The Founding of the NFL: The American Professional Football Association of 1920

By 4Football Staff · September 26, 2026 · 10 min read

The NFL began in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, born in a car dealership in Canton, Ohio. Here is why it formed, who joined, and what it looked like.

The National Football League, the most valuable sports league in the United States, did not start with a television deal, a stadium or a press conference. By the usual account, it started in a car dealer's showroom in Canton, Ohio, where a handful of team managers sat on the running boards of automobiles and agreed to form an association. Its name was not even the NFL. It was the American Professional Football Association.

The founding of the league in 1920 is a story about money, rivalry and trust. Professional football already existed, but it was a loose collection of teams that signed each other's players, played unpredictable schedules and made up rules as they went. A group of owners decided that if they cooperated, they could all do better. That idea, collective agreement for the benefit of rivals, has remained the core of the league ever since.

This article covers what professional football looked like before 1920, the meetings that formed the new association, who was in it, how it changed in its first two years, and what survives from that first season. The rest of the early story, including the struggle to survive, continues in the article on the early NFL.

Pro football before the league

People were paid to play football well before 1920. The earliest documented cases come from the 1890s, when clubs in Pennsylvania began paying players to appear in games. A commonly cited example is a game in 1892 in which a former college star was reportedly paid to play for an athletic club. In the years after that, towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere formed teams that hired the best players they could afford.

By the 1900s and 1910s, a loose circuit of professional teams had grown up in Ohio, which is why historians often call that period the era of the Ohio League. Rivalries such as the one between the Canton Bulldogs and the Massillon Tigers drew crowds and attention. The great Native American athlete Jim Thorpe, who had been an Olympic champion in 1912, played for the Canton Bulldogs in the 1910s, which gave the team and the sport national visibility.

But there was no league office, no common schedule and no agreement among teams about player contracts. That led to several problems.

• Bidding wars. Teams competed against each other for the same players, and salaries rose beyond what many clubs could afford.
• Contract jumping. Players could sign with one team and move to another midseason for a better offer, and nothing prevented it.
• College players under fake names. Some teams used college players, sometimes under assumed names, which angered college authorities and risked the reputation of the whole enterprise.
• Schedules. Teams scheduled their own games, so a club's season could depend on whether a rival would agree to play.
• No clear champion. Without standings or a playoff, claims to being the best team were a matter of argument.

For the people who owned the teams, the situation was costly. They were competing against each other in ways that raised their expenses without growing their audiences.

Canton, 1920

Two meetings in Canton in 1920 are usually described as the league's founding. The first, in August 1920, brought together representatives of several Ohio teams at an automobile dealership owned by Ralph Hay, who also ran the Canton Bulldogs. The group agreed in principle to form an organization, and they invited teams from other states to join.

A second meeting on September 17, 1920, again at Hay's showroom, brought together representatives of teams from several states. That date is commonly given as the official founding date of the league. The attendees agreed to organize under the name American Professional Football Association.

They did several things in that meeting.

1. Chose a name and a president. The group elected Jim Thorpe as the association's first president. Historians generally see this as a choice made for name recognition. Thorpe was the most famous football player in the country, and his name would help the new league attract attention. He did not run the day-to-day affairs of the league.
2. Set a membership fee. A fee of one hundred dollars per franchise is the figure usually reported. Historians also note that many teams are said never to have actually paid it, so treat it as a symbolic figure.
3. Agreed on basic principles. The owners wanted to stop bidding against each other for players, to respect each other's contracts and to avoid signing college players who still had eligibility.

The agreement was thin. There was no schedule, no standings system and no real enforcement. It was closer to a gentleman's agreement than a modern league.

The teams of 1920

The first season involved a mix of teams, mostly from the Midwest. The roster of clubs changed over the year, and sources differ on exactly who was a member at which moment, but the following were among the early participants.

Two of these franchises survive in some form. The Decatur Staleys were sponsored by the A. E. Staley food company, and in 1921 the team's player and coach, George Halas, took charge of it and moved it to Chicago. It became the Chicago Bears in 1922. The Cardinals trace their roots back to a Chicago athletic club formed in the late 1890s, and the franchise has since moved to St. Louis and then to Arizona.

The Green Bay Packers did not take part in the first season, but joined in 1921 after being organized by Curly Lambeau, and the team's story is one of the few in the early league to reach the present without moving. The Packers' arrival in a small Wisconsin city is a good example of the kind of town that dominated the early NFL.

The first season

The 1920 season looked nothing like a modern schedule. Teams played different numbers of games, some against opponents who were not members of the association. There was no official schedule imposed by the league, and clubs arranged games among themselves. Some fell apart because of weather or money.

At the end of the season, the owners held a meeting to determine a champion. The Akron Pros, who had gone through the season without a loss, were declared the champions. The league did not use a title game. Records from that era are not always consistent between sources, so if you need an exact record, look at a reference book on early league history.

