Buffalo team (NFL)
Buffalo, New York had a turbulent, early-era National Football League team that operated under multiple names and several different owners between the 1910s and 1920s.
In 1918, the city's teams were not allowed to play outside the area because of the 1918 flu pandemic; Dooley and Lepper discontinued the All-Stars.
As the Niagaras, the team won a citywide championship in 1918, going undefeated with a 6–0–0 record (including a forfeit), having only one touchdown scored on them in any of their six games.
They were one of the few upper-level teams still able to play games that year, with most of the top-level teams (such as the Patricians, Canton Bulldogs and Massillon Tigers) all having suspended operations due to the pandemic and/or World War I player shortages; this allowed Buffalo to get a leg up on its Ohio competition and sign otherwise-unemployed players, setting a course for bringing the region on par with the Ohio League and the ultimate establishment of the NFL.
Patterson held on to the Prospects name and put together a lower quality team that played through 1923, including a 1922 game against the All-Americans themselves.
[4] The All-Americans had success during its first couple of APFA seasons, posting a 9–1–1 regular season record in 1920, becoming the first professional NFL team to win by margins of 20 or more points in each of its first four games, an asterisked record which was not tied until the 2007 New England Patriots' offense duplicated the feat;[5] the asterisk is because, in the early NFL, the All-Americans played five of its 11 games against non-league opponents.
Five All-Americans left the team to play for the Quakers full-time; Buffalo had the pickings of the then-defunct Detroit Tigers to replenish their roster.
At the game, Akron owners Frank Nied and Art Ranney agreed to sell Bob Nash to Buffalo for $300 and five per cent of the gate, in the first known player deal between NFL clubs.
However, the Pros still had to play the All-Americans who were fresh from a 7–3 win over the Canton Bulldogs at New York City's Polo Grounds.
Joseph Carr, owner of the Columbus Panhandles, moved at the league's meeting in April 1921 to give Akron the sole title and the rights to the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup.
George Halas and the Chicago Staleys manage to capture second place in the APFA in 1921, with their only loss of the season against Buffalo.
The first game was scheduled for December 3 against the tough Pros, after which his team would take an all-night train to Chicago to play the Staleys the next day.
McNeil still believed his team was the APFA's 1921 champion, and even invested in tiny gold footballs for his players to commemorate the achievement.
McNeil insisted the Buffalo All-Americans were the champions, still maintaining that the last two games his team played were merely exhibitions.
[10] 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.
Under the leadership of player-coach Tommy Hughitt, the All-Americans, though they never equaled the success of the first two seasons, continued to post winning records in 1922 and 1923.
Star running back Ockie Anderson's knees deteriorated during the 1922 season, forcing his early retirement and beginning the team's decline.
However, on October 1, 1925, the Bisons managed to wrestle Jim Kendrick from his contract with the Hammond Pros and signed him to play for Buffalo.
[12] Jim Kendrick announced his "Buffalo Rangers" experiment, fielding an exhibition team of players from Texas and the Southwestern United States for the 1926 season.
[12] Along with the West Coast's Los Angeles Buccaneers and the South's Louisville Colonels, it was one of three teams that represented cities outside the NFL's existing footprint.
