approached three fellow team owners about banding together to start the American Professional Football Conference APFC It was time to see if other owners were ready to buy into the idea Hay made his case before the men gathered in the showroom In the new league he envisioned teams would share a common rule book they would not raid one another's rosters and the size of contracts would be limited For two hours the men hammered out an outline for the league Hay's vision became reality The APFC still disjointed disorganized and largely dysfunctional changed its name to the American Professional Football Association APFA and began its first season just a few weeks later Despite its shortcomings the APFA marked the jumping off point for organized professional football Less than two years later the league changed its name to the National Football League THE DAWN OF THE NFL CHAMPIONSHIP For more than a decade the NFL remained a very loosely organized league Franchises came and went Teams picked which teams they wanted to play including non NFL teams and scheduled games however they wanted to They didn't even play the same number of games The NFL had no playoffs so champions were determined by the regular season winning percentages Chaos was the way of the young league and that was never truer than in the 1932 season The Green Bay Packers led the NFL with 10 victories Yet at the time the league discarded all ties when calculating winning percentages And based on winning percentages the Packers 10 3 1 mark left them behind both the Chicago Bears 6 1 6 and the Portsmouth Spartans 6 1 4 After throwing out the tie games the Bears and Spartans were both left with 6 1 records 8 THE SUPER BOWL
CHARTER MEMBERS Only two of the original APFA teams remain in the NFL today The Decatur Staleys moved to Chicago in 1921 and won the APFA title that year In 1922 the team changed its name to the Chicago Bears below in 1925 The other APFA charter member was also Chicago based The Chicago Cardinals remained in the Windy City until 1960 when the team moved to St Louis The Cardinals were on the move again in 1988 becoming the Phoenix Cardinals In 1994 they changed their name to the Arizona Cardinals Both teams thrived in the early NFL winning multiple titles But they haven't had as much success in the modern era The Bears have won one Super Bowl and the Cardinals haven't won any FROM CHAOS TO CHAMPIONSHIPS THE MAKING OF THE BIG GAME 9
This tie would change the NFL forever but only because of highly unusual circumstances that followed The NFL had a tiebreaker in place the two teams head to head record in the regular season But while the Bears and Spartans had met twice in the regular season both games had resulted in ties The NFL had no rule to resolve the deadlock The idea of a split title wasn't appealing to anyone the league included So the stage was set for a first in pro football a winner take all championship game In what was already a unique situation things got still stranger The teams were set to meet at Chicago's Wrigley Field on December 18 But blizzards swept through the region and experts predicted bitterly cold temperatures that could endanger players and fans So the game was moved indoors to Chicago Stadium ALLAST co nEassus pirms Fans could get close to the action at Chicago Stadium for the 1932 NFL Championship 10 THE SUPER BOWL
The stadium however wasn big enough to house a full sized football field So the 1932 NFL Championship HUI HUI was played on a field that measured just 80 yards from goal line to goal line and IM AHA was also 10 yards narrower than a field should be If that wasn’t bad enough the loose dirt field offered little footing and hadn been properly cleaned after a circus had been in town a week before The game itself was a flop beginning with the temperature outdoors being well above zero far warmer than predicted Inside on a surface and field unfit for football neither team could generate much Bronko Nagurski stretches out his throwing arm during practice before the 1932 NFL Championship Nagurski's pass to Red offense Finally in the fourth quarter Grange was the game's only touchdown Chicago fullback Bronko Nagurski threw a touchdown pass to Red Grange The Bears went on to a 9 0 victory Even though that 1932 title game was a disaster it inspired a major change in the NFL In 1933 the league split its teams into two divisions The Bears won the Western Division while the New York Giants claimed the Eastern Division The teams met for the first official NFL Championship This time the game lived up to its billing It was at that time an offensive shootout The Giants led 21 16 in the final minutes That's when the Bears Nagurski threw a 14 yard pass to Bill Hewitt who then tossed it to Billy Karr Karr streaked into the end zone for the winning touchdown FROM CHAOS TO CHAMPIONSHIPS THE MAKING OF THE BIG GAME III