An important figure on that Akron team was Fritz Pollard, one of the first Black players in the league, who in 1921 also became a coach. His story belongs in the history of the sport's integration, which is covered in the article on the integration of professional football.

Joe Carr and the reorganization of 1921

The loose structure of 1920 did not last. In April 1921, the association elected Joe Carr as president. Carr, who had managed the Columbus Panhandles, a team known for its tough travelling schedule, was a more hands-on administrator than Thorpe. He is generally regarded as the person who gave the league real structure.

Under Carr, the association took several steps.

• Standings and records. The league began to keep official standings, so that a championship was based on a record rather than a vote.
• Territorial rights. Franchises were given exclusive rights to operate in their areas, so that two teams did not compete for the same fans.
• Player rules. The league adopted policies against signing college players before their eligibility ended and against players jumping contracts. The Green Bay Packers' franchise was briefly revoked in early 1922 after it used college players under assumed names, and it was later reinstated. Those events show how seriously the owners took the issue, and that enforcement was imperfect.
• A headquarters. The league operated from Columbus, Ohio, where Carr was based.

In June 1922, the association changed its name to the National Football League, a name it has kept since. The renaming reflected a growing national ambition. In the first few years the league was geographically small, but the new name signaled that it aimed to represent the sport nationally.

The shadow of the college game

It is easy to forget how much smaller and less respected professional football was in 1920. College football was the sport's main attraction. Its stars were national figures, its stadiums were far larger than anything a small-town pro team could afford, and many Americans looked down on playing for pay. College officials and newspaper columnists regularly suggested that professionals were a lower class of player, and some of the owners' rules about college players reflect a fear of being attacked for stealing from the colleges.

That explains one of the association's earliest preoccupations: it wanted to look respectable. The pledge not to sign players with college eligibility remaining was partly about keeping peace with the colleges and partly about protecting the owners' public image. The same concern helps explain why Thorpe, a famous amateur-turned-professional, was chosen as a face for the new group. Fans who had followed him at Carlisle and the Olympics could see that serious athletes were willing to play in the new league.

It also explains why the league's early growth depended on a few big names. Within a few years, a star from the college game, Red Grange, would bring professional football its first truly national attention, a moment covered in the article on Red Grange and the rise of professional football. Before that, the association survived mostly on local loyalty and the willingness of its owners to absorb losses.

What an early game day looked like

Descriptions of 1920s pro football games by people who attended them give a consistent picture, though specific details vary. Games were played at local athletic fields, fairgrounds and baseball parks. The crowds were small compared with the college game. Players were paid by the game, often with a modest sum, and many had other jobs. Rosters were short, and some players went both ways, playing offense and defense. Travel was by train.

Because teams were tied to their hometowns, a loss to a visiting club could matter more to local pride than any league standing. The team was usually a community project, backed by local business owners and supported by local newspapers.

Why Canton?

If you visit Canton, you will find the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Hall was opened there in 1963, and one of the reasons usually given is the city's role in the league's founding and the Bulldogs' place in pro football history. The article on the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton covers that story.

What was different about the new league

Compared with the loose collection of teams before it, the association offered several things.

• A common rule against raiding. The owners agreed, at least in principle, not to sign each other's players. In practice enforcement was uneven, but the principle was established.
• A shared name and a shared claim to a championship. Fans could say that a team was a champion of a league rather than of a region.
• A structure that could grow. Because the association was a formal body, it could add members, hold meetings and pass rules.

What it did not have was financial stability. Most franchises were small businesses, often backed by local merchants. Attendance was modest, and many teams lost money. The association survived because the owners were willing to accept losses in hope of long-term growth.

Common misunderstandings

• "The NFL started in 1920 under that name." It was the American Professional Football Association until 1922.
• "Jim Thorpe ran the league." He was its first president, but historians generally describe the role as largely a matter of prestige.
• "All the founding teams are still around." Only a couple of the original franchises survive in any form, and both have moved.
• "The league always had a set schedule and a playoff." It had neither in 1920.
• "The $100 fee shows the league had serious money." It is a reported figure that was reportedly not always collected, and in any case it was a modest amount.

Seeing the league today

The league that started in a showroom is now followed by millions of people. You can see current standings on our standings page, browse the full list of clubs on the teams page, and check the weekly schedule. Looking at those pages, it is worth remembering that only a handful of the names on them existed in 1920, and that the stable league of today is the product of more than a century of expansion, mergers, moves and failures.

The short version

• Pro football existed before 1920, but teams competed for players, scheduled their own games and had no common rules.
• On September 17, 1920, owners met in Canton, Ohio, at Ralph Hay's car dealership and formed the American Professional Football Association, with Jim Thorpe as president.
• The first season had no set schedule, and Akron, undefeated, was named champion by the owners.
• Joe Carr became president in 1921, introduced standings, territorial rights and player rules, and the league became the National Football League in 1922.
• Of the 1920 clubs, the Chicago Bears and the Arizona Cardinals are the ones that survive in some form; both have changed cities or names.
• Many details of the first season vary by source, so check a specialist reference for exact records.