1920 APFA season
[1] The "American Professional Football Conference" (APFC) was made up of Hay's Canton Bulldogs, Akron Pros, the Cleveland Tigers and the Dayton Triangles, who decided on a six-game schedule to play each other at home-and-away, an agreement to respect each other's player contracts, and to take a stand against signing college students whose class had not yet graduated.
[2][3] A second organizational meeting was held in Canton on September 17, 1920, with the original four APFC clubs, as well as a fifth Ohio team that had played informally in what historians later dubbed the "Ohio League" (the Columbus Panhandles) and four teams from Illinois (Chicago Cardinals and Chicago Tigers, Decatur Staleys, and Rock Island Independents), two from Indiana (Hammond Pros and Muncie Flyers), two from New York (Buffalo All-Americans and Rochester Jeffersons), and the Detroit Heralds from Michigan for a total of 14.
At the league meeting in Akron on April 30, 1921, the Pros were awarded the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup for the 1920 season, the only year the trophy was used.
Had modern NFL tie-breaking rules been in force in 1920, the Buffalo All-Americans (9–1–1) would have been co-champions with the Akron Pros (8–0–3), as both teams had a win percentage of .864 and their only game was tied, while the Staleys (10–1–2) would have finished third with .846.
In this regard, if games against non-APFA teams are excluded, Akron (6–0–3) would still have won the championship with .833, but the All-Americans (4–1–1) and the Staleys (5–1–2) would have finished equal second with .750 as they did not play each other.
On August 20, 1920, a meeting attended by representatives of four Ohio League teams—Ralph Hay and Jim Thorpe for the Canton Bulldogs, Jimmy O'Donnell and Stan Cofall for the Cleveland Tigers, Carl Storck for the Dayton Triangles, and Frank Nied and Art Ranney for the Akron Pros[5]—was held.
[6][7] According to the Canton Evening Repository, the purpose of the league was to "raise the standard of professional football in every way possible, to eliminate bidding for players between rival clubs and to secure cooperation in the formation of schedules, at least for the bigger teams.
[10] Team representatives changed the league's name slightly to the American Professional Football Association and elected officers, installing Thorpe as president, Cofall as vice-president and Ranney as secretary-treasurer.
[5][10][11][12] Under the new league structure, teams created their schedules dynamically as the season progressed, so there were no minimum or maximum number of games needed to be played.
The Triangles' Lou Partlow scored the league's first touchdown and George "Hobby" Kinderline kicked the first extra point.
In October 1921, most of the team was invited to the Elks Club of Akron, which was labeled as "a grand homecoming celebration for the world's champions".
[32] Even though the Pros were given the trophy in 1920, the league lost track of the event, and for a long time published in its own record books that the 1920 championship was undecided.
