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Representatives of four Ohio football teamt,the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, and Dayton Triangle and met in a Canton automobile showroom to form a new professional football league. Initially called the American Professional Football Association
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Fritz Pollard adds coaching responsibilities to his on-field duties, becoming the NFL's first black head coach.
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More than 40 different teams will join the league, only to quickly drop out or go out of business entirely.
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The American Professional Football Association officially renames itself the National Football League.
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The NFL cuts the number of franchises from 22 to 12.
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The NFL imposes a new total racial segregation. No more black athletes will play in the NFL until after World War II.
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The NFL holds its first annual draft of college players. The first player selected, Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger.
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An 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.
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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.
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The Los Angeles Rams become the first NFL team to wear a helmet logo, painting rams' horns onto their leather hats.
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For the first time, the NFL Championship Game is televised nationwide.
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The Chicago Bears' Willie Thrower becomes the first black player to throw a pass as quarterback in the modern NFL.
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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.
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The Houston Oilers defeat the San Diego Chargers to win the first AFL Championship.
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Old-time teams like the Packers, Bears, and Giants begin using helmet logos for the first time.
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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.
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NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle creates NFL Properties, Inc. to manage the licensing of league logos.
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For the first time, more people polled in a national survey choose pro football than baseball as their favorite sport.
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NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle announces that the NFL and AFL have reached an agreement to merge into a single league by 1970.
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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.
