The Pennsylvania Polka refers to a series of moves affecting the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers franchises in the National Football League (NFL) from 1940 to 1941.
Both the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Pirates franchises were founded in 1933, after blue laws in Pennsylvania were rescinded to allow organized sports teams to play on Sundays.
[7] The team started the season at 1–0–2[8] before falling at home by a score of 10–3 to a Brooklyn Dodgers squad coached by local hero Jock Sutherland.
[10] The loss to the Dodgers began a six-game losing streak, before the team traded wins with the Eagles to cap a 2–7–2 season in which they scored a total of just 60 points.
[11] Rooney was also concerned about the availability of players in the coming seasons due to the ongoing war in Europe and the specter of a military draft.
[20] The transaction was completed and announced on the same day that the Chicago Bears pummeled the Washington Redskins by a score of 73–0 in the most lopsided NFL championship game of all time.
[20] In an unusual twist Rooney, Bell, and Thompson pooled the rosters of the two squads and conducted essentially a mini-draft to distribute the talent.
[22] In this transaction, the Rooney/Bell team added eleven players from the 1940 Steelers: ends George Platukis, Walt Kichefski and John Klumb; tackles Clark Goff and Ted Doyle; guards Carl Nery and Jack Sanders; and backs Boyd Brumbaugh, John Noppenberg, George Kiick and Rocco Pirro.
[32] Because the entire strange turn of events all took place during the offseason and the Eagles and Steelers never actually missed games in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, respectively, the NFL considers each franchise as single unbroken entities since 1933.
[30] The transaction, which amounted in the end to Bell selling the Eagles and purchasing half-interest in the Steelers, as well as trading more than half of each team's rosters to each other, has been termed the "Pennsylvania Polka".
The Steelers had to combine with the Chicago Cardinals in 1944 to form "Card-Pitt"; the merged team lost all ten of their games that season.
After the 1949 season, Thompson sold the Eagles to a syndicate of 100 buyers, known as the "Happy Hundred", each of whom paid a fee of $3,000 for their share of the team.
[34] The Rooney family has remained the owners of the Steelers since its founding in 1933, with Art's son, Dan, taking over the team following his death in 1988.