[November 12th
marked the
125th anniversary of the signing of America’s first professional
football player, William
“Pudge” Heffelfinger. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Pudge and other
groundbreaking professional athletes, leading up to a weekend post on Trump and
sports!]
On how a groundbreaking
athlete reveals three sides to the development of football and professional
sports in America.
1)
College vs. pros: The two central realities of
football in the late 19th century are roughly equally hard to
believe in our 21st century moment: that college football was
pretty much the only game in town; and that the center of the college football universe
were Ivy League
institutions like Harvard and Yale. But those were the pigskin realities,
and the legendary Yale career of Pudge Heffelfinger exemplifies them quite
nicely. Heffelfinger was a three-time All-American at defensive guard during
his four years at Yale (the 1888 to 1891 seasons), and he (under legendary coach
Walter Camp) led at least two of those teams (1888 and 1891) to undefeated seasons.
The 1888
team, moreover, also gave up precisely no points on the season, outscoring
its thirteen opponents 698 to 0 (for an average victory of 53.7 to 0). Few if
any sports teams, from any era or at any level, have equaled the success of
that Ivy League football squad, and Heffelfinger helps us remember that
striking fact and moment.
2)
Haphazard growth: Professional sports were
beginning to emerge in that same late 19th century moment; but,
especially when compared with the juggernauts that our major sports
organizations now seem to be, they did so in piecemeal and haphazard fashion.
Heffelfinger’s historic paycheck embodies that randomness quite precisely—in
the 1960s, the Pro
Football Hall of Fame, alerted by a rediscovered item from Pittsburgh
newspapers, recovered a long-lost
page from the account ledger of the Allegheny Athletic Association. The
page revealed that Heffelfinger had been paid both a $25 salary and a $500 “game
performance bonus” by Allegheny to play in a game on November 12th,
1892. It appears that he was the only player paid to appear in that game; over
the next few years, six
other players would be paid, some for individual games and some on salary
for entire seasons. Such was the individualized and haphazard nature of “professional”
sports in the 1890s, and the first step toward the sports and cultural behemoth
that is the 21st century National Football League.
3)
Organization and Publicity: By the mid-20th
century, both football in general and professional football in particular had
become far more organized and wide-ranging, and in his final role in football
(after a few years of coaching at various universities) Pudge Heffelfinger
likewise exemplified that new era. Between 1935 and 1950, he compiled and
authored Heffelfinger’s
Football Facts, an annual publication that featured statistics and
schedules for both college and pro teams. This periodical, one of the first of
the now-ubiquitous annuals published for every major sport, did more than just reflect
football’s growth and popularity, though—it also helped contribute to those
trends, using the name and identity of this iconic early star to publicize and
sell the sport to familiar and new audiences alike. One more side to the profession
and business of sports that Pudge Heffelfinger embodies and helps us remember.
Next
AthleteStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other athletes or related histories you’d highlight?
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