Strengthening Cuttings and Embankments RailUK Forums

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
 
Lawrence Bell wasn’t going to wait around for me.
The moment he found out who I was, he would be coming for me. There’s no way he would let me train and get better in order to face him. Lawrence would come down hard and fast, preferably while I didn’t know what I was doing.
That was the assumption Samuel worked with.
Training consisted of two parts: physical fitness and lectures with Samuel.
The physical fitness training was obvious. Get myself in shape so that, if it came down to it, I could fight. The exercise schedule Samuel gave me was vigorous. Someone else in the family had developed it, and now I had to follow it.
As a result, I ended up joining the track and field team. That was Samuel’s idea. It gave me an excuse to train constantly with a good explanation for my mom. On the days I wasn’t exercising, Samuel would try to teach me as best he could about the history of our family and magic itself. It was difficult because we did so over FaceTime.
Samuel lived four hours away, back where the funeral had happened. He stayed at Hamilton’s house for a week to get me on schedule, but then left for home.
The next month was intense. Exercise was the easy part. At least I didn’t have to think. But Samuel’s lectures were grueling and even boring. He drilled me on family members by holding up a picture of them and I had to spit out every fact about them that I knew off the top of my head.
“Why do I need to know so much detail?” I asked, frustrated. “I already know their names!”
“You won’t just know them,” Samuel answered. “You will lead them! The Champion will unite both families!”
So, the family trivia continued.
He also taught me about the Prophecy of the Champions, which was great background but had no practical use here.
Three generations ago, the Bell and Keenes families tried to combine into one by marrying two of their Council members’ children: George Bell and Emma Keenes.
They did marry, but before they could have children and complete the blood binding, they both left magic behind. They renounced their powers and authority, and ran away to raise children away from the families influence.
Both families were furious at each other. Each side would accuse the other’s child of de-converting their precious progeny. No one could resolve the dispute.
The problem with two magical families warring is that they are both very powerful. People on both sides were dying left and right. Some were being cursed straight to hell and the ground would open up and pull them under where they stood. Others were burned alive in their houses while they slept.
The conflict was deadly.
The two Councils had a meeting to try and resolve everything once people started dying and disappearing. That’s when the Prophecy of the Champions was born.
Two Champions chosen in the future. Whoever won was supposed to pick someone from the other family to marry and have children with to complete the blood mixing. They would also take their place as head of the Council over both families. In the meantime, no one was to kill anyone of the other family.
And it worked. No more bloodshed for three generations.
But now, Lawrence and I were supposed to fight to the death. All that the prophecy had done was delay the violence until the future so it was no longer their problem.
 
Talia, Mason and I continued to hang out at school. I’d get some clarifications from them about the family, and they’d tell me interesting stories of theirs from their childhood around magic. We got along well and I was genuinely glad to have met my cousins.
Home life was good enough. Mom was happy I’d joined a team, and Marcus was too even if he expressed how much he hated the bus.
I did eventually gather up enough bravery to ask Mom why Dad had shut the family out. She danced around it for a while before giving me a somewhat concrete answer.
"Your dad and Charles and Grandpa Joe had lots of arguments. Grandma, Joe's wife, had died when your dad was just a kid. It was just the three of them living in the house at that time. Sure, your aunts and uncles were in and out of the house, but they weren’t much help. It wasn't an ideal home situation. Lots of tension was bred. That's where Charles thinks it started, anyway,” she said.
"As everyone got older, your dad expressed serious doubt in... everything. He would constantly tell his father that it felt like something was missing or not quite right. When he got married, he slowly stopped coming to family functions. Other people's kids had to replace him in rituals and such. That alone made some heavy friction."
“So you knew about the… magic?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t turn this on me somehow and ask if I’d seen them lately.
“I did,” she muttered. “But I got used to it. I wasn’t really around it much since your dad was already skipping family functions when I met him.”
"Then, one day, after you were already born, he came home and said he was… done. He told me he never wanted to see his family again. They were beyond saving to him, and what had just happened had confirmed it to him.”
“I tried to change his mind or get more details from him, but he never answered. So I just… went with it,” she sighed.
I had a lot to think about that night. What, out of all this craziness that made up the Keenes family, would be too much for Dad to handle to the point that he never even wanted to see his family again?
 
One day, Samuel told me I needed to come up that weekend to the Keeper’s Monastery. Talia had told me about it, as that’s where her potion-making sessions happened. A big mansion the family owned had been converted into a home for all the Keepers. It was four hours away, out where the funeral had been.
“What do they do all day?” I asked Talia.
“I don’t know. They study magic, I think. They put out a book of new techniques every year or so for the family to use. But only the Keepers have direct access and they give us spells and rituals on an as-needed basis.”
“How do they decide who becomes a Keeper?” I asked. Some days I wished I was one and could tinker with magic all day long.
“Carlisle selects the Keepers. Most are from Carlisle’s bloodline,” Talia answered. “Somewhere up the tree there’s another family member whose bloodline also contains Keepers, and Carlisle selects from there too.”
Samuel also asked me to bring the Maze Blade, which helped me understand the purpose of the trip. He was going to teach me how to use it. I’d been told it contained magic, but not what it was for, or how to use it. I’d spent some nights raising it over my head repeatedly with no results.
Finally, some real magic again.
 
