Nfl

History of the National Football League

By chrispryor15

  • Professional Football Begins

    Professional Football Begins
    The Founding of the NFL On September 17th, 1920, seven men, including legendary all-around Native American athlete and football star Jim Thorpe, meet to organize a professional football league at the Jordan and Hupmobile Auto Showroom in Canton, Ohio (pictured). These men represented four Ohio football teams—the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, and Dayton Triangles. The meeting led to the creation of the American Professional Football Conference (APFC), the forerunner to the hugely successful NFL.

  • First African American Head Coach

    First African American Head Coach
    Fritz PollardAkron Pros star Fritz Pollard adds coaching responsibilities to his on-field duties, becoming the NFL's first African American head coach. He was ultimately elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where each member is represented by a bronze bust of their likeness (pictured).

  • The APFA officially changes their name to the NFL

    The APFA officially changes their name to the NFL
    The American Professional Football Association officially changes their name to the National Football League. The NFL's first World Championship Ring(pictured) is awarded to the New York Giants.

  • Football Segregation

    Dark DaysAt the insistence of Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall, the NFL imposes a new de facto policy of total racial segregation. No more black athletes will play in the NFL until after World War II.

  • First College Player Draft

    First College Player Draft
    The 1936 NFL DraftThe NFL holds its first annual draft of college players. The first player selected, Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger, chooses to pursue a career in plastics manufacturing instead of pro football and never plays a down in the NFL. Jay Berwanger (pictured), a Chicago University athlete, was the first player selected.

  • First Televised Game

    FirstAn NFL game airs on television for the first time, with NBC producing a local broadcast of a game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Eagles. Since fewer than 1,000 TV sets are known to exist in New York at the time, it is unclear whether anyone actually watches the broadcast.

  • War Drafts Players

    With many of the NFL's players and fans overseas in military service, the league struggles to survive through World War II. Pennsylvania rivals Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, both unable to field a complete team, temporarily join forces to play one season as the Phil-Pitt Steagles.

  • First African American Players of Modern NFL Era

    Link The Los Angeles Rams sign former UCLA stars Kenny Washington and Woody Strode, who will become the first African-Americans to play in the NFL in the modern era, ending 13 years of whites-only football in the league.

  • First Helmet Logo

    Birth of the Helmet LogoThe Los Angeles Rams become the first NFL team to wear a helmet logo, painting rams' horns onto their leather hats.

  • First Championship Game Televised

    For the first time, the NFL Championship Game is televised nationwide.

  • AFL

    Texas oilmen Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams, rebuffed in their attempts to acquire NFL franchises for Houston and Dallas, announce plans to form a new football league to rival the NFL. Their new league, called the American Football League (AFL), will begin play in 1960 with eight teams.

  • Antitrust Exemption

    The NFL wins a special antitrust exemption from Congress, authorizing the sale of league-wide television broadcast rights and the distribution of resulting revenues in equal shares to all league teams. Almost immediately, Commissioner Pete Rozelle negotiates the NFL's first national TV deal, in which CBS agrees to pay the league $4.65 million a year for exclusive broadcast rights.

  • Football Desegregates

    Receiver Bobby Mitchell signs with the Washington Redskins, becoming the first black player on the last all-white team in the NFL. The league's segregationist era is over.

  • AFL-NFL Merger

    NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle announces that the NFL and AFL, a small rival league, have reached an agreement to merge into a single league by 1970. In the meantime, the two leagues' champions will meet each January in a new AFL-NFL World Championship Game. That game quickly becomes known as the Super Bowl.

  • Super Bowl I

    The NFL's Green Bay Packers easily defeat the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs to win the first Super Bowl. More than 32,000 tickets go unsold for the game, held in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, but the game draws more television viewers than any previous sporting event. The NFL would televise a Super Bowl every year following as it grew to be the most watched single sporting event in the United States.