American Football League (1934)
Encyclopedia
| Sport | American Professional Football American football American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by... |
| Founded | 1934 1934 in sports -American football:NFL championship* New York Giants 30–13 Chicago Bears in the NFL championship gameCollege championship* College football national championship – Minnesota Golden Gophers-Association football:International... |
| First Season | 1934 1934 in sports -American football:NFL championship* New York Giants 30–13 Chicago Bears in the NFL championship gameCollege championship* College football national championship – Minnesota Golden Gophers-Association football:International... |
| Last Season | 1934 1934 in sports -American football:NFL championship* New York Giants 30–13 Chicago Bears in the NFL championship gameCollege championship* College football national championship – Minnesota Golden Gophers-Association football:International... |
| Claims to Fame | first minor league AFL American Football League (disambiguation) American Football League is a name shared by several leagues of American football.Major leagues*American Football League , also known as AFL I *American Football League , also known as AFL II... ; second league of that name; competitor of National Football League; first football league based in American South |
| No. of teams | 6 - - |
| Disbanded | 1935 |
The 1934 edition of the American Football League was a short-lived minor professional football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
league with teams based in the American South and Southwest. The first of several minor leagues with the same name
American Football League (disambiguation)
American Football League is a name shared by several leagues of American football.Major leagues*American Football League , also known as AFL I *American Football League , also known as AFL II...
, the 1934 was also one of the first involving teams not located in the American Midwest and East
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
. While its membership was the cornerstone of American football in the southern U.S. (with several having beaten National Football League
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
teams on the gridiron
Gridiron football
Gridiron football , sometimes known as North American football, is an umbrella term for related codes of football primarily played in the United States and Canada. The predominant forms of gridiron football are American football and Canadian football...
), the AFL had only one season of competition and folded after cancelling competition in the 1935 season.
Participating teams
Charlotte Bantams. Formed in 1932 and playing primarily teams based along the Atlantic CoastEast Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
, the Bantams amassed a 10-3 record in 1933.
Dallas Rams. Founded in 1933 with the expressed purpose of joining the new AFL as a natural rival of teams in Oklahoma City and Houston, the Rams played only three games that year.
Louisville Bourbons. Founded in 1931, the Bourbons played primarily against opponents in the Midwest, including the Portsmouth Spartans of the NFL.
Memphis Tigers. Formed in 1927 as "New Bry’s Hurricanes" and renamed in 1928, the Tigers were the dominant football team of the South from 1929 to 1932. In 1929, Memphis defeated the Green Bay Packers
Green Bay Packers
The Green Bay Packers are an American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. They are members of the North Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League . The Packers are the current NFL champions...
20-7 (the Packers eventually won the 1929 NFL championship without losing a league game).
St. Louis Blues. Formed by the league after the St. Louis Gunners
St. Louis Gunners
The St. Louis Gunners, were an independent professional football team based in St. Louis, Missouri, who played the last three games of the 1934 National Football League season, replacing the Cincinnati Reds on the league schedule after the Reds' league membership was suspended...
rejected the league's overtures for membership. Sports promoter Bud Yates was credited with founding the team after being general manager for the 1926-27 St. Louis Blues independent team (which lost only one game in its two-season existence). and founding crosstown rivals St. Louis Gunners (in 1931)
and St. Louis Veterans (in 1932). When the Gunners joined the NFL in November 1934, the Blues moved to Kansas City.
Tulsa Oilers. Formed in late 1933 as the Tulsa Drillers, the team played (and lost) only three games that season (two against Oklahoma City, one against the St. Louis Gunners). Coached by Billy Boehm, the team featured former members of the Tulsa University football team.
Teams who joined the league but were forced out
Oklahoma City Chiefs. Formed in 1932, the Chiefs lost only one game in their inaugural year (to Portsmouth) and continued their success in 1933 as they staked their claim as being one of the two strongest minor league teams (along with the St. Louis Gunners). Because their home stadium could seat only 2000 people, the league dropped the Chiefs when the team’s efforts to secure a "suitable" stadium. The team ceased to exist two months later.Houston. Having joined the league despite not having a team organization or player roster, Houston was dropped when Oklahoma City was given the boot. The team never came into existence.
Origin of league
After the collapse of the first American Football League and the paring of ten teams from the NFL after the 1926 season, professional American football was concentrated in the American Midwest and Northeast. The Memphis Tigers developed into a strong independent football team, comparable to those based in OhioOhio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
and Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
.
In 1929, a Memphis team that was temporarily enhanced by the addition of Ken Strong
Ken Strong
Elmer Kenneth Strong, Jr. was a college and professional American football player. After a college career as multi-year All-American at New York University, he went on to play professional football. As a halfback with a 14-year career he played from 1929–1937, 1939, 1944-1947...
and several other NFL players defeated the Green Bay Packers. The victory prompted Tigers owner S. A. Goodman to claim the "national pro championship." Memphis was not seriously challenged by non-NFL teams in 1930, but in 1931, promoter Bud Yates founded the St. Louis Gunners with future Hall of Fame member
Pro Football Hall of Fame
The Pro Football Hall of Fame is the hall of fame of professional football in the United States with an emphasis on the National Football League . It opened in Canton, Ohio, on September 7, 1963, with 17 charter inductees...