The three of us all drove up together. Talia wanted to show us potions while we were there, and Mason wanted to come along so he wasn’t stuck at home bored all weekend. I drove us all up in my car and dropped them off at the Monastery first. Then I drove a little ways out of town to an address where Samuel told me to meet him.
The drive over made me anxious. It would be just Samuel and I. I still wasn’t comfortable around him or other Keenes family members who weren’t Mason’s family or Talia.
The address turned out to be a beautiful garden outside of town. It was walled in with old stone and wrought iron gates. Green trees poked out over the fence at intervals. When I parked in front of it, Samuel was waiting.
“You brought the Blade, I sincerely hope?” Samuel asked, eyebrows raised.
I brandished the Maze Blade, which made Samuel shake his head.
We walked together to the double doored gates. Samuel did a waving motion with one hand, and the gates slowly opened. After we had entered, they shut behind us. I watched with amazement at the casual magic.
The garden was beautiful and well maintained. Everything was green, and we followed a perfectly trimmed stone path toward the center of the land. Trees and bushes dotted the land seemingly at random. It wasn’t dense forest, and gave you a view of the whole plot.
We came to a collection of stone columns, each carved with different patterns and different heights. The tallest one was twice my height. Samuel held out his hand, and I gave him the blade.
“This is not just a knife,” Samuel said, holding the blade. “You should not use it as a knife either. It’s very old and very valuable.”
“What’s it for, then?” I asked.
“It’s an object that is capable of channeling magic without explicit Keeper permission,” Samuel explained. He reached out and set the knife on top of a four foot tall stone column. After a second, the knife began to emanate a soft hum.
“Objects imbued with magic lose their potency over time. The Maze Blade is no exception. And the further you are from the Keeper’s domain, the faster it drains. We’ve carved these pedestals from mountains that act as enormous stores of magical energy. We can essentially ‘re-charge’ magical objects.”
“Like a phone,” I suggested. Samuel nodded.
“Walk with me,” he commanded, following the stone path around the columns and out into the garden. I did as he asked, leaving the Maze Blade on the stone column.
“The Maze Blade was designed specifically for the Keenes family Champion,” Samuel said. “The magic it possesses was chosen with that in mind. The Maze Blade was fused with a specific spell that is used for guidance. If a destination is set and envisioned in the mind, it will show guide you in that direction.”
“So, it’s a compass,” I said, trying to sound smart.
“A map,” Samuel corrected. “A map to the maze that is the physical world.”
Ah. Maze Blade. Right.
We followed the stone path in a circle, doubling back to the stone columns.
“It was also fused with another spell that acts as a type of master key to the Keenes family. It can access and unlock anything the Keenes family controls.”
“Like those vaults I heard about?” I asked. “Where all the magical objects are stored?”
“Yes,” Samuel said. “Which is how the Maze Blade was able to leave the vaults of its own volition and come to you. Your Grandfather assigned it to you with a spell, and it knows who its master is.”
We arrived back at the stone columns. I could still hear the Maze Blade quietly humming. Samuel reached behind the stone columns and into a box. I followed his movements. Out of the box, he produced a robe like the one I’d worn to summon Grandpa.
“Made custom for you,” he said, handing the folded robe to me. I put it on, slipped my thumbs through the holes in the sleeves, and tightened the sash. It fit perfectly.
“Your robe is now part of your identity,” Samuel said, straightening his own robe. “Take good care of it.”
I nodded.
“Now,” he said, “I’m going to have you practice with the Maze Blade.”
He produced a second piece of cloth from the box and had me tie it around my eyes for a blindfold. I did as I was told, feeling nervous. What if it didn’t work?
“The movements of the Maze Blade are gentle,” Samuel said. “Being blindfolded will help you block out distractions and focus on the movements of the Blade itself. You’re going to let it guide you to the gates of the garden.”
He set the blade in my hands. I gripped the hilt with one hand. The second my robe brushed against it, it hummed once. It knew its master.
“Follow the Blade to the gate,” Samuel commanded.
Without any further instructions, I tried to figure out the Maze Blade. It didn’t take long to figure out that it hummed whenever the tip pointed in the direction I was supposed to go. The variations in the terrain still tripped me occasionally, but I knew when I was in front of the gate because it hummed three times in a row, then stopped.
I pulled down the blindfold and found myself in front of the iron gates we had entered through. The hilt was warm either from my tight grasp or from the magic surging through it.
“Good,” Samuel said behind me. He’d been following me as I stumbled through the garden. “If you ever find that the Maze Blade’s movements are too soft, close your eyes and they’ll guide you. Now, find the symbol on the gate.”
Confused, I stepped toward the gate and found a symbol painted onto the metal where the two doors joined together.
“Touch the gem of the Blade to the symbol,” Samuel commanded.
I did. The Blade thrummed for a second, and then I heard an audible click as the lock secured itself. Without prompting, I tapped it again and the gate unlocked quietly.
“Good,” Samuel smiled, walking over. “It’s a good start. I think we’re done here. You can go back to the Monastery.”
“Samuel…” I started as he began to turn back to the stone columns. He stopped and faced me.
“My father…” I said, slowly. “Can I… can we... summon him? I… I need advice.”
“Absolutely not,” Samuel answered sharply. “Dragging someone up who would actively refuse is just asking for trouble.”
“He would refuse coming to see me?” I responded, not believing that.
“Gary would refuse to be conjured by the magic he rejected in this life,” Samuel answered, shaking his head. “The answer is no, Logan.”
With that, he waved a hand. The unlocked gate began to swung open. My cue to leave.
 
Back at the Monastery, I was upset and ranted with Mason and Talia about it. They let me speak my mind, but I could tell they sided with Samuel. And why wouldn’t they? Samuel was their leader.
The building truly was a mansion. It was three stories and mostly empty. Most of the Keepers were out and about today, according to Talia. A few were still around, though. One of them took the Maze Blade when I entered and set it on another stone column on display by the grand staircase. It was lit from above and the Blade appeared sacred sitting on it. It hummed, happily absorbing magic.
We spent the rest of the day wandering the Monastery and its grounds. The family paid for gardeners to come and maintain ornate designs of flowers, trees, and bushes. The grounds were as beautiful as the garden I had been at with Samuel.
We talked and wandered for a while until the sun got low. Dinner was catered from a restaurant in town. The Keepers usually made their own food, but having guests made them order in. They kept to themselves and always kept their hoods up around us. We could hear them talking animatedly upstairs, but we were forbidden from going up there. Our bedrooms were in a wing off the main staircase.
The Keeper who acted as our guide led us to our rooms after dinner and shut us in. Each of us got our own room.
“Can you hear me?” I spoke into the vent that should lead to Mason’s room.
“Yeah,” Mason answered.
“How far do you think we are from Dead Hollow?” I asked reluctantly.
“...You can’t be serious,” Mason said after a moment.
“I just need advice!” I countered. “I don’t see what’s so hard about that.”
“You’re conjuring the dead,” Mason replied.
“You’re talking about your dad again?” Talia’s voice echoed. Apparently our voices were carrying further than expected. Talia’s room was on the other side of Mason’s.
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s not far,” Talia said. “We’ve used some potions there before.”
“Can you take me?” I pleaded. “Even if I can’t do the magic, which I bet I can, but even if I can’t, it’s the closest place to the next plane. Samuel said so. I might be able to get… impressions or something.”
“Let me get dressed,” Talia answered.
“Guys! No!” Mason whined. “We’re going to get into trouble! The Keepers are gonna--”
“We’re just going for a drive, Mason,” I placated. “Just to see what we can do.”
Mason grumbled some more, but we managed to convince him to come with.
The doors in this mansion were heavy, but quiet. The three of us managed to sneak out of our rooms undetected. One quick detour to snatch my Maze Blade from the main staircase column, and we were out the door. The front door wasn’t even locked.
 
