Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit

However, the prestige and increased membership that could come from a successful team, led these clubs to begin secretly hiring talented players.

The Allegheny Athletic Association was found guilty of paying cash to players and was permanently barred from any kind of competition with other AAU members.

This punishment would end a team, because their opponents, whether other pros, amateur associations, or colleges, would have simply stopped playing them.

[3] The misconception that these were amateur athletic clubs was held to in public, even when newspapers wrote openly of players being under contract.

[7] The circuit did not immediately die out and in fact experienced a slight renaissance in the 1920s as the Western Pennsylvania Senior Independent Football Conference.