Review The region interpreted the triumph as one that reflected Confederate victories in the Civil War and supported its racial structure of segregation.

5. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Review It also served as a propulsive agent in embedding football in the economic and psychological scaffolding of the south, leading to the construction of new stadia and the introduction of bowl games.

6. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Review The NFL, meanwhile, ended its own era of integration when the 1933 season opened without any African-American players as a ban that would last to the late 1940s took hold, freezing the great player and coach Fritz Pollard and others out of the league they helped to popularize.

7. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Overview College and pro football would change beyond recognition to its founders and early players, including many still alive, between the late 1920s and late 1950s. In short, football in this period set itself up for great prosperity.

8. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Overview But in doing so, the schools that incubated the sport from its start in the 19 th century would decide to return to their roots and let the game pass it by because it simply had changed too much. Few outside of the east seemed to notice – or care.

9. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Overview Among the actions that specifically helped the pro game : - a rapprochement between the pro and college games that served to connect both. - continued changes to pro rules that transformed the quarterback into the star.

10. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Who was the typical early-NFL player? In the early 1920s when the league formed, players were drawn mainly from semipro, town or industrial league teams.

11. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Generally, college stars from the 1920s such as Bernie Oosterbaan of Michigan avoided the NFL because of: - Low pay. - Meager status. - The sense that the pros were a step down from college.

12. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Meanwhile, owners of NFL teams sought college players because the players were: - Intelligent: only 10 percent of Americans completed college. - Experience: college featured high-level play.

13. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Entertainment Value: college players were featured in newspapers and thus would bring focus and existing popularity to the pro game.

14. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The difference in perspective would not be immediate but … The signing of Red Grange by the Chicago Bears, for one, showed college players that the pro game meant over-the-table money and job connections for the off-season.

15. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1927, Ernie Nevers of Stanford turned pro, sending more signals to college players that the pro game was an option Still, college players hesitated, in part because of opposition from football lifers such as Amos Alonzo Stagg

16. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game So why did at least some players turn pro? “This is an opportunity not be overlooked. I am not a rich man’s son and what I can earn playing football will come in handy,” said Eddie Tryon of Colgate, when asked why he signed in 1926.

17. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game A likely turning point can be traced to a Notre Dame back named Joe Savoldi Jr., who played under Knute Rockne. Savoldi, a top college star, scored the first touchdown in Notre Dame Stadium when it opened in 1930.

18. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game But Savoldi held a secret. He had divorced his wife. When Notre Dame administrators learned about the divorce during the 1930 season, they expelled Savoldi because under Catholic Church rules, divorce was forbidden.

19. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game But just 10 days after leaving South Bend, Savoldi stood in the Chicago Bears’ backfield with Red Grange. Savoldi’s agreement with the Bears widened the rift between the college and pro games but only briefly. He played one year.

20. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The decision to sign forced college athletic directors and coaches who once described the NFL as an evil agent that undermined the morals of the country to reassess their views.

21. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game College officials understood the stakes. A 1931 follow up report to the Carnegie study advised athletic directors and coaches that their game was in danger of turning into a training league for the NFL.

22. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The Carnegie follow-up report turned out to be more accurate than not. By the early-to-mid 1930s, college players routinely joined the NFL and regional pro leagues such as the Pacific Coast League and the Dixie League in the South.

23. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game College players moved to the pros for several reasons, including: Money. Stars could earn $7,000 per year. Expression of manliness. Make connections for off-season jobs .

24. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game By 1936, the bad blood between the college and pro games had drained away.

25. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The NFL held its first draft of collegians in 1936 to eliminate the friction between teams seeking to sign the same players. It featured a reverse-order selection process, in which the team with the worst record would pick first to promote competitive balance.

26. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The first NFL draft pick ever was the first Heisman Trophy winner (1935), Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago. Berwanger ran for 577 yards, passed for 405, returned kickoffs for 359, scored six touchdowns, and added five PATs for 41 points.

27. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The Philadelphia Eagles selected Berwanger, but he rejected an offer of $1,000 a game. George Halas of the Bears promised to pay Berwanger $13,500 a season. He declined that, too, and went to work for a rubber company.

28. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Berwanger would turn out to be one of the last of the top collegians eligible to play to say no as players signed pro contracts in ever-increasing numbers. Who were these players now relative to earlier in the decade?

29. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Most were from urban areas – 52 percent. About nine percent were the sons of farmers. After 1933, some 98 percent had attended college (by comparison, only 25 percent of pro baseball players attended college).

30. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game After retiring from the game, 51 percent of these NFL players worked as company owners or executives, a startling figure given the persistence of the Great Depression during the 1930s.

31. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In short, the NFL player of the 1930s represented a rapidly maturing league featuring increasingly intellectually demanding and complex game play and formations. These were not the “tramp athletes” of the pro game of a decade earlier.

32. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game 16.7 percent worked as professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.) 35.4 percent worked as white-collar managers. 18.75 percent worked as white-collar staff (clerks).

33. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game 6.25 percent worked as semi-professionals (not quite managers but not quite laborers). 18.75 percent worked as entry-level managers (e.g., factory foreman). 4.2 percent worked as farm or factory workers.

34. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The 1936 Green Bay Packers’ roster shows that all players played in college, marking a change from the early 1920s. It also shows that they still needed off-season jobs.

35. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Even as it solved the issue of sorting new players with the draft, the NFL needed to address another issue: league coherence. Since its founding on the scaffolding of the Ohio League, the NFL added, moved and lost teams with frightening regularity.

36. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The league could not sustain itself without stable teams that could build loyal fans and traditions in the mold of the college game. In the decade of the 1930s, the league achieved that stability, with teams in large, media-saturated cities.

37. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game NFL in 1930: - Green Bay Packers - New York Giants - Chicago Bears - Brooklyn Dodgers - Providence Steamrollers - Staten Island Stapletons - Chicago Cardinals

38. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game NFL in 1930 (continued): - Portsmouth Spartans (Ohio) - Frankford Yellowjackets (Philadelphia) - Minneapolis Red Jackets - Newark Tornados

39. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1934, a team considered to be the worst in NFL history played its second and last season, bounced out even before the season ending for failing to pay league dues. The Cincinnati Reds finished 0-8-0, scoring 10 points while allowing 243.

40. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game NFL in 1939 – East - New York Giants - Washington Redskins (formerly the Newark Tornados, the Boston Braves and Boston Redskins - Brooklyn Dodgers - Pittsburgh Pirates (Steelers in 1940) - Philadelphia Eagles

41. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game NFL in 1939 – West - Green Bay Packers - Chicago Bears - Detroit Lions (formerly Portsmouth) - Cleveland Rams - Chicago Cardinals

42. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In this period of modernizing between 1930 and 1939, the NFL held its first championship game and modified the rules to make passing easier, making the game more open and thus more entertaining for fans more familiar with the run-oriented college game.

43. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Interestingly, the Spalding company jumped on the pro football bandwagon just as it had with the college game in the 19 th century. It published the NFL rulebook that served to promote the game to the general population.

44. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The first NFL championship game occurred in 1932 when two teams – the Portsmouth Spartans (later Detroit Lions) and the Chicago Bears – tied for first place. Prior to 1932, the team that ended the season in first place was crowned the champion.

45. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The Bears’ lineup featured the great backs Red Grange (foreground) and Bronko Nagurski, the two best players of the era. And the two would combine on the pivotal play of the game that would change the NFL.

46. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The official program states the game would be played at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. But a snowstorm left the Wrigley Field surface unplayable.

47. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The game was moved indoors, to Chicago Stadium. Chicago Stadium hosted a NFL game in 1930 when the Bears and Cardinals played an exhibition game there. Now, it would host a championship.

48. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The Bears won, 9-0, on a disputed pass play from Nagurski to Grange (rules required that forward passes had to be thrown from at least five yards behind the line of scrimmage). The Spartans argued that Nagurski passed the ball closer to the line.

49. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The play and the tight confines of the field led to profound changes in the NFL. It marked what may be described as the singularity – the moment when the NFL detached itself fully from the college rules and game.

50. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Among other changes in the aftermath of the 1932 title game, the NFL decided to: - Create its own set of rules. - Require that the ball be spotted on the hashmarks on every play (10 yards from sideline). - Move goal posts to the goal line.

51. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game [Ironically, the college game copied the NFL rule change on using hashmarks to spot the ball beginning in the same year as the NFL in 1933. Previously, the ball was spotted where the play ended, even if close to the sideline. ]

52. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Another change turned out to alter the essence of the game itself to clarify the rules that Portsmouth said cost it the game. The NFL legalized the forward pass from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage, thus opening the game even more.

53. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game That change transformed the NFL into a game dramatically different from the college version. It unintentionally encouraged teams to focus on passing from a range of formations and locations.

54. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The change triggered the start of a 50-year evolution in the shape of the ball to keep pace with developments in the passing game to make it easier to throw both faster and longer with more touch.

55. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1934, colleges, too, changed rules to make passing more frequent, thus seeding the game with throw-first quarterbacks.

56. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The changes were: 1) First forward pass in series of downs can be incomplete in end zone without loss of ball except on fourth down; 2) Circumference of ball reduced.

57. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The forward pass rules transformed game play in college and the pros. That, in turn created the first star quarterbacks in Sid Luckman, left, and Sammy Baugh, both known for passing rather than running or simply distributing the ball to running backs.

58. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game It also changed the dream life of young boys such as Alfalfa of the Our Gang films serial. Now, he and other boys wanted to play quarterback.

59. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The rule changes also transformed helmet design for at least a handful of schools, including Michigan under coach Fritz Crisler. Crisler is a key figure in college football history for many reasons but his role with the winged helmet heads the list.

60. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game From 1919 to 1921, Crisler played end at the University of Chicago under coach Amos Alonzo Stagg, who, as referenced earlier this semester, had played at Yale and was a member of Walter Camp’s first All-America team in 1889. He became an assistant coach.

61. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game After two years as coach of Minnesota, Crisler became the first non-alumni to coach either Yale, Harvard or Princeton when he joined Princeton in 1932.

62. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Even though helmets were not mandatory in college football until 1939, many schools required players to wear them. Ohio State added extra padding in the form of wings in 1930, which the team wore until 1935.

63. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Indiana added stripes to the winged design in 1933 and wore that for two years.

64. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Georgetown wore a helmet with wings from 1933 to 1938.

65. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Michigan State adopted the winged design in 1934 and continued to wear it until 1947.

66. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Crisler favored the winged design when he went to Princeton, but he implemented it in 1935 for a reason that had nothing to do with extra padding. Instead, he wanted to make it easier for his quarterback to spot receivers.

67. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Crisler dyed the leather wing and the three stripes orange to achieve his objective.

68. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Michigan hired Crisler in 1938, and he took the Princeton design with him to Ann Arbor. Instead of orange, Crisler dyed the leather wings and stripes in Michigan’s maize color.

69. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Michigan is the only team to wear the design continuously since 1938, maintaining the wings and stripes even after plastic replaced leather in the 1950s.

70. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In the NFL, a second decision after 1933 created the format for a permanent championship game. In July 1933, the NFL split into two divisions and scheduled a championship game between the divisional leaders at the end of the year.

71. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In the first season under the divisional format in 1933, the Bears won the West, the New York Giants the East. On December 17, 1933, the Bears nipped the Giants, 23-21, to win the first scheduled NFL championship game.

72. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game A year later, the two teams would meet again in a game that generated a lasting memory of NFL Championship action After sliding on the frozen turf, the Giants decided they needed sneakers for traction.

73. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The Giants’ equipment manager broke into Manhattan College’s gym and returned with sneakers. The plan worked. The Giants overwhelmed the Bears and their great running back Bronko Nagurski, 30-13, on Dec. 9, 1934 in what is known as the Sneaker Game.

74. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game That newfound capacity to form legends from factual events became one of the key elements of the NFL’s rise to prominence later in the 20 th century. Legendary games gave the NFL the mythology the college game cultivated for decades.

75. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The year 1934 also featured the start of a NFL tradition: a Detroit Lions football game on Thanksgiving Day, giving the league a presence to rival high school and college football on the national holiday.

76. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game As noted, the quarterback position secured prominence in the pro game when rule changes altered play. That became apparent in the first decade of the new rules when two quarterbacks became all-time greats.

77. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Baugh of the Washington Redskins.

78. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Luckman of the Chicago Bears.

79. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Baugh and Luckman would meet three times in NFL Championship games, giving the league a consistent marquee showcase for its top stars. Luckman’s Bears would take two of the three contests in 1940 and 1943.

80. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Baugh played tailback in the single-wing offense of Texas Christian University. He led the Horned Frogs to victories in the Sugar Bowl and Cotton Bowl before graduating in 1937.

81. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The Washington Redskins who had moved from Boston drafted Baugh with the sixth overall pick in 1937. Baugh started as a traditional single-wing tailback, but Washington moved him to quarterback to exploit his throwing ability.

82. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In his first year, Baugh set the NFL record at the time for completions: 81 in 171 attempts for 1,127 yards during the 11-game season. He led the Redskins to a 28-21 victory in the 1937 NFL championship game against the Chicago Bears at Wrigley Field.

83. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Baugh’s 335 yards passing in the game stood as a league playoff record for a rookie until 2012 when Russell Wilson broke it. His performance led historian David Boss to write that the game was one of the ten that mattered most in the first 50 years of the NFL.

84. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game On the other side of the line and on special teams, Baugh excelled. He starred at defensive back, and he served as the team’s punter.

85. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Baugh led the Redskins to their second NFL championship in 1942, again against the Bears. It marked the second of three NFL championship games in which he would meet Luckman of the Bears.

86. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Luckman starred at Columbia University in New York before joining the Bears and coach Halas in 1939. As noted, Halas coached at the Great Lakes Naval Station in World War I after graduating from Illinois and leading the Bears.

87. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The NFL of the 1930s still focused on Pop Warner’s single-wing running formation but the passing game was evolving. Halas’ insight was based on confusing the defense by adding Knute Rockne’s back-in-motion to Pop Warner’s single-wing offense.

88. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game That gave his quarterback a tactical advantage by opening the defenses for both the run in the middle and the pass outside. In 1938, Life magazine proclaimed Luckman to be the league’s best passer

89. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Halas would continue to innovate and reached into the game’s past when he installed the T-formation. The formation had been around for decades but did not have the staying power of Warner’s single-wing offense that served as the basic package for 30 years.

90. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game By 1940, Halas had refined the T-formation by starting the play with three backs arrayed behind the quarterback and then sending one in motion before the snap. The motion back would become a receiver and force the defense to shift to that side for coverage, fracturing the middle defense.

91. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Halas initially kept his T formation with motion secret – until the 1940 NFL championship game. The Bears baffled Baugh and the Redskins with it en route to an astonishing 73-0 triumph on Dec. 8, 1940.

92. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Luckman threw only four passes in the game, completing three for 88 yards and one touchdown. His rating stood at 156.2. Three other Chicago backs threw for six passes, completing four.

93. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Halas’ T-formation would be refined later in the 1940s into what’s called the pro set and serve as the standard formation in the NFL for almost 50 years. The motion back would be settled in place outside the tight end and back from the line of scrimmage.

94. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Under Halas, Luckman became the perfect quarterback to run the T formation. The Bears under Luckman won four NFL titles in 1940, 1941, 1943 and 1946.

95. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1943, Luckman amassed staggering figures, including throwing 28 touchdown passes in just 10 games. During one game that year, Luckman threw for 443 yards (the first 400-yard passing game in the NFL) and seven touchdowns. He retired in 1950.

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97. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Baugh became a pro set quarterback in 1944 as the Halas’ innovation worked its way through the NFL. He thrived under the system, setting numerous NFL records before retiring in 1952.

98. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Baugh won six NFL passing titles and earned first-team All-NFL honors seven times in his career from 1937-1952. He led the NFL in punting four straight years from 1940 through 1943. He also led the NFL in passing and interceptions in 1943.

99. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game When he retired in 1952, Baugh owned 13 NFL records, including the most seasons (five) leading the league with the lowest interception percentage.

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101. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game On the eve of World War II, the NFL enjoyed a level of success few would have predicted when it first emerged from the old Ohio League just two decades earlier.

102. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1939, the NFL drew more than a million fans for the first time. And on October 22 that year, the Brooklyn Dodgers-Philadelphia Eagles game was broadcast from Ebbets Field to about 500 sets in New York and to the RCA Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Queens.

103. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The combination of growing fan interest in the pro game, the excitement generated by open formations and the forward pass, and the emergence of a new medium – television – pointed to a golden age for the pro game – until World War II intervened.

104. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game As in World War I, the military played a pivotal role in expanding football under a process called innovation diffusion. Innovation diffusion occurs when a new idea spreads among a large group such as the military.

105. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Innovation diffusion in World War I led to a massive expansion of the game as soldiers learned how to play from coaches who enlisted to support the war effort but were stationed at military bases and posts to coach teams.

106. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The vast scale of World War II meant that innovation diffusion would be wider, deeper and more intense than in World War I. Moreover, military leaders had adopted football as a tool to prepare men for battle and acted accordingly on the eve of hostilities.

107. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game According to scholar John Watterson, “military leaders believed that football built leadership qualities, inculcated discipline, sharpened aggressive instincts, and taught its officers to react quickly under pressure.’’

108. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game When General Douglas MacArthur served as superintendent of West Point, he ordered the following carved into a wall: ‘‘Upon the fields of friendly strife/Are sown seeds that/Upon other fields, on other days/Will bear the fruits of victory.’’

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110. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game MacArthur enforced that attitude by requiring cadets to participate in intramurals and by giving football players special privileges and prominence on campus. That drilled football into the officer corps who would command troops in World War II.

111. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game ‘‘I want an officer for a secret and dangerous mission. I want a West Point football player.” – Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. He also wanted West Point football players in his command, too.

112. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Third from left is General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe. On the far right is general Omar Bradley, commander in chief of American ground forces on D-Day.

113. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The military started football teams for all of its bases and posts. The military’s Naval Pre-Flight Training Program made football a required part of its mission, and other training units known as V-5, V-7 and V-12 did likewise.

114. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Two men who would later serve as presidents of the U.S. played football at the V-12 training station in North Carolina: Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, left.

115. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Other bases and stations supported teams that would play each other and college teams. The team from the Randolph Army Air Corps base played in the 1944 Cotton Bowl and tied Tennessee, for example.

116. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In World War I, the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago fielded an exceptional team headed by Halas. The tradition continued during World War II.

117. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1942-43, a man from western Pennsylvania named Steve Belichick played fullback and coached there. After the war, he would leave the service to coach football at Hiram College in Ohio where he met his wife, Jeannette, who died in September 2020.

118. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1944 and 1945, Paul Brown coached the team, and, like Halas, he would become one of its all-time great coaches. Brown used the experience at Great Lakes to experiment and innovate, to try formations and tactics he would later deploy in the pro game.

119. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The lives of Belichick and Brown would intersect after the war. Brown sought to sign Belichick to the Browns, but Belichick declined. A Brown assistant coach, Bill Edwards, hired Belichick in 1949 to serve as a Vanderbilt assistant.

120. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Bill Edwards would later serve as the godfather of Steve and Jeannette Belichick’s son, Bill, who was born in Nashville in 1952.

121. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Two other all-time greats coached at naval stations during the war and they, too. Paul “Bear” Bryant coached aviators in Georgia and North Carolina before coaching at Kentucky, Texas A & M and Alabama.

122. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Bud Wilkinson served as assistant coach at a highly successful naval station team in Iowa before leading Oklahoma to several national championships. He would later give Steve Belichick a signed copy of his Oklahoma Split T Football  book (1952).

123. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game “To Steve Belichick — With best wishes. Bud Wilkinson,’’ he wrote on the inner leaf. Belichick wrote above that, in a homage to Wilkinson and to Leland Deland: “Said Napoleon — ‘Battles are won by the power of the mind.’ So are Bud’s football games.”

124. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Belichick’s book collection totaled 413, including American Football by Walter Camp, Wilkinson’s book on the split T, Coaching by Knute Rockne and The Paul Brown Story ., among others. His son, Bill, read his father’s books.

125. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game And it would be Brown whose influence shaped the game more than any other coach at the time. And that would extend into the 21 st century through the son of Steve Belichick, Bill, who said Brown influenced him more than any other coach.

126. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Brown (front row, third from left) led one of the best teams in the nation during the war, compiling a winning percentage of almost 80 percent. Among the coaches on his staff was Weeb Ewbank (front row, second from left).

127. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Ewbank would serve as coach of the winning team in the two most important games in NFL history: the Colts’ win over the Giants in the 1958 championship and the Jets’ win over the Colts in Super Bowl III.

128. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The players on that team included Bud Grant, who would coach the Minnesota Vikings to four Super Bowl appearances, and Ara Parseghian (No. 27), who would coach Notre Dame to national championships in the 1966 and 1973.

129. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game While coaches such as Bryant and Wilkinson became among the best ever in college after the way, Brown focused on the pro game, just as Halas did when he left the Great Lakes Naval Training Center at the end of World War I.

130. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game And it is here where Brown is perhaps the greatest of all, as his innovations transformed the game in his lifetime and anticipated changes that ripple through the NFL today.

131. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Brown was born in the football crescent, in Massillon, Ohio, where he played football for Washington High School. Brown enrolled at Ohio State but transferred to Miami of Ohio after he didn’t make the football team.

132. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Brown qualified for a Rhodes scholarship after graduating from Miami of Ohio in 1930 but took a teaching position at a prep school in Maryland. Two years later, he became head coach at his high school alma mater.

133. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Brown’s teams at Washington won almost 60 games, six state championships and four national titles between 1935 and 1940. One of his first innovations emerged during this period: the playbook.

134. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1940, Brown became the youngest coach in Big Ten history at the time when he joined Ohio State.

135. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Two years later, the Buckeyes were named national champions. Brown left Ohio State for the Navy after the1943 season to coach at Great Lakes.

136. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Brown’s path to the pros began with an offer from an entrepreneurial sports editor from Chicago named Arch Ward. He had started baseball’s all-star game and the Golden Gloves boxing competition in the 1930s.

137. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1944, Ward sought investors for a new pro league he wanted to start in a challenge to the NFL. Ward saw an opportunity for a new pro football league, and for good reason.

138. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Pro football had become a respectable game, played by educated men, and the pool of talent from both college and military base teams was deep. Money could be made by players, owners and coaches.

139. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1946, a year later than he planned, Ward launched the All America Football Conference (AAFC) with eight teams, including one in Cleveland coached by Paul Brown. The team was named the Browns.

140. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Unlike the NFL, the AAFC would feature racially integrated teams. Soon after agreeing to coach, Brown signed Marion Motley, an African-American back who played for the coach at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station.

141. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Brown also landed a top quarterback, Otto Graham. Graham starred at Northwestern and played for Bear Bryant during his time in the Navy.

142. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Ward sorted the conference into two divisions of four teams each. In the East, the New York Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers, Miami Seahawks and Buffalo Bisons; in the West, the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, Los Angeles Dons and Chicago Rockers.

143. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game After the first year, the Miami Seahawks moved to Baltimore and became the Colts, underscoring the league’s instability. But the league had Brown, who, in turn, had a star running back (Motley), a star quarterback (Graham), and a title in 1946.

144. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The Browns would dominate the AAFC, winning all four of the league’s championships while it existed. The league folded after the 1949 season, but the NFL was seeking to expand and invited three AAFC teams to join.

145. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The Browns, Baltimore and the San Francisco 49ers accepted and became part of the NFL in 1950. Washington owner George Preston Marshall chirped that the worst NFL team could beat the best AAFC conference team but went along with the expansion.

146. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game As it turned out, the Cleveland Browns dominated the NFL in the first half of the 1950s. The Browns won championships in 1950, 1954 and 1955. The team played in six straight title games from 1950-1955.

147. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Brown and Graham were a formidable combination. The Browns structured their T-formation offense around Graham’s capacity to understand and execute a complex package of plays.

148. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game “Otto has the basic requirements of a T-quarterback – poise, ball-handling and distinct qualities of leadership,” said Brown of Graham.

149. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Graham played in 10 title games and won seven championships, including three in the NFL.

150. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In the 1954 title game, Graham led the Browns to their second title with one of the greatest performances in league history. He ran for three scores and threw three touchdown passes as Cleveland routed the Detroit Lions, 56-10.

151. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game At the time, it was thought to be the last game of his career. Graham did retire after the game, but Brown lured him back for one more season, even though he did not work out or participate in off-season film study.

152. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1955, Graham capped his career with a 38-14 victory over the Rams for yet another NFL title. He passed for two touchdowns.

153. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game During his career, including the four years in the AAFC, Graham: - Completed 1,464 of 2,626 passes for 23,584 yards, 174 touchdowns and 135 picks. - Ended his career with a passer rating of 86.6, which puts him among top QBs.

154. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game What makes Graham’s accomplishments even more remarkable is the game had yet to fully evolve as one based on passing. Yet Brown assembled a corps of wide receivers such as Mac Speedie who anticipated the contemporary game.

155. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game That was just one point in a pattern of continuous innovation that kept Brown ahead of NFL opponents even as they tried to keep pace with his ideas. A list of his ideas executed with great precision is extraordinary.

156. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Among other things, Brown: - Hired full-time staff coaches. - Systematically scouted college players. - Deployed intelligence tests on players.

157. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game He also: - Used notebooks and techniques common to classrooms Devised film-clip statistical studies Graded players on film-clip reviews Invented a facemask.

158. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game What’s more, Brown: Called plays from the sideline by shuttling guards as messengers. Developed pass patterns designed to exploit holes in defensive formations. -Devised defensive formations to counteract passing attacks.

159. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Brown also: Became the first coach to write, publish and distribute a full playbook to his players, something he first did as a high school coach in Ohio.

160. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game And he sought to use radio transmissions from coaches to players wearing listening devices in their helmets to relay plays, a tactic the NFL adopted more than 40 years after Brown first tried.

161. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Brown was out front of social issues, too. In cities where African-Americans were not allowed to stay at the same hotel as whites, Brown took his team out-of-town so it could stay together.

162. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Player such as Bill Willis and Horace Gillom represented a wave of African- American players who signed with Cleveland in the 1950s.

163. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The rest of the NFL, meanwhile, could not force all team owners to draft and sign African-Americans. In fact, the municipal government in Los Angeles forced the NFL to integrate when it moved the Cleveland Rams there in 1946.

164. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The NFL entered the post-war era with a renewed focus on sharpening business practices. The league appointed Philadelphia Eagles’ owner Bert Bell to the post of commissioner and formed plans for expansion to the West Coast.

165. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Cleveland Rams’ owner Dan Reeves moved the team to Los Angeles in 1946 to establish the NFL in that region and compete with the AAFC’s Dons. The Los Angeles Coliseum authority, however, would grant a lease only if Reeves integrated the team.

166. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Reeves relented and signed two African-American players: - Woody Strode, a wide receiver. - Kenny Washington, a halfback. Strode and Washington played at UCLA in 1939 with Jackie Robinson, who would integrate baseball in 1947.

167. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game In 1939, Washington led the nation in total offense — he could either pass or run with great agility from his halfback position — while Robinson averaged 20 yards a punt return, the best in college football. Washington would now be able to play in an integrated NFL.

168. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Still, segregation persisted throughout cultural production. Washington took a star turn in the movies as he followed the template established by Red Grange in the late 1920s, but he couldn’t land roles outside films produced exclusively for the African-American audience.

169. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Meanwhile, rules opened the game. In 1945, the hash marks moved 20 yards instead of 15 from the sidelines. In 1950, the league permitted unlimited free substitution, creating two-platoon football.

170. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game The NFL entered the middle of the 1950s ready to own Sundays. The three great quarterbacks of the late 1930s and early 1950s – Baugh, Luckman and Graham – had all left the stage by the start of the 1956 season, clearing the way for new stars who would captivate the public.

171. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Norm Van Brocklin of the Rams illustrates the new NFL generation of passers. In 1951, he threw for 554 yards against the New York Yanks, and his 73-yard TD pass to Tom Fears gave the Rams the NFL Championship over the Browns later that year.

172. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Ironically, the New York Giants won the 1956 NFL title just as Madison Avenue welcomed a new technology to help companies sell things, from beer and cars to refrigerators and lawn seed.

173. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Television, a device one writer called the “thing we’ve all been waiting for,” was starting to be turned on in millions of American homes. The vicarious experience of ecstasy and violence would soon be invited inside.

174. JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game And women would drive fan numbers higher than anyone anticipated at the time, even though they were effectively banned from tackle football in 1939 after LIFE magazine published photos of women’s football played in Los Angeles.

175. JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Earlier in the 1930s, a 14-year-old girl played center for her Connecticut high school team. A girl in Texas kicked for her high school.

176. JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game But the male establishment then in control of school athletic departments and town parks and recreation institutions sought to prevent women from playing after LIFE published the photos.

177. JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Even so, in 1945, the University of Connecticut fielded a women’s football team for a season.

178. JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football The Pro Game Over the decades from the 1950s to the present, women would become a driving force in NFL viewership, with 57% of American women watching games at least in part by 2024.