Talia was right, it was only an hour away from the Monastery. The roads were empty, and darkness had fully set in. Without Talia, I doubted we could ever find the turnoff at night. The dirt road was tiny and obscure.
Once we were on the dirt road, however, we hit our first snag.
The gate.
How could we have forgotten?
We all got out and inspected it. Two locks: one padlock and one electronic lock. Hopefully, I brandished the Maze Blade and tapped the gem to the padlock. Nothing. The electronic lock, on the other hand, changed from red to green. The gate was allowed to partially open, held back only by the still locked chain.
The gap was just large enough for us to squeeze through. So, we did.
First, I parked the car off to the side, grabbed my robe from the trunk, kept the Maze Blade tucked into my belt, and we continued on to our destination.
It was quite a walk, but we managed to make it over the bumpy dirt road, through the tree tunnel, across the plains, and to the single-file walking path. All of us had turned on our phone’s flashlights to see. The moon was new tonight, which kept the night air dark.
Scanning our flashlights across the plains showed faint flattened paths in the tall weeds. Walking paths? Vehicles that had driven over it? I thought this was private land? Looking for more magic wells, perhaps?
We took a break at the entrance to the single-file walking path. I looked up at the stars, admiring the new moon hovering faintly in the sky. Looking up at it made me cringe and smack my forehead.
“Okay,” I breathed.
“I forgot about the magic alignment things,” I moaned.
“The what?” Mason asked.
“When we were going to conjure my Grandpa, Samuel had to check a calendar with events or something. Like if the stars were aligned or whatever. I didn’t even think about whether or not that's tonight.”
“But we were only going for a drive, though,” Mason taunted. I threw a small rock at him playfully.
“Well, we’re already here,” Talia sighed, pointing her flashlight into the trees.
“Let’s go see who we can conjure up.”
 
It was darker in the Dead Hollow. A lot darker. Even with the dense roof made of tree branches, the moon had been a huge source of light the night we conjured Grandpa.
When we arrived, I tucked the Maze Blade into my belt for safe keeping. I’d tried using it on the trail, but no matter which direction I pointed, it didn’t prefer any direction.
I walked Mason and Talia around to the side of the stump with the roots. The dirt was still crumbs, and the hole was nowhere in sight from last time. I explained what Samuel had me do, and they nodded.
“You still need a Keeper to redirect the flow,” Mason said.
“I can do it,” Talia piped up. We both looked at her.
“You’re not a Keeper,” Mason accused.
“I can try,” Talia insisted.
“Try focusing or something,” I suggested. “Just envision the river of magic around us and--”
“I know what to visualize,” Talia interrupted.
“Sorry,” I said quietly, then turned to the stump. “Here goes nothing.”
I adjusted my robe and knelt to the ground. Mason stood off to the side, watching me. Talia stood above me, breathing softly with her eyes closed. I wrapped my fingers around the roots with a tight grip. The robe’s sleeve was caught in the grip. Just being here was making my palms sweat.
I took some time to breathe deeply and try to feel for any magic. Talia and I managed to synchronize our breathing. The night was quiet except for rustling leaves in the gentle breeze.
“Gary Marcus Keenes,” I chanted.
I said his name several times with confident chants that echoed into the trees. I could hear Talia moving behind me, but didn’t look around to see what movements she was trying to direct the flow of magic.
I peeked and checked the crumbs of dirt before me. No movement. No portals opening to the next plane.
Mason was growing impatient. I could hear him pacing. I asked him to stop and he apologized.
Just as I turned back to the stump to focus, I saw him turn to look out into the trees. His entire body went rigid, and he took an involuntary step backward.
“Logan…” he whispered.
I didn’t answer. I was too busy staring at the ground next to the stump. No portal had appeared, but smoke was rising from between the crumbs of dirt, like an underground fire.
“Talia…” Mason whispered, reaching out a hand to touch her shoulder.
“I’m concentrating,” she hissed.
I kept my hands on the roots and looked back. Mason’s expression was pure terror.
“What the hell is that?” He squeaked, pointing off into the trees.
Talia sighed and opened her eyes. She followed his finger, squinting to see what was in the trees. I tightened my grip on the roots and strained my neck to see what they were looking at. I couldn’t see anything…
Then it moved. One of the trees, branches and all, slowly shifted to the left. It was thirty feet away, but still too close for comfort. Mason took another step back. Talia dropped her arms, which she’d been holding in some gesture to help direct magic.
I coughed. The smoke from the ground was intensifying. I wanted to let go of the roots, but thought of Samuel’s warning.
Do not take your hands off the roots where I place them. If you take them off, you’ll unseal the opening.
Mason squeaked again and asked what it was. Talia was speechless. I turned in time to see it come a step closer. It was twenty feet away now.
So long as you keep your hands on those roots, we’ll all be safe.
“Hold on,” I called out. My grip on the roots made my knuckles go white. My neck began to cramp as I tried to look behind me to see what it was. Talia and Mason had gravitated together and were backing up to the stump next to me. I still couldn’t make out what it was.
I swear to you, nothing will hurt you if you keep your hands there.
The smoke from the ground in front of me surrounded my head now. I was trying to cough without moving my hands. It was hard to breathe.
Then, flames suddenly poked out of the ground. Just a small flicker, but it was enough to startle me.
My hands let go of the roots.
I collapsed backward, crawling away from the flames that continued to grow slowly near the tree stump. Talia and Mason pulled me to their side. Free of the roots, I was able to turn around and get a good look.
A tall figure, at least ten feet tall, wrapped in a pitch black cloak with glowing, with red lines criss-crossing its robes. On its head weren’t branches of a tree like I’d originally thought, but antlers. The face on top of the body was that of a deer skull.
It stood a ways off, partially obscured by trees.
Neither of us moved.
I considered making a run for it, but since we didn’t know what it was, that might not be a wise decision.
A limb raised out of its cloak and pointed.
A flash of light and a deafening crack like thunder appeared behind us. We all spun around to find one of the trees had a gaping, smoking hole in its trunk. Chunks of wood were still settling onto the ground.
Before we could react, another tree next to it exploded, sending splinters of wood and bark flying into the clearing. The flash was blinding, and the crack sent us into action. We scrambled for the exit, tumbling over each other to try and get out.
As we got into the path, another crack sounded to our right and we were doused with splinters and chunks of bark.
“Run!” I shouted redundantly.
I’d fucked up. I’d let go of the roots. I’d broken the ring. Now it was free.
We ran blindly through the path. Occasionally a tree would explode, and we’d have to cover our faces to avoid getting hit with wood.
The second we were out of the single-file path, our blind motions to push leaves out of our faces turned into a dead sprint. I led the way, my training coming into use. While we ran, I shimmied the Maze Blade out of my belt, hoping it would guide us to safety.
My intuition was right. It began to hum as soon as my robe sleeve brushed it. I pointed it vaguely back to the car. It hummed. The pathway would be safe.
We ran the entire way back to the gate. Each of us shoved through the gate and piled into the car. I slammed the gear into reverse, and tore up spits of gravel as we got back onto the highway.

