The Shelby Tigers was a professional American 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...

 team, based in Shelby, Ohio

Shelby, Ohio

Shelby is a city in Richland County in the U.S. state of Ohio, northwest of the city of Mansfield. It is part of the Mansfield, Ohio Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 9,821 at the 2000 census.-History:...

, from 1910 until 1911. The team played in the Ohio League

Ohio League

The Ohio League was an informal and loose association of American football clubs active between 1903 and 1919 that competed for the Ohio Independent Championship . As the name implied, its teams were based in Ohio...

, which was the direct predecessor to the modern 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...

.

1910 season

The team was established and managed by Frank Schiffer, a former executive of the Shelby Athletic Club when the team first started paying players, including the first African-American professional football player, Charles Follis

Charles Follis

Charles W. Follis, a.k.a "The Black Cyclone," was the first African-American professional football player. He played for the Shelby Blues of the "Ohio League" from 1902 to 1906. On September 16, 1904, Follis signed a contract with Shelby making him the first African-American contracted to play...

. The coach and quarterback of the 1910 Tigers team was Homer Davidson

Homer Davidson

Homer Hurd Davidson was a professional Major League Baseball player for the Cleveland Naps . Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he played only 6 games for the Naps during the 1908 season. Davidson was better known as a professional football player...

, a star player for the cross-town, Shelby Blues

Shelby Blues

The Shelby Blues were an American football team based in Shelby, Ohio. The team played in the Ohio League from 1900 to 1919. In 1920, when the Ohio League became the APFA , the Blues did not join but continued to play against APFA teams, only to later suspend operations...

. Meanwhile Bullet Riley, who caught the first legal forward pass

Forward pass

In several forms of football a forward pass is when the ball is thrown in the direction that the offensive team is trying to move, towards the defensive team's goal line...

 from Peggy Parratt

Peggy Parratt

George Watson "Peggy" Parratt was a professional football player who played in the "Ohio League" prior to it becoming a part of the National Football League...

 while playing for the Massillon Tigers

Massillon Tigers

The Massillon Tigers were an early professional football team from Massillon, Ohio. Playing in the "Ohio League", the team was a rival to the pre-National Football League version of the Canton Bulldogs. The Tigers won Ohio League championships in 1903, 1904, 1905, and 1906, then merged to become...

 in 1906, signed with the team in 1910.

The Tigers march to an undefeated season in 1910. The team then signed a contract to play the Akron Indians on Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving (United States)

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday,...

. However Akron needed to play the Shelby Blues again after losing to the team the week before. The rematch was needed to decide the championship of the Ohio League. Indians were forced to cancel their game with the Tigers and forfeited their $100 guarantee. The Blues would defeat Akron 8-5 and claim the title.

Ohio League champions?

The Blue and Tigers both laid claim to the 1910 Ohio League title. The Blues were unbeaten with one tie and had those two big victories over the Akron Indians. Meanwhile the Tigers were unbeaten, untied, and unscored upon. The Blues played a harder schedule, but the Tigers won more convincingly. Frank Schiffer challenged the Blues to winner-take-all game for the title and suggested that the entire gate and $500 go to the winner. However having a championship game between the Tigers and Blues was impossible since too many players had seen action for both teams in 1910. Any game between the Blues and Tigers would force several players to choose sides, while the outcome of the game would depend simply on how their loyalties divvied up.

It was later determined that since both teams were from Shelby, they should simply share the championship. The players for the Blues and Tigers were so intertwined that it was very hard to determine who was a Tiger and who was a Blues player. Both teams combined for a 13-0-1 record.

1911

In 1911, the Shelby Blues and Shelby Tigers merged, taking the "Blues" name. A second "Shelby Tigers" team began play that season and contined as a semi-professional team into 1912.