Jimmy Conzelman as the team’s coach. After a respectable 5-2-1 record in 1931 (playing all of its games at Public Schools Stadium in St. Louis), the Gunners changed coaches (to Bullet Baker
Bullet Baker
Roy Marlon Baker was a professional football player in the National Football League and the first American Football League. Over th span of his career, Babe played for the Chicago Cardinals, New York Yankees, Green Bay Packers, Staten Island Stapletons of the NFL. Before that played again in 1926...
) and played a more ambitious schedule in 1932, playing the Tigers to one win, one loss, and one tie – a November 27, 1932, game between the two teams was billed as for the "independent pro championship" ended with a 0-0 score.
The 1931 season saw the start of the Louisville Bantams, which played most of the games in its inaugural season against teams based in Ohio (including the Ironton Tanks
Ironton Tanks
The Ironton Tanks were a semi-professional football team organized in 1919 in Ironton, Ohio.Their historical marker gives the story of the Tanks origin: "Semi-professional football began in Ironton in 1893 with a team known as the Irontonians...
); the following season saw the formation of the Charlotte Bantams and the Oklahoma City Chiefs. By 1933, both Charlotte and Oklahoma City were not only able to compete toe-to-toe with Memphis and the St. Louis Gunners, but both dominated the Tigers in three out of four games that year.
On November 14, 1933, Memphis Tigers owner S. A. Goodman, boasting that the Tigers have been playing "as good football as in the NFL" and that St. Louis and Oklahoma City "could win… in the NFL at any time," announced plans for a new major football league, which he named the American Football League. In the three weeks after the announcement, the Gunners defeated NFL teams in successive games and a new team in Tulsa, the Drillers, came into being and played competitively against Oklahoma City and St. Louis, losing all three of their games.
Formation
In 1933, Goodman stated "We don’t want a Southern league, nor a secondary league." Yet by the summer of 1934, his new league was to have teams representing Memphis (Tigers), St. Louis (Gunners), Oklahoma City (Chiefs), Tulsa (the newly renamed Oilers), Charlotte (Bantams), Louisville (Bourbons), Dallas, and Houston. Even then, plans for the league had to be altered as neither Dallas nor Houston had organized teams at that point… and the Gunners did not want to join the embryonic league as they had aspirations for joining the NFL (in fact, the team bought the NFL’s Cincinnati RedsCincinnati Reds (NFL)
The Cincinnati Reds were a National Football League team that played the 1933 season and the first eight games of the 1934 season. The football Reds played most of their home games at Crosley Field...
franchise for $20,000 on August 8, 1934, but the sale was veto
Veto
A veto, Latin for "I forbid", is the power of an officer of the state to unilaterally stop an official action, especially enactment of a piece of legislation...
ed by the NFL team owners).
In August, Oklahoma City was expelled from the league because their home stadium (a minor league baseball park) could hold only 2000 people in the grandstands (the Chiefs would continue as an independent team for two more months before folding); at the same time, Houston was dropped from the lineup as there was no progress in organizing a football team in time for the start of the season. On the other hand Dallas was successful in forming a new team, the Rams. Also in August, Bud Yates (founder of the St. Louis Gunners in 1931 and the St. Louis Veterans in 1932) was enlisted to organize a third St. Louis team, this time called the St. Louis Blues, which featured former Gunners Dick Frahm
Dick Frahm
Herald Samuel Frahm was an American football halfback for the Staten Island Stapletons, the Boston Redskins, and the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League and the St. Louis/Kansas City Blues of the 1934 version of the American Football League. He played college football at the...
and John Breidenstein.
