Buffalo owner, Frank McNeil, having already scheduled the team's last game for December 3 against the Akron Pros, agreed on the condition that it be considered only a "post-season exhibition match" and not be counted in the standings.
Therefore, after a game against the tough Akron Pros on December 3, McNeil's team would take an all-night train to Chicago to play the Staleys the next day.
McNeil continued to assert that his team was the AFPA's 1921 champion, and even invested in tiny gold footballs for his players to commemorate the achievement.
[2] In their decision, based on a generally accepted (but now obsolete) rule that if two teams play each other more than once in a season, the second game counts more than the first, the executive committee followed established tradition.
The winner of the game was supposed to have received possession of the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup, the championship trophy established as a rotating prize the previous season.
Buffalo never again reached the level of success they did in the 1918-1921 period; the franchise barely stayed over .500 winning percentage for the next three seasons, after which the team fell to the bottom of the league in the standings for most of the rest of the decade, suspending operations in 1927 and folding in 1929.
Jeffrey J. Miller, who coined the phrase "Staley Swindle" to describe the controversy, has argued most fervently that the All-Americans were wronged by the league's decision, which stands to the present day.
[3] Kenneth Crippen, in contrast, has noted that Buffalo's competition was not as stiff and that, overall, the Staleys had a better season when factoring in margins of victory and strength of schedule.