The NBA offseason is filled with exciting storylines like LeBron James' free agency and Kawhi Leonard's unhappiness in San Antonio.
But rather than dwell on the obvious names, this series intends to do the opposite: focus on the lower-profile free agents who may have some value to teams.
After looking at point guards, shooting guards, small forwards, and power forwards already, we're turning our attention to CENTERS.

featured item

Nerlens Noel, Dallas Mavericks, UFA, 24 years old
Sometimes, I get stubborn about my predictions. I'm sticking with Josh Jackson as the # 1 prospect in his class, I'm sticking with Brandon Ingram over Ben Simmons... heck, I'm still waiting for Greg Oden to come around (not really.)
But I am (really) still waiting for Nerlens Noel to come around. There’s a reason this kid was the # 1 high school prospect in his class, and would have most likely been the # 1 draft prospect in his class if not for injury. Noel is one of the most agile and nimble 6'11" big men that you'll ever see, with extremely quick hands to boot. His defensive potential has always been massive.
Take, for example, how Nerlens Noel compares to this stacked draft class of big men based on college averages:
DeAndre Ayton: 0.6 steals, 1.9 blocks
Marvin Bagley III: 0.8 steals, 0.9 blocks
Jaren Jackson Jr: 0.6 steals, 3.0 blocks (only 22 mins)
Mo Bamba: 0.8 steals, 3.7 blocks
Wendell Carter Jr: 0.8 steals, 2.1 blocks
Nerlens Noel: 2.1 steals, 4.4 blocks
Noel has translated some of that success to the NBA. In his young career, Noel has averaged 1.6 steals and 1.4 blocks per game. That's a rare combination. Not even Anthony Davis or Draymond Green can make that claim. In fact, very few players in NBA history can make that claim. Since the league made it an official stat, 82 players have averaged 1.4+ blocks. 65 players have averaged 1.6+ steals. But only four -- FOUR -- have met both of those thresholds. Julius Erving, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, and Nerlens Noel.
Even more impressively, Nerlens Noel is doing that in limited time. He's averaged 26.0 minutes per game in the regular season, well below those legends. If you extrapolate to a "per 36 minute" mark, Noel would balloon up to 2.2 steals and 2.0 blocks. No player, not Erving, not Olajuwon, not David Robinson, ever averaged 2 steals and 2 blocks per 36 minutes for their career. (Hakeem came the closest, narrowly missing the steals mark with 1.8 per 36.)
Now obviously, those raw counting stats don't tell the whole story about your defensive ability. You never want to hunt for blocks or chase steals to the detriment of the team. Noel can freelance in that way too often at times. That said, he's still proven to be an impact defender on the court according to +/- metrics. Even this year as he struggled to find a footing in Dallas, he graded as a +2.4 based on ESPN plus/minus on that end.
Of course, there's a reason that a 24 year old with legit Defensive Player of the Year potential can be found on display at our 99 cent store. By all accounts, Noel is a "bad egg" who wouldn't survive Willy Wonka's factory or avoid Rick Carlisle's doghouse. He hasn't proven to be a professional, which has kept his minutes low and kept him from fulfilling his potential.
At the same time, that may keep his price down. If Noel had a breakout season with Dallas, he may be fielding $80M long-term contracts. Right now? He may need to settle for a "prove it" contract again to show that he can be a genuine starter in this league.
For the first time, Noel will have the opportunity to pick his own coach and his own situation, and we should only hope that he does so wisely. With his career on the rocks, he can't chase the cash right now. He needs to find a true "home" that will help him develop better habits (on and off the court), if only to prevent me from looking dumb for touting him for so long.
possible fits
LAL. According to reports/rumors, Nerlens Noel had previously turned down a $70M offer from Dallas last summer in order to reach this unrestricted free agency. His new agent is going to have to work hard to come anywhere close to that again. But you know who his new agent is? Rich Paul. And Mr. Paul happens to have some other high-profile clients in his portfolio. If the Lakers sign LeBron and still have money to spare, Rich Paul can make a push for his boy Noel to join them. And to be fair, he does fit a run-and-gun young lineup in need of a defensive big man down low.
HOU. I presume the Houston Rockets will pay up to retain RFA Clint Capela, but if they don't, signing someone like Nerlens Noel becomes crucial to maintaining their momentum. Noel can provide a lot of the same skills as Capela for a steep discount. Houston would also provide Noel a stable and "winning" situation to help rehabilitate his stock (as would Boston or Golden State on a short-term deal.)
DAL. It's always difficult to speculate what's going on behind the scenes (or behind the ears of a player like Noel). At this point, a reunion seems unlikely. But that said, Dallas didn't draft a big man like Mo Bamba, and may strike out on their plans to chase big name FAs. If that's the case, these two may turn back to each other, for better or worse.

99 cent store

Ed Davis, Portland Trail Blazers, UFA, 29 years old
As a talented young big man, Ed Davis always on felt on the verge of a breakout. We've been waiting. And waiting. And waiting. I was surprised to see that he's already 29 years old already; I would have pegged him for 25. Perhaps that breakout will never come.
But then again, perhaps Ed Davis simply hasn't gotten the real opportunity to shine. He's always been a productive player in his limited minutes, averaging 11.6 points and 11.4 rebounds per 36 minutes over the course of his career. His smooth movement skills have allowed him to thrive on defense, where he registered a +2.4 impact according to real plus/minus. Originally, he may have been seen as a "tweener" as a slightly undersized center, but the modern and smaller NBA is playing right into his hands.
In fact, there's a legitimate argument that the Blazers should allow the bulkier (and more expensive) Jusuf Nurkic to leave in free agency, and have Ed Davis serve as the placeholder starter until Zach Collins gets up to speed.
Brandan Wright, UFA, 30 years old
Effectively, Brandan Wright was "Ed Davis" before Ed Davis. The fleet-footed and slightly undersized center out of UNC, Wright has always shown well in his limited minutes. He's especially effective at rolling to the rim, and contributes 2.2 blocks per 36 minutes.
Wright has never found a permanent home in the league, playing for 7 separate teams as he's struggled with injuries. Right now, Wright is off a roster as a result. Teams will need some medical info on him to see whether he can still contribute off the bench, or whether it's the end of the road for him.

