George Halas and the Birth of the Bears (Part 2)

The American Professional Football Association was reorganized in 1921, becoming a league in the true sense of the word. Under its new president, Joe Carr, the APFA established an official schedule and began to keep standings and other statistics.

 

George Halas and the Staleys opened the 1921 season with a seemingly meaningless exhibition game against the Waukegan American Legion team, winning 35-0. Then they played their first, and last, official league game in Decatur before moving the franchise to Chicago. A capacity crowd of 4,000 came out for the team’s farewell appearance at Staley Field. The Staleys beat Rock Island 14-10, then boarded the train to Chicago. Halas rented out rooms for his players in a boarding house at 4414 N. Clarendon, for two dollars per man per week. The players walked to Wrigley Field for practices and games.

 

Through their first six league games, the Staleys were undefeated and untied. In the sixth game, they dispatched Jim Thorpe’s new team, the Cleveland Indians, 22-7 before a crowd estimated at 10,000. On Thanksgiving Day, the unbeaten Buffalo All-Americans invaded Wrigley Field and handed the Staleys a tough 7-6 defeat. On November 27, quarterback and coach Curly Lambeau led his Green Bay Packers into Chicago for the first game in what would become the greatest rivalry in pro football. The Staleys won 20-0. Then, in the biggest game of the season, a rematch with Buffalo, Guy Chamberlin scored a touchdown and kicked a field goal to carry the Staleys to a 10-7 victory.

 

Now Chicago and Buffalo each had suffered one loss. The Staleys beat Canton 10-0 on December 11, then closed out the season the next Sunday against the Chicago Cardinals. On a frozen field, the teams slipped and skidded to a scoreless tie. The Staleys finished 9-1-1 in league games, while Buffalo was 9-1-2. Joe Carr ruled that the Staleys’ game with the semi-pro Waukegan team would count in the APFA standings. Thus the Staleys were 10-1-1 and the first official champions of pro football.

 

Although they triumphed on the field and were reasonably successful at the box office, the 1921 Staleys did little to justify Halas’s faith in the ultimate profitability of pro football. They lost $71.63 for the season.

 

In 1922, the Chicago Staleys became the Bears. “I considered naming the team the Chicago Cubs,” Halas remembered, “out of respect for Mr. William Veeck, Sr., and Mr. William Wrigley, who had been such a great help. But I noted football players are bigger than baseball players; so if baseball players are cubs, then certainly football players are bears!” The Staley franchise was officially transferred to the Chicago Bears Football Club, Inc. A year later, the American Professional Football Association also adopted a new name—the National Football League.

 

RED GRANGE

On November 22, 1925, the Bears blanked the Packers 21-0 at Wrigley Field. Observing from the Bears’ bench was Harold “Red” Grange, the Wheaton native whose sensational career at the University of Illinois had concluded less than 24 hours earlier. Immediately after the Illini’s season-ending 14-9 victory at Ohio State, the three-time All-American had secretly boarded a train for Chicago to join the Bears. Thus he was at their game the very next day—but not in uniform, because the final details of his contract had not been settled. 

 

When Grange officially signed with the Bears on Monday morning, it was a monumental coup for Halas. He announced that “the Galloping Ghost” would make his debut on November 26, Thanksgiving Day, against the Cardinals. Tickets went on sale Monday afternoon, and the 20,000 that had been printed were sold within three hours. Mounted police were called to quell a potential riot among fans who were still in line when the supply ran out. More tickets were printed the following day, and another 16,000 were sold.

 

Thursday afternoon was damp and chilly, but Wrigley Field was filled to the rafters. Seventeen people were arrested outside the park for selling counterfeit tickets. Grange took the field wearing a Bears’ jersey onto which his familiar No. 77 had been hastily stitched.

 

In the first quarter, Grange brought the fans to their feet when he fielded a punt and zigzagged 30 yards before being wrestled down. The rest of his afternoon was less eventful. He ended up with 66 yards on three punt returns and 36 yards on 13 carries from scrimmage. He also attempted six passes, all of which fell incomplete, and caught one pass. His interception thwarted one of the Cardinals’ two scoring threats (the other was a field-goal attempt by Paddy Driscoll that ricocheted off one of the uprights).

 

Although the Bears failed to mount a serious assault on the Cardinal goal line and the game ended in a scoreless tie, no one seemed too disappointed. When the gun sounded, Cardinal players lined up to shake Grange’s hand, knowing that his presence in the league was likely to make them all more prosperous. Hundreds of fans swarmed onto the field, and only quick work by a cordon of policemen saved Grange from being stampeded by the well wishers.

 

“The Bears and the Cardinals are great pro teams,” the Tribune’s Don Maxwell wrote the next morning. “They have thousands of enthusiastic followers. But the more than 36,000 folk who made the turkey wait until the game was over weren’t there to see their teams play. They were there to see the redhead of Wheaton. They cheered when Grange gained ground; they cheered when he lost ground. They went into vocal hysterics when he trotted on the field, and they almost mobbed him when he left it.”

 

To exploit Grange’s tremendous popularity, the Bears played exhibition games in St. Louis, Washington, and Pittsburgh in addition to their five regularly scheduled league games between December 2 and December 13—for a total of eight games in 12 days. Late in December, they set off on a coast-to-coast barnstorming tour that saw them play nine more games before the end of January. As a result of these games, Halas said, “Pro football for the first time took on true national stature.”

 

Pro football was here to stay. By the time of his death in 1983, Halas had seen the value of a franchise increase from $100 to roughly $100 million. He had also done more than anyone else to make it happen. 

 

(Part 2 of 2.) 

  

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