Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

For those who study pre-NFL football, what may have happened for a particular early team that made you consider them to be no longer semi-professional but professional?

If a franchise paid a league's franchise fee (NFL, AFL, AAFC, etc) it would be a league member and thus be a professional team. Some franchises that joined the NFL in the early years had been playing in other, lesser-known, leagues before jumping to the big league. We have a tendency to call any team from non-major leagues semi-professional today but I'm not sure that's fair to the memory of those teams.

In the years prior to the founding of the NFL, there were loosely-confederated leagues, such as the Ohio League. I consider the Ohio League a professional football league, but there were teams that played games in the OL and games outside the league. The players were considered professional by the era's definition because they got paid something, although they didn't get much. The vast percentage of players had to have other jobs. Those players were paid a little to play, making them pros. But they had to support themselves with non-football jobs. Does that make those players semi-pros? I guess that's up to the individual looking at the situation.

The most complicated part of the landscape were players who worked for a company that supported a team, which I have called factory teams. Some of those teams had players hired to work at the company specifically because they'd play on the football team. Would you consider those players professionals or would you call that type of team a semi-pro team?

So, to answer your question: In the pre-NFL days, a professional player was one who got paid. Some of the leagues that existed might somehow be considered semi-professional by today's standards, but they were not described that way during that era. Games between teams (say for example the Stanley Steamers against the Electrolux Vacuums) would be advertised as professional football. Speaking for myself, those were professional teams.

I hope I helped with your question.

Lee Elder wrote:We have a tendency to call any team from non-major leagues semi-professional today but I'm not sure that's fair to the memory of those teams.

Thank you. Yes, I think sometimes our current thinking about what makes a team "professional" can skew how we perceive the earliest teams. Just like with players we need to consider each team during the era in which it played.