The Ohio League (1889-1909) NFL Archives
The site of Pro Football's Hall of Fame is located in Canton, Ohio because the NFL's first organizational meeting were held there in 1920. But Canton also could have been chosen for older, perhaps better, reasons. For that matter, so could have Massillon, Stark County's second-largest city. Those two cities, and their natural rivalry, opened the door to pro football growth in Ohio.
Pro football in Ohio had its roots in teams sponsored by athletic clubs. The first known club football team in the state was the Dayton AC in 1889. It was joined by teams from the Cleveland AC in 1891, the Akron AA in 1894, and the Canton AC and Youngstown AC in 1895. Ohio had strong amateur competition from the start, and state champions were proclaimed from 1895 to 1902.
In 1903, a decision was made that revolutionized the game of football. Though much of the 1890s, Massillon had fielded amateur teams made up of local players. They rarely could compete with Canton. The string of losses was not only embarrassing, but costly - the men of Massillon always lost large amounts of money wagered on the games.
By 1903, the football enthusiasts of Massillon had had enough. They met at the Hotel Sailor on September 3rd to find a solution. A new team was organized, with Jack Goodrich as manager and Ed Stewart as coach. When the city's sporting goods store only could supply jerseys with striped sleeves, the town adopted the nickname Tigers.
Although many towns throughout Ohio organized teams the same way Massillon did, the Tigers were not just any team. For one thing, they made sure to spend time practicing together, which other town teams did not do. For another, they appeared to have some real talent on the squad. Guard Frank Botoner, a 32-year-old policeman; Goodrich, who was a halfback as well as the manager; Stewart, the coach quarterback, and editor of the Massillon Evening Independent; and Mully Miller, a 170-pound fullback and the group's real star, immediately gave the Tigers a strong team.
After losing its opener 6-0 to Wooster College, Massillon rapidly became one of the best teams in the state, winning its next four games. Then the Tigers easily disposed of Canton 16-0, before beating a team from Cleveland. At that point, Massillon challenged Akron to a game for the state title.
The championship the Tigers were pursuing was not official. In a practice dating back to the 1890s, the championship of the state was awarded by popular acclaim at the end of the season. All games played were considered, but some games were more important than others. Victories over big-city title contenders were much more important than wins against small-town teams, although a loss against one of the lesser teams could eliminate a contender from the title picture. In 1903, the East End team of Akron had been recognized as the state champion for several years.
The East Ends initially dismissed Massillon's attempt to schedule a game, but the Tigers continued to pursue their claim. Finally, a game between the Tigers and the East Ends was set up for December 5, with an agreement that the winner would receive 75 percent of the gate and the loser 25 percent. Almost immediately, stories appeared claiming that Massillon wanted to win at any cost. On December 2, the Akron Beacon Journal announced that the Tigers had hired four members of the old Pittsburgh Athletic Club. The four were Bob Shiring, who had been the center for the Pittsburgh Stars in 1902, meaning he was the best center in western Pennsylvania (and probably in the country); the McChesney brothers - Harry, a back who was one of the best punters available, and Doc, a lineman who could play tackle or end equally well; and a man whose last name was either Peiper or Peiffer, depending on the source, and whose first name still is unknown but who possessed a sterling reputation as a tackle.
Massillon's tactics infuriated the Akron paper, but not as much as what happened on the field. In the first half, Doc McChesney recovered a fumble for a touchdown. In the second half, Massillon scored on a tackle-around play. The Tigers proceeded to win the Ohio Independent Championship 12-0.
The controversy about Massillon's use of pros raged in northern Ohio for weeks, but the Massillon team was not bothered in the slightest, nor were the managers of other Ohio teams. By the beginning of the 1904 season, at least Five teams besides Massillon - Canton, Dover, Shelby, Lorain, and Salem - had begun paying players openly.
Recent research by Joe Horrigan of the Pro Football Hall of Fame indicates that the Shelby team had been paying players since 1902. Despite Shelby's precedence in hiring pros, however, Massillon must be accorded the place of honor on the road to pro football in Ohio because it was the Tigers who opened the floodgates for a previously unpopular process, and who initiated the importation of out-of-state talent.
Shelby also receives credit in one other historical note. On September 16, 1904, Charles W. Follis signed a contract to play for the Shelby AC. Although Shelby had been paying some of its players since 1902, Follis had played for the team in exchange for working at the Howard Seltzer and Sons Hardware Store. His actual signing of a full-season contract in 1904 not only indicated how valuable he was considered, but made him the first verified black professional football player. Follis' outstanding play as a halfback was a major reason Shelby went 8-1-1 in 1904, losing only to Massillon.
Meanwhile, the collection of Ohio teams informally known as the Ohio League began to be recognized as official. Starting with Massillon's first pro championship in 1903, the league used the same set of rules for determining a pro champion (or independent champion as it was known in the early years) that the amateur teams in Ohio had used in the 1890s. The members of the league played most of the other teams once or twice a year, allowing for a champion to be decided by consensus. The top teams in this unofficial league became so strong that each year the best of then was able to call itself, deservedly, the "U. S. Professional Champion."
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