clearance rack

Stephen Zimmerman, UFA, 22 years old
Previously, we mentioned Portland center Zach Collins, who has become a favorite son of Blazers fans. However, there's one unsigned and fringe roster player who may be grumbling about his success.
You see, back in high school, Stephen Zimmerman was the star of his Las Vegas high school team, with Zach Collins as his backup. Between them, Zimmerman had a much bigger national reputation. He was the McDonald's All-American and top 10 recruit. He was supposed to be the "stretch" big that would become an NBA star.
That hasn't happened. After one decent year at UNLV, Zimmerman fell to R2 and has been cut by both Orlando and the L.A. Lakers. In theory, he’s a modern stretch big, but he hasn't proven to be a reality yet. In college, he only made 29.4% of his threes and 62.4% from the line. He's barely played in the NBA so it's difficult to chart his progress there, but presumably he didn't light up practices if he's been getting cut.
If you bring in Zimmerman, you're banking on his "pedigree" as a recruit more than anything else. He's still young enough to have a future if he can figure it out. It's not a great bet, but that's why you can find him in the clearance rack / trash bin.
shameless plug This sub is so active that these posts can get crowded off the "new" page quickly, but if you'd like to be notified about new posts you can check me out at twitter at Zan_Ellison
update thanks for the good response to this! My twitter went from 15 to 38. We’re moving from a basketball size roster to football soon. Still need a few more special teamers though.