Competition and dissolution
By October 7, 1934, the day of the league's first games, the AFL settled on a double round robin schedule, with each team scheduled to play one road game and one home game against each of the other members of the league. Despite the league's intention, only Memphis and Charlotte managed to play the full ten games as weather forced the cancellation of several games.Final league standings – 1934
| Team | W | L | T | Pct. | PF | PA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Louis St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St... /Kansas City Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties... Blues |
7 | 0 | 1 | 1.000 | 161 | 40 |
| Memphis Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers.... Tigers |
5 | 3 | 2 | .625 | 94 | 76 |
| Louisville Louisville, Kentucky Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096... Bourbons |
5 | 3 | 0 | .625 | 76 | 70 |
| Dallas Dallas, Texas Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States... Rams |
3 | 6 | 0 | .333 | 65 | 105 |
| Carolina Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County. In 2010, Charlotte's population according to the US Census Bureau was 731,424, making it the 17th largest city in the United States based on population. The Charlotte metropolitan area had a 2009... Bantams |
3 | 7 | 0 | .300 | 81 | 122 |
| Tulsa Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 46th-largest city in the United States. With a population of 391,906 as of the 2010 census, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 937,478 residents in the MSA and 988,454 in the CSA. Tulsa's... Oilers |
1 | 5 | 1 | .333 | 28 | 92 |
By late October, the Blues' supremacy was virtually conceded as St. Louis was not only dominating each of its games but also outdrawing the Gunners, which had to cobble together a schedule after the rejection by the NFL and the reduction of availability of AFL members for scheduled football games. When the Gunners’ purchase of the Cincinnati Reds was finally approved by the NFL, Blues' ownership decided not to compete with the newest member of the National Football League and opted to move across the state of Missouri, to Kansas City, one-time home of the NFL's Kansas City Blues
Kansas City (NFL)
Kansas City, Missouri had a National Football League team prior to the Chiefs that operated under two different names: The Blues in 1924 and the Cowboys from 1925-1926. The Blues competed as a traveling team, playing all of their NFL games in other cities' stadia in their only year under that name...
and Kansas City Cowboys
Kansas City (NFL)
Kansas City, Missouri had a National Football League team prior to the Chiefs that operated under two different names: The Blues in 1924 and the Cowboys from 1925-1926. The Blues competed as a traveling team, playing all of their NFL games in other cities' stadia in their only year under that name...
. After the move, the former St. Louis Blues became the new Kansas City Blues.
The St. Louis/Kansas City Blues ran roughshod through the league, with only a tie with Memphis marring its won-lost record with a late-season tie. On December 16, 1934, the Blues finally met the Gunners for the first (and only) time, with the NFL team prevailing 7-0 before it was disbanded due to unpaid tax debts (a new St. Louis Gunners team would surface by later 1935, again as an independent).
Preparations for the 1935 season saw the Blues returning to St. Louis after the Gunners' dissolution and Louisville playing exhibition games in September, but none of the other league members had bothered to assemble their squads, including the Tigers, which were sited in the league's home city, Memphis. S. A. Goodman, both the president of the AFL and the owner of the Tigers, announced on September 26, 1935, that due to "lateness in organizing", the 1935 AFL season was cancelled, but the league would return in 1936.
St. Louis and Louisville played four games in front of diminishing crowds before folding; the Memphis squad was tentatively put together by two longtime Tigers (Red Clavette and Cliff Norvell) and bankrolled by Wilson Murrah. While the team managed to play three games (scoring 100 points in the process), the writing was on the wall: the Tigers (and any possibility of the AFL returning in 1936) winked out of existence.
All-League teams
Despite the AFL’s existing for only one season, it had two All-League teams, one selected by Associated PressAssociated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
writers in the cities represented by the AFL teams and one selected by the coaches of the American Football League.
Associated Press All-AFL team
- End: Dutch Kreuter, Charlotte
- End: Burle Robison, Memphis
- Tackle: Jess Tinsley, Louisville
- Tackle: Hugh Rhea, St. Louis/Kansas City
- Guard: Win Croft, St. Louis/Kansas City
- Guard: Gordon Reddick, Charlotte
- Center: Popeye Wager, Louisville
- Quarterback: George Grosvenor, St. Louis/Kansas City
- Halfback: Red Tobin, Memphis
- Halfback: Fred Hambright, Charlotte
- Tailback: Tony Kaska, St. Louis/Kansas City
AFL All-League team (selected by coaches)
FIRST TEAM- End: Cliff Ashburn, St. Louis/Kansas City
- End: Burle Robison, Memphis
- Tackle: Hugh Rhea, St. Louis/Kansas City
- Tackle: Champ Siebold, Memphis
- Guard: George Mougin, Charlotte
- Guard: Danny McMullen, Memphis
- Center: Homer Hansen, Dallas
- Quarterback: George Grosvenor, St. Louis/Kansas City
- Halfback: Ted Sassele, Memphis
- Halfback: Casey Kimbrell, Louisville
- Tailback: Tony Kaska
SECOND TEAM
- End: Dutch Kreuter, Charlotte (only one end chosen for second team)
- Tackle: Charles Zunker, Dallas
- Tackle: Nap Nisonger, Memphis
- Guard: Win Croft, St. Louis/Kansas City
- Guard: Cliff Norvell, Memphis
- Center: Art Koeninger, Memphis
- Quarterback: Frosty Peters, Memphis; Johnny Branch, Charlotte (tie)
- Halfback: Earl Clary, Charlotte
- Halfback: Dick FrahmDick FrahmHerald Samuel Frahm was an American football halfback for the Staten Island Stapletons, the Boston Redskins, and the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League and the St. Louis/Kansas City Blues of the 1934 version of the American Football League. He played college football at the...
, St. Louis/Kansas City - Fullback: Ross Hall, Tulsa