On
October 17, 1920 there was a football
game at Rock Island, Illinois. The
Decatur Staleys, under the leadership of former professional
baseball player George Halas, beat the home town Rock Island
Independents by a score of 7-0. The
only thing that made the game memorable was that it was the first game played
by teams of the new American
Professional Football Association; a fledgling
professional league renamed two years later as the National Football League (NFL.)
The Staleys, who started out as a semi-pro team in
1919 sponsored by the food starch producer A.
E. Staley Company, had a pretty good season finishing with 10 wins, 1 loss,
and 2 ties. They finished second to the Akron Pros.
The
new league was the brainchild of legendary athlete Jim Thorpe, player-coach
of the Canton Bulldogs. He had been promoting the idea among
other independent pro and semi-pro teams since 1917, but World War I and then the 1919 Spanish
Influenza pandemic prevented anything from happening. Thorpe and Leo Lyons, owner of the barnstorming Rochester Jeffersons got representatives from a number of teams to
gather for a meeting in August 1920 in a Hupmobile
Dealership in Canton, Ohio to
launch the league. Thorpe was elected
President of the league in addition to his player/coach duties with
Bulldogs.
The
teams competing that first year included Canton Bulldogs, Decatur Staleys,
Chicago Cardinals, Akron Pros, Cleveland Indians, Dayton Triangles, Hammond
Pros, Muncie Flyers, Rock Island Independents, Rochester Jeffersons, Buffalo All-Americans, Chicago Tigers,
Columbus Panhandles, and Detroit
Heralds. Of these teams only 11
managed to finish the season.
In
1921 Halas got permission to take his team to Chicago. The Staley Company gave him $5000 to keep the
name for at least the first year. The
team played Cubs Park (now Wrigley Field.) The team finished with a 9-1-1 record, and
finished in first to win the League’s second Championship.
 |
| Navy and orange not adopted as official colors until 1925, |
Freed
from his contractual obligation Halas renamed the team the Chicago Bears in 1922 as a nod to his stadium hosts, the Chicago Cubs. The league was still struggling in 1925
when Hallas signed the biggest star in college
football, Red Grange, the Galloping Ghost of the University of Illinois. In honor of his prize player, Halas
changed the team colors to the orange and navy blue of the Illini.
Today
only two of the original franchises remain active, neither of them in their
original location. The Cardinals have moved twice, from
Chicago to St. Louis and then to Arizona.
The Staleys became the Bears after only two seasons and moved to
Chicago after one. But the team is the
only one still owned by the same family.
Virginia
Halas McCaskey, George’s daughter who was born in 1923, the years
the team became the Bears, is the principle owner. After her son Michael McCaskey retired
as team president in 2009 he was replaced by Ted Philips and for
the first time day-to-day management of the team is not in family hands. Michael’s brother George, however, is
still the Chairman of the Board. Members
of the Halas/McCaskey family own 80% of the company stock and show no signs of
selling.
The team now plays in the renovated Soldier Field
which famously resembles the crash site of a UFO thanks to a
favorable lease from the Chicago Park District, fancy bond
deals involving the City and State, and hundreds of millions
of dollars’ worth of infrastructure work provided by the City at no cost
to the team at all.
Mike
Ditka used to say that old George Halas “Threw nickels
around like manhole covers.” Halas would
undoubtedly be proud of the scams on the public his heirs have pulled off
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