The 3-0 Canton Bulldogs continue the defense of their Ohio League professional football championship with a 41-0 defeat of the Rochester Jeffersons at League Park in Canton, Ohio.
The name Jefferson is testimony to the team’s beginnings as a sandlot team, many of which popped up across the country during the late 1800s and into the early part of the century. These sandlot teams were limited in how far they could travel, leaving them to play crosstown rivals. As these rivalries unfolded, the teams began calling themselves and each other by the street name or avenue near where the team played, in this case Jefferson Avenue in Rochester.
The Rochester Jeffersons, under the leadership of owner Leo Lyons who started playing for the team at age 16 in 1908, grew from the sandlot and won the New York Professional Football League (NYPFL) title in 1915 and 1916.
On this day a hundred years ago, Leo Lyons didn’t just put his team on a train to Canton, he put them on track to become a charter member of the NFL.
Some researchers go further, arguing this game more than any other led to the creation of the NFL itself, seeing the new league as essentially a merger of the NYPFL into the Ohio League.
Leo Lyons, tireless promoter of professional football, had sparked a national interest, even in defeat.
He forced football players around the country, even old sandlot teams, to make a gut check: do you have what it takes to play the best?
The Rochester Jeffersons proved they did October 28, 1917, the first NYPFL team to challenge Ohio’s place as the center of the professional football universe. Teams with humble beginnings were competing all over the country. There was only one way to find who had the best football team, and that was to create a nation-wide league.
By age 18 Lyons was already involved with the team’s finances, promoting games, managing the team, a role he would maintain until the team ceased operations after the 1925 NFL season. Hall of Fame Immortal George Halas mentioned Lyons in his acceptance speech, as Halas had modeled his stewardship for the Bears. Lyons is credited as being “manager, owner, photographer, doctor, counselor, financier, field worker, game booker, agent, and scout.”
Talking with Jim Thorpe after the blow-out, Lyons remained upbeat, predicting that one day pro football would be the biggest sport in America.
After the war when the invitations went out from Canton to create the NFL, one arrived in Rochester addressed to Leo Lyons.
The October 28, 1917 loss to Canton helped Lyons make bigger games and recruit better players. Unfortunately, the Jeffersons had a big problem that made it impossible for them to survive the times. Not even Lyons could overcome this issue: pro football fans in Rochester only wanted to see the local boys play. When Lyons recruited a big name player, attendance suffered. The Jeffersons played their last season on the road.
It seems football historians, with no way to answer the question of whether there might have been a professional football team somewhere in America that could have been competitive in the Ohio League, find it’s easiest to simply dismiss the idea.
At this time, for a West Coast professional football team to test their mettle in Ohio, it’s just ridiculous, so we’ll never know. With no footage, first-hand accounts are all we have. The journalists covering pro football wanted to see the sport thrive as well, and would use hyperbole to make the game sound more interesting. When it’s time to make comparisons, who travelled enough to see all of these different teams? Even top sportswriters could only see so many games.
It’s easier to make a more seamless history and simply say “the Ohio League had the best teams in the world.” If pressed for evidence, well in 1917 the New York state champ lost 41-0; any questions?
Yet, Lyons might have made a better argument for the state of professional football outside of the Ohio League if he had instead chose to play a second-tier team, say the struggling Columbus Panhandles that Canton had just defeated 54-0 the week prior. In this comparison, Rochester appears to have outplayed Columbus. Still, Leo Lyons wanted to promote professional football, so it made more sense to play the best. He wasn’t going to go all the way to Ohio to play Columbus. For historians it would have been great if he did, because it would have provided a key data point.
In the absence of any evidence, the idea that Ohio in 1917 is the center of the football universe will persist.
This same lack of real data also allows each region to imagine how their local powerhouse might have fared. These independent teams were often led by a great veteran player, whose name had become synonymous with the team and as such, impossible for him to play anywhere else.
It would have been highly unusual to see a West Coast player leave his home to play in the Ohio League, even though Thorpe was making $1,500 a game at this point.
Evidence this had already changed can be seen in 1925 when Champ Chamberlin used telegrams to recruit John Stockton’s grandfather Hust Stockton from Gonzaga to play in Philadelphia for the Frankford Yellow Jackets.
The Philadelphia and southeast Pennsylvania area is one place where we have evidence of independent teams playing against NFL teams.
Of course everyone is familiar by now with the great teams from Schuylkill County, Pottsville, Coaldale, Gilberton, Shenandoah and Wilkes-Barre, the Anthracite League as they came to be known. One of the reasons these teams became famous is that they were playing pro football on Sunday, in defiance of the state’s Blue Laws. Supposedly the county DA was quoted as saying, “If you want to come up here and tell these coal miners they can’t play football on their day off, be my guest.”
It’s impossible to discount the effect the Blue Laws had on the development of professional football.
It should be no surprise Ohio became the center of the football universe, when you consider almost everyone east of the border would have to play football on Saturday at a time when college ruled the gate. If you wanted to play on Sunday, you needed to head west.
In Philadelphia professional teams played on Saturday. The Frankford Yellow Jackets were already hard at work by 1917, and upstart Holmesburg from right up The Kings Highway took the city championship in 1919 and 1920. If these were “neighborhood” teams we wouldn’t expect to find the score of the city championship game in the London Times and San Francisco Chronicle. They competed against other teams around the city and its environs, as well as traveling teams from New York and DC, Reading and Lancaster.
Play in the western suburbs throughout the pre-war era was dominated by Conshohocken, led at the time by Earl Potteiger, who would go on to coach the New York Giants’ 1927 NFL championship team.
When the NFL began play in 1920, there were only two teams east of Ohio, the Rochester Jeffersons and the Buffalo All-Americans.
After the 1917 season the Jeffs were forced to suspend operations like almost everyone else, even Harvard and Yale, with an exception being the city of Buffalo, which somehow managed a six-game pro season in 1918.
When the Jeffs returned to the field in 1919 they lost the New York State title to the same Buffalo team that had won the city title in 1918, a team head-manned by one of pro football’s first great quarterbacks, Michigan’s Tommy Hughitt.
The torch for professional football in the state of New York had passed from Rochester to Buffalo.
In 1920, as the NFL came together, Buffalo, led by Frank McNeil, having defeated Rochester in 1919, felt his team worthy of joining the newly formed league and had already taken his team on a barnstorming tour through Ohio.
Looking for star power he recruited Dartmouth’s Swede Youngstrom and started calling the team the All-Americans to highlight the abundance of college talent on the roster.
The Rochester Jeffersons posted a winning record in the NFL’s first year, finishing ahead of Canton in the standings, even though they only played one other NFL team, a 17-6 loss to Buffalo, which finished the season 9-1-1.
Like the Bills of the 60s and 90s, the Buffalo All-Americans were probably the best team from their era that didn’t win a championship, finishing 9-1-2 in 1921, again only good enough for second place.
The All-Americans went into the last game of the 1920 season knowing they were one win away from the championship, while their opponent, the Akron Pros, only needed a tie. The game ended 0-0, and with it, Buffalo’s hope for a championship in the NFL’s first year. According to modern NFL tie-breakers the Buffalo All-Americans would be considered co-champions of the 1920 season, as Akron finished 8-0-3. For fifty years the NFL had the title listed as undecided, until records were found that at one of the meetings prior to the 1921 season Joe Carr had put forward Akron as champion and those present had voted aye.
None of the players from this great Buffalo team are in the NFL Hall of Fame. Not Hughitt; not Youngstrom, who at least made the “Hall of Very Good” Class of 2012; not Cornell’s Ockie Anderson, perhaps the NFL’s first star running back, whose career was cut short by injury; not Penn’s Heinie Miller, who Walter Camp described as the greatest end he’d ever seen play; not Lehigh’s Butch Spagna, who would later make NFL all-pro; not Tackle Lou Little, who played with Miller at Penn and went on to win the Amos Alonzo Stagg award and entry into the College Football Hall of Fame for his work at Columbia, where he developed Sid Luckman; not their Penn teammate Center Lud Wray, who co-founded the Eagles and became their first coach a year after being the first coach of the Redskins. What else could he have put on his resume? Star player in the league’s first year for a great team, first coach for two NFC East rivals, co-founder of the Eagles; forget about Canton, Philadelphia born and bred Lud Wray can’t even make the Ring of Honor at the Linc.
Instead, most of the accolades are reserved for Bert Bell. So what is it about greatness that tends to diminish the contributions of those around them? No one does it alone.
Bell, Wray, Miller, Little, the four Penn players served in the same unit during the war, and Bert Bell was the first to his feet when the officer asked for volunteers on a suicide mission. Then they returned to Penn for one last year of college ball. It should be a movie. One researcher found that Lud Wray, despite being in the Army, was on the League Island Marine Team in 1918, another dominant team playing in the eastern Pennsylvania area at the time. The military fielded some great football teams in this era out of military camps and bases around the country, and these teams would sometimes play against local pros.
According to Bert Bell’s biographer, it was Wray who handled the negotiations that allowed the buying group to obtain the territorial license for Philadelphia the Yellow Jackets had relinquished after the 1931 season, agreeing to settle debts with the Bears, Packers and Giants that the team had built up as the depression took hold of the team’s community-sponsored finances in Frankford.
Supposedly, Bell didn’t even have his share, the crash of ’29 had cost him dearly, and he borrowed the money from his fiancé, Frances Upton.
At that time, Upton might be compared to Janet Jackson circa Poetic Justice, already famous as a singer and dancer, she went out to Hollywood and just killed it.
Another way to measure Upton’s star power, when someone had the idea to do a live shortwave radio broadcast for Admiral Byrd in 1929, who was in Antarctica at the time in search of the South Pole, she made the cast.
Bell met her when she arrived with her entourage at the Ritz-Carlton, where he worked after his playing days had ended.
He took her on a date to Franklin Field to watch Penn play; she pointed out the pro game was more exciting. “At least they throw the ball.”
As one of the country’s most popular entertainers it was natural for her to float in the same circles as the top athletes of the day, and she had seen pro football at the Polo Grounds and Wrigley Field before ever meeting Bell.
In the depths of the depression, this woman bankrolled the creation of the Philadelphia Eagles, not because she had stars in her eyes, but because she believed in pro football, and she believed in Bert Bell.
More importantly to the history of professional football, she told Bell it would be impossible to marry a drinking man, and for her he sobered up, opening the door for him to become an NFL Immortal.
Bell bled the bluest of blood, and some argue this led him to the football field in the first place, similar to Hall of Famer Benny Friedman, whose biographer claimed he wanted to play football in part to dispel the myth that Jews were somehow a weaker species of man.
No one questions the toughness of a football player, especially not back then.
Bell, at 155 pounds, played the quarterback position with a desperation that gave caution to those who might think to tease him about his given name, deBenneville, an homage to his mother’s lineage that extended back to before the Revolutionary War. His father had been the Attorney General of Pennsylvania. The old man, instrumental in the creation of the NCAA, told Bert “he could go to Penn or he could go to hell.” When Bell returned a war hero his father bought him a $1,000 touring car that became famous around campus during the 1919 season.
Yet, Bell had what we would call today a gambling problem. In 1919 he was so sure Penn would defeat Swede Youngstrom and Dartmouth that he bet everything he had on the game.
He left the keys in the Touring car, put it the lot outside of Franklin Field before the game, and when Dartmouth came away with the upset it was never seen on campus again.
Bell’s father of course wanted him to marry well, and made a $50,000 investment to that effect, money he squandered at Saratoga.
The story that best reveals Bell’s somewhat singular position in American history involves the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.
Naturally, the feds were concerned about mob involvement, but who can find the answer to such a question? They turned to Bert Bell. He was able to verify from Al Capone himself, then in jail, that the mob was not involved, crucial and reliable information Bell then passed along to the proper authorities, which then guided the effort to catch the kidnappers.
Of course Bell became an NFL Immortal not because of his work at the Eagles, which never had a winning record under his ownership and may have been the worst franchise ever. The stories abound; apparently they were down to their last football and after a field goal attempt the kids ran away with it, and these were some of their last remaining fans.
It was Bell’s time as Commissioner that made him a first ballot Hall of Famer. And what does history measure as one of his first challenges and greatest accomplishments? Bell made sure the gamblers could not influence the outcome of an NFL game. He knew if there was ever a whiff these games were being fixed on the inside, it would be the end of the NFL as the fans would turn away. He saw how it had ruined boxing.
In a way it was like putting Joseph Kennedy in charge of the newly founded SEC after the stock market crash; the only one who really knows how the fox keeps getting into the henhouse is the fox himself.
Back to Buffalo. One reason these players may not get the recognition they deserve is because they are at the center of a story that poses an embarrassing challenge to the myth that the best teams in the country were in NFL.
Many of these Buffalo All-Americans were “two-timers,” playing on Saturday for the self-proclaimed US National Professional Champions of 1920, which was unfortunately not an NFL team, nor an old Ohio League team, but the Union Big Red out of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.
It’s likely Bert Bell was in the middle of all this, as Youngstrom signed with Buffalo prior to two-timing with Union, and the two men were notorious rivals at the game of Bridge. There is a rumor Bell might have even suited up for Union.
The Union came into being in the post-war environment where soldiers returned with an interest in playing and watching sports. Phoenixville had fielded a dominant professional football team since 1907, but also needed to suspend operations in 1918, only managing to play one game in early December, a 48-0 blow-out of Paschall AC from Philadelphia.
Prior to the 1919 season, a rival club opened its doors in Phoenixville, the Phoenix Athletic Club, and signed the borough’s best players, such that Union, which noted researcher John Fenton of Ghosts of the Gridiron fame estimates compiled a 95-8-10 record over its existence, could only manage a scoreless tie against Phoenixville High School in what would be the only game they played. Long-time Union coach and captain Fats Eyrich left town to play for local powerhouse Conshohocken.
Phoenix meanwhile compiled a 6-0-2 record in 1919 ahead of the big game against Conshy. As was the tradition of the time, they looked for top college talent to help them win. They recruited Miller, Spagna, and Bodie Weldon and Johnny Scott from Lafayette, who played on the team that upset Penn in 1915. Snowy conditions contributed to a 0-0 tie in front of 5,000 fans at Norristown’s Great Stockade Grounds.
Prior to the 1920 season, Eyrich returned to Phoenixville with a proposal to create a first class football team. The top college stars recruited for the Conshy game would form the new team’s core. He made his pitch to about 50 local leaders and they raised more than $7,000 in one week. This wad of money became a magnet for top east coast talent.
Potteiger came over from Conshohocken, bringing with him end Whitey Thomas, who years later would make the pages of Ripley’s Believe it or Not for gaining over 100 receiving yards while playing for the Atlantic City Roses.
Youngstrom, Miller, Wray, Little, Spagna, Weldon, Johnny Scott, the two-timers would suit up for an early game Saturday in the Philadelphia area and then take the train to Buffalo, joining Hughitt and the rest of the All-Americans for an NFL game on Sunday.
Miller, who coached Union, made all 22 games, while Wray and Little only each missed one (when Union defeated Ewing Little sat out as he was their coach).
Union ended up 11-0, giving Heinie Miller a combined 20-1-1 record for the 1920 professional football season. In 1925 Miller became coach at Temple, and he brought in Bert Bell and Lud Wray as assistant coaches. Keeping with the long story of their friendship, they argued incessantly, and Bell quit the team over Wray’s insistence on scrimmaging the team at practice. The two friends obviously patched it up by 1932 as it was Bell who recommended Wray to become the first coach of the Redskins, a team Bell’s close friend NFL Immortal George Preston Marshall had just purchased.
After romping through the local athletic clubs and coal teams, Union defeating long-time rival Conshohocken. It was at that point that they decided to go into the city and play Holmesburg and Frankford at the Baker Bowl (Phillies Park). Paid attendance for the Holmesburg game stood near 9,000. With the big gate looming Union brought in Stan Cofall, the Vice President of the NFL. When Union came away with the 13-0 win, they were so happy they sent a homing pigeon back to Phoenixville with the good news.
Two days later Union returned to the Baker Bowl to defeat the Frankford Yellow Jackets, 10-6 in front of 15,000 fans.
At 10-0, they now challenged any professional team to board the train and come to Philadelphia, with the mythical national championship on the line, and the promise of a big gate.
Obviously the Buffalo All-Americans could not answer the call, given they were the same team.
The Akron Pros, led by NFL Hall of Famer Fritz Pollard, who also two-timed with Union that year – scoring five touchdowns in two games – did not want to risk their championship claim, as everyone knew Union was a top team, perhaps none more than Pollard himself.
So it fell to Jim Thorpe and the great Canton Bulldogs, many of which arrived the night before at North Philly station to much hoopla.
On Saturday Union defeated Canton 14-7 in front of more than 17,000 fans at the Baker Bowl.
It’s tempting to use the final scores of these games to show that both Frankford and Holmesburg might have been able to give Canton a game in 1920. Yet, it’s hard to judge a team when the lineups are in flux. As the potential for a big gate grew so did the opportunity to bring in better players just for that one game.
Conversely, if the team felt confident, or the gate looked light, there would be no reason to spend extra money, and this of course this would be reflected in the final score. For instance, in 1920 Union defeated Ewing 14-0 while Frankford blew them out 41-0. As noted, Little didn’t play, but by the time Union played Frankford they had already put together what was probably the best team in America, and while Frankford would have also been working to bring in better players, they did not have the same kind of cash.
The Union-Canton game of 1920 is the most attended pro football game in the NFL’s first year, in part because so many All-American fans had come down from Buffalo to see their team play in a different jersey.
Imagine that, President of the NFL Jim Thorpe competing against Vice President of the NFL Stan Cofall in a game the young league could not possibly have sanctioned, but not even the president and vice president could say no to a gate like that.
Meanwhile, the most attended game between two NFL teams in 1920 was at the Polo Grounds in New York City. In this game the Buffalo All-Americans defeated the Canton Bulldogs 7-3. Youngstrom blocked a Thorpe punt and recovered it for a touchdown; as the story goes you could still see the imprint from the laces in his chest three days later.
The point of all this is, in the NFL’s first year the two most attended games took place in New York City and Philadelphia, and both games were won by effectively the same team of east coast all-stars. Looked at this way, it appears the end of Ohio as the center of the football universe had already begun at the time of the NFL’s founding.
While the Blue Laws would not be repealed in Philadelphia until the Eagles in 1933, with Bert Bell himself an outspoken critic and effective lobbyist, the idea that teams from the old Ohio League could take the train into Philadelphia on Saturday for a big gate, and then play in Schuylkill County on Sunday on their way out of town made it more attractive to extend the league eastwards. In fact Union’s boy manager Leo Conway was at the NFL’s spring meeting prior to the 1921 season.
The 1920 Union team so overwhelmed the small town of Phoenixville that Miller could not convince the locals to take another bite of the apple in 1921, and so Conway, with Miller still coach, moved into the city and played the 1921 season as the Union Quakers of Philadelphia, again fielding a top team. Carlisle and Canton veterans Pete Calac and Joe Guyon, after losing to Union in 1920, were now two-timing for Union in 1921. These pros knew where the money was, and Guyon would go on to be part of Potteiger’s 1927 Championship team in New York.
It seemed logical that the Union Quakers would become Philadelphia’s first NFL team for the 1922 season, but what about the two-timers?
Buffalo owner McNeil settled the issue midway through the 1921 season, causing a crisis for the young league by exposing the two-timers and acting like he just thought they were playing light games in Philadelphia. Miller went to the paper to say it was all about money, pointing to how McNeil had used the league’s new rules against Johnny Scott in what might have been the first contract dispute. Some of the two-timers stayed in the NFL, but those with ties to Philadelphia left the NFL behind.
In 1922, the Union veterans including Little, Spagna, Thomas, and Scott joined Frankford, replacing many of the starters. Miller served as coach and captain. This 1922 Frankford team defeated the NFL’s Rochester Jeffersons 33-0. In 1923 Little took over as captain and coach. In 1922 and ’23, the Frankford Yellow Jackets racked up a 6-2-1 record against NFL teams.
After the 1923 season Frankford challenged the latest iteration of the Canton Bulldogs, this one a dominant team that had just finished its second undefeated NFL season, becoming the first back-to-back champ in league history, a long string of shut-outs to their credit. Up front the Bulldogs were led by NFL Immortal Fats Henry and Hall of Famer Link Lyman, both playing about 240, and coached by Hall of Fame End Champ Chamberlin from Nebraska. When the Bulldogs came to Philadelphia to play Frankford they needed a late field goal from Henry to secure the 3-0 win.
Even in defeat, like Rochester before them, Frankford had proven it was possible to compete with even the best of the old Ohio League teams, and the Yellow Jackets became the first NFL team from Philadelphia in 1924.
That year, Chamberlin, Henry and Lyman won their third straight title, this time as the Cleveland Bulldogs, with a 7-1-1 record; both their loss and their tie came against the expansion team from Frankford, which fell far down in the standings given the struggle of playing at home on Saturday and then on the road Sunday, much like their two-timing predecessors.
In 1925 Frankford brought in Chamberlin, fresh off his three-peat, but an injury derailed what looked like a fourth straight title for a coach with a better winning percentage than Belicheck whose losses mostly came when he wasn’t playing; when he was on the field as a coach he was almost unbeatable.
In 1926 Chamberlin returned to lead Frankford to the first NFL championship for a team east of Ohio.
In what was effectively the championship game, a 7-6 win against the Bears, Chamberlin blocked the extra point and Hust Stockton engineered a fourth quarter two-minute style touchdown culminating with a pass to the smallest player in the NFL, Two-Bits Homan. This was a repeat performance from earlier in the year against the Packers, with Stockton again connecting with Homan late, giving Frankford the 20-14 win. Stockton earned his own place in Ripley’s Believe it or Not for averaging over 100 yards passing per game at Gonzaga under the guidance of coach Gus Dorias, who was Knute Rockne’s quarterback at Notre Dame.
With the New York Giants winning the NFL in 1927, the shift in power east out of the Ohio League had become patently evident, and remains in place today. Obviously this move towards the east coast population centers helped the NFL grow into what it is today, and that all started 100 years ago today with Leo Lyons and the Rochester Jeffersons.
Both the 1926 Yellow Jackets and Giants had roots that stretched back to the Union Big Red of 1920, with Youngstrom playing for Frankford and Potteiger coaching the Giants.
1926 played an important role in this shift in power, as NFL Immortal Red Grange split with Halas about how the money should be divided. The gate had gone from 5,000 to 25,000 when Grange put on a Bears uniform. Wouldn’t it make sense that Grange would be the one to get rich? Obviously, Halas could not relent.
To express his frustration, rather than simply forming a team of his own, Grange created an entire league to compete with the NFL.
For the new league, he wanted teams in big cities, and so Grange himself played for the New York Yankees.
The American Football League, as it was called, lasted only one year, but its argument that the success of professional football required a move into the big cities has held.
Grange made his point; in the end, it’s all about the gate. You want to have a good football team? Get your money out. The Union Club proved this in 1920.
By the end of the AFL season, only one of the four surviving teams was not being subsidized by Grange’s Yankees, and that was the Union Quakers of Philadelphia.
Yes, the old gang had reunited. This 1926 version of Union was again managed by Conway and featured Johnny Scott and some of the other players from Philadelphia’s storied past. They defeated Grange and won the AFL title. Imagine that, 1926, the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and the city of Philadelphia holds both major professional football championships.
Union, in their tradition, challenged NFL teams to what would have been the first Superbowl, the champion of each league facing off, but given the controversy of 1925, no one wanted to get on Joe Carr’s bad side, especially not the Frankford Yellow Jackets.
The 7th place New York Giants invited the Quakers to a game at the Polo Grounds. In the snow, after falling behind 3-0 at half, the Union Quakers of Philadelphia were crushed 31-0, forever ending the argument about which league had the better football teams.
Grange would take his Yankees into the NFL for the 1927 season, the only AFL team to make the transition.
For many of the great players at Union, it was the end of an era, one that featured big games both in and outside of the NFL, a story that remains surprisingly untold in Philadelphia, a place that loves its history almost as much as its pro football.
Most historians begin the narrative of professional football in Philadelphia with Connie Mack in 1902, but in 1899 Frankford had 2,000 fans watching the Yellow Jackets defeat Reading YMCA 28-0 at Wistar Park. Obviously the baseball men were desperate to use their monolithic stadiums for some other purpose, and football’s flexibility