Allegheny Athletic Association

The organization was founded in 1890 as a regional athletic club in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, which is today the North Side of Pittsburgh.

Allegheny soon took up football largely when the club discovered that it could give them a recruiting edge over the East Enders.

Members O. D. Thompson and John Moorhead Jr., were former teammates of Walter Camp, the inventor of the modern game, who had become a successful Pittsburgh lawyer.

[1] Allegheny won the game easily, 38–0, but the contest was significant since it marked the official start of Pitt's football program.

At this time, Harry Fry, who was in the line-up for Allegheny a year earlier, jumped to East End team.

Surprisingly though, Doc Proctor of the East End team appeared in Allegheny's starting backfield that day.

However, in order of putting together a competitive team, Allegheny had to convince two brothers, Ross and Lawson Fiscus, for the Greensburg Athletic Association, to play for them.

Thompson secretly knew how good the East End team was and feared of what a one-sided loss to their arch-rivals might do to the club's memberships and clubhouse subscriptions.

Thompson even had to recruit not only the Fiscus brothers but also Doc Proctor and Grant Dibert of East End to fill out his backfield for the final scheduled game.

But finally it was stated that a game with East End might have hurt the clubs reputation more than it would have helped bringing in money to the organization.

However, there were some questions as to why the Fiscus brother were willing to travel over 30 miles to play for Allegheny when they had a perfectly good team in Greensburg.

The reason that Allegheny played in only one exhibition game was so that the team could effectively hide its strengths and weaknesses from Pittsburgh's scouts.

The latest incident involved quarterback A.S. Valentine, who jumped to the Pittsburgh team at the beginning of the 1892 season and played in their first two games.

Gamblers and odds-makers listed the Pittsburgh team as slight favorites because the game would be played on their home field and because they had more experience working together.

Pittsburgh captain Charley Aull, reportedly told the officials from both teams that he had just run into an old friend named "Stayer", who agreed to play in the game at center.

The game only added fuel to rivalry as Pittsburgh accused the Allegheny of dirty play to purposely injure Kirchner.

It was soon discovered that "Strayers" real name was A.C. Read, the captain of the Penn State University football team.

On the day of the rematch between the two clubs, Sport Donnelly, William C. Malley and Pudge Heffelfinger of the Chicago Athletic Association Football team appeared in the Allegheny line-up.

[3] However while the three Chicago players gave Allegheny an advantage, they had never practiced with their new teammates and a lot of mistakes were made.

On top of that, the team charged that all three Chicago men had received twice their travel expenses, making them paid professionals.

In the 1960s a man named Nelson Ross, walked into the office of Dan Rooney, the president of the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League.

After a brief discussion, the man gave Rooney a typed, 49-page manuscript about the early history of pro football.

Ross' examination of Pittsburgh newspapers indicated that the first pro football player actually was Pudge Heffelfinger, an all-American guard from Yale, who was hired play for Allegheny on November 12, 1892, for $500.

[4] The Pro Football Hall of Fame soon discovered a page torn from an 1892 account ledger prepared by Allegheny manager, O.D.

"[5] Heffelfinger, who was working as a railroad clerk in Chicago, and had earlier turned down an offer to play for the Pittsburgh Athletic Club for $250.

This set off quite a controversy as Pittsburgh A.C. protested the presence of Heffelfinger and other Chicago Athletic Association players.

Other Pittsburgh teams began hiring players, but Allegheny remained the top local football club for the next two years.

Prior to the game, an unnamed Pittsburgh player offered the team's signals to Allegheny's Billy Kountz for $20.

In September, 1895 the Allegheny found that it was under investigation by the Amateur Athletic Union for secretly paying its players.

Knowing that it would soon be barred from competition by the AAU, the Allegheny Athletic Association defiantly emptied its treasury to import a team of all-stars, including Heffelfinger.