Akron Pros

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Akron Pros were declared champions of the first season of what would become the National Football League on the 30th of April, 1921. Nobody was there to argue otherwise. The two men who might have objected, President Jim Thorpe and Vice President Stan Cofall, simply did not show up to the meeting at Canton where the vote was taken. Art Ranney, one of the Pros' co-owners and the league's secretary, presided in their place. He and the other team managers voted the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup to Akron. It was, depending on how you look at it, either an administrative coup or a fitting reward for a team that had finished the season without a single loss. What follows is the story of a franchise that helped build professional football from the ground up, fielded two of the sport's most important Black players, and then quietly disappeared before most people knew it had existed.

• 2. Akron Before the Pros

  ›

  Long before the Pros, Akron's football scene was ruled by a team called the East Ends. The East Ends dominated Ohio football so thoroughly that it took a deliberate act of sabotage to unseat them. In 1903, the Massillon Tigers paid imported ringers drawn from the recently disbanded Pittsburgh Stars to come in and beat the East Ends specifically to break their grip on the state. That kind of hardball strategy was not unusual in early professional football, where players moved freely between teams and rosters changed week to week. Out of this environment the Akron Indians emerged in 1908, winning Ohio League championships in 1908, 1909, 1913, and 1914. Fans always called them the Indians regardless of what the official name was at any given moment. The early Indians stood apart from other clubs in one notable way: they preferred passing the ball rather than running, a style more associated with college football than with the athletic clubs that dominated the game.

• 3. Parratt's Era

  ›

  Peggy Parratt arrived before the 1912 season after stints with the Massillon Tigers, the Franklin Athletic Club, and the Shelby Blues. He moved to Akron specifically because the market was larger and the money was better. His first act was to rename the team "Parratt's Indians", signaling that this was now his operation in every meaningful sense. He served as player, coach, and owner-manager simultaneously. The 1913 championship run showed his methods at their most aggressive. When Shelby loaded their roster with big-name players from eastern schools and paid each man $700 just for a single championship game, a snowstorm canceled the contest. When the Blues came back to Akron a week later, Parratt had assembled talent his opponents believed was even stronger. The Indians won 20-0. For 1914, Parratt recruited a lineup that included Knute Rockne, Howard "Horse" Edwards, "Deke" Jones, and Joe Collins, all former Notre Dame stars. The Indiana connection ran so deep that by late in the season, the entire left side of the Akron line had come from Notre Dame. That season carried a grim footnote: on the 15th of November, 1914, Canton defeated Akron 6-0, but Canton's captain Harry Turner died when his spine broke during a tackle on Akron fullback Joe Collins. Turner's death was the first fatal accident involving a major professional football team in Ohio. The 1915 season unraveled when the Massillon Tigers deliberately raided Parratt's roster, and Canton manager Jack Cusack signed Jim Thorpe to lead a renamed Canton Bulldogs squad. By season's end, Parratt's squad was built almost entirely from local sandlot players. He returned to Cleveland the following year and formed a new team, the Cleveland Tigers, taking some former Akron players with him.

• 4. The Burkhardt Years

  ›

  In 1916 the Burkhardt Brewing Company stepped in and took over what remained of the franchise, renaming it the Akron Burkhardts. The reorganization was led by Howe Welch and his brothers Chang and Suey. Welch took on the same triple role Parratt had filled, serving as player, coach, and manager at once. The 1916 team managed a winning record despite losing to the Canton Bulldogs and splitting a two-game series with the Columbus Panhandles. The team name shifted back to the Indians in 1918, though records from that period are contested and many sources still called the team the Burkhardts as late as 1920. Meanwhile, the Indians name itself was sold off separately to Suey Welch, who ran it as an independent club from 1917 through at least 1921. The 1919 team finished 5-5-0 and lost money even with Fritz Pollard on the roster. Pollard was described at the time as one of the country's best breakaway runners and is recognized as the first Black player in what would become the NFL.

• 5. Fritz Pollard and Paul Robeson

  ›

  In 1920, Art Ranney, a former University of Akron football player turned businessman, and Frank Nied, a cigar store proprietor, bought the team. They dropped the Indians name in favor of "Pros", hoping the change would lift both performance and attendance. Their most consequential act was signing Fritz Pollard and then, the following year, elevating him to head coach, making him the first African-American head coach in NFL history. Paul Robeson joined the team in 1921 as well. Robeson is now far better known as a singer and civil rights activist, but in 1921 he was among the earliest stars of professional football. Both men played at a time when the league still allowed Black athletes. That window closed after the 1933 season. Professional football remained segregated from 1934 to 1946. Pollard's Hall of Fame induction came in 2005, more than eight decades after his playing days with Akron ended.

• 6. The 1920 Championship

  ›

  The Pros opened the 1920 season at League Park with a 43-0 demolition of the Wheeling Stogies. Al Nesser, one of the football-playing Nesser Brothers, scored three touchdowns that day, all on fumble recoveries. The team moved through its schedule without a loss, beating Canton's Bulldogs 10-0 in what was considered a major upset given that Canton featured Jim Thorpe, Joe Guyon, Pete Calac, and Pete Henry. The Pros tied the Cleveland Tigers 7-7 and later held the Buffalo All-Americans and the Decatur Staleys to scoreless draws. At the Buffalo game, attended by only 3,000 fans, Nied and Ranney traded Bob Nash to Buffalo for $300 and five percent of the gate receipts. That transaction is recognized as the first documented player deal between NFL clubs. Because Akron had the best record in the league, the Pros needed only to avoid a defeat. Buffalo and the Staleys both had to win outright to claim the title. Neither managed it. Under modern NFL tiebreaking rules, the 1920 Buffalo All-Americans would be considered co-champions, matching Akron's win percentage of .864 wins to losses and both finishing ahead of the Decatur Staleys, whose record that season counted 11 wins and 2 losses for a percentage of .846.

• 7. Decline and End

  ›

  After the championship, the slide was steady. The Pros finished third in 1921, tenth in 1922, and spent most of the following seasons near the bottom of the standings. The single exception was 1925, when the team climbed to fifth place. After that season, the ownership returned to the Indians name, closing the circle back to the franchise's earliest identity. The revived Indians played through 1926 but fell apart under the combined weight of a poor record and shrinking financial support. The team suspended operations in 1927 and formally surrendered its franchise in 1928. The founding meeting of the American Professional Football Association, which would become the NFL, had been held in 1920 on stationery belonging to the Akron Pros, its minutes kept by Ranney himself. The league went on. The team that had helped create it did not.