Hammond Pros

• 1. Introduction

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  The Hammond Pros played seven seasons in the National Football League and won only five games. That record alone might consign them to a footnote. But before their last game in 1926, this small-town Indiana squad served as an unlikely home for six of the nine African-American players in the entire league, hosted the first Black head coach in NFL history, and once featured a young end named George Halas who would go on to shape professional football for decades.

  Hammond, Indiana, was not built for professional football. Its stadium, A. Murray Turner Field, was designed for baseball and could seat only a few thousand people. The Pros played just two regular-season NFL games there across their entire existence. Yet the team's co-founder, Dr. Alva Young, kept it alive in the league for seven years and 34 games. How a semi-professional outfit with part-time players managed to stay in the NFL that long, and what they left behind when they were gone, is the real story.

• 2. Roots in Pre-League Football

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  Dr. Alva Young's path into professional football began not on the gridiron but in other corners of sport. A boxing promoter and owner of a racing stable, Young also served as doctor and trainer for a semi-pro team run by the Hammond Clabby Athletic Association from 1915 to 1917. When that club folded, he stepped up to organize a new squad called the Hammond All-Stars in 1918.

  That All-Stars team played against many of the clubs that would go on to found the American Professional Football Association, including the Racine Cardinals, Detroit Heralds, Rock Island Independents, Minneapolis Marines, Cleveland Tigers, Canton Bulldogs, and Toledo Maroons. When team owners gathered in Canton, Ohio in 1920 to create what became the NFL, Young was in the room. His involvement in that founding moment was no accident. A game between Hammond and Canton, played on Thanksgiving Day 1919 and drawing around 12,000 spectators in Chicago, reportedly helped persuade the owners that a formal professional league could draw a paying crowd.

  Young co-founded the Pros alongside local businessman Paul Parduhn, who provided the organizational footing while Young supplied the football experience and medical expertise.

• 3. George Halas Passes Through

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  In 1919, before the NFL existed, a version of the Hammond team known as the Hammond Bobcats featured George Halas at wide receiver. Halas was not yet famous. He was a young end playing on the Indiana club before professional football had a formal league structure.

  The following year, Halas left for the Decatur Staleys, the franchise that would become the Chicago Bears. He stayed with that team as a player, then as coach, then as owner until his death in 1983. His brief stint in the Hammond orbit places the Pros in a direct line to one of the most consequential figures in NFL history. Halas was later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963. Paddy Driscoll, who played quarterback and halfback for Hammond in 1919, was inducted in 1965.

• 4. A Team in Name Only

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  The Pros carried an NFL franchise designation but operated far closer to a semi-professional club. Most players held full-time jobs outside football and could not dedicate themselves to regular practice. Against professional squads that trained seriously, the gap in preparation showed on the field. Their combined record over seven NFL seasons was 5-26-4.

  The team's relationship with Hammond itself was complicated. A. Murray Turner Field was built for baseball and could hold only a few thousand spectators. Over seven years, the Pros played just two regular-season NFL games on that home turf. Instead, they used Cubs Park in Chicago as an unofficial base, making the franchise a traveling operation in practice rather than a rooted hometown team. Contemporary observers noted that the contemporary Hammond Bobcats, a high-spending outfit described as a "$20,000 team," played all its home games in Chicago as well. That club was eventually admitted to the league as the Chicago Tigers, distinct from Young's Pros despite the shared Hammond name. Despite those constraints, Young kept the franchise active through lean seasons, absorbing losses that would have ended a less committed owner's involvement.

• 5. A Stage for Black Players

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  Nine African-American players suited up anywhere in the NFL during the Pros' years in the league. Six of them played for Hammond. That concentration on one of the smallest, least successful franchises in the league was not coincidental; Young's willingness to sign Black players when most teams would not made the Pros a rare point of entry into professional football.

  Fritz Pollard played halfback and served as a coach for Hammond in 1923 and 1925, becoming the first African-American head coach in NFL history. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005. Another Hammond player during those years was Mayo Williams, who went by the nickname "Ink" and later built a successful career as a music producer. The presence of both Pollard and Williams on the same struggling franchise points to something the win-loss record does not capture: the Pros were, for a brief period, one of the most significant clubs in the league for African-American participation in professional sport.

• 6. The League Moves On

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  The NFL's decision after the 1926 season to shrink to 12 teams ended the Hammond Pros. The league had just won its battle with a rival American Football League, and the owners chose to tighten the circuit, shedding smaller franchises that struggled to draw crowds and field competitive rosters. The Pros were among those cut.

  By the time they were dismissed, Hammond had posted a final season record of 0-4 under Doc Young's coaching. Their seven-year run produced 34 games, five wins, and a collection of players whose subsequent careers and historical significance far outpaced anything the scoreboard recorded during those seasons. Fritz Pollard's 2005 Hall of Fame induction came nearly 80 years after the franchise folded, a delayed recognition of what those years in Hammond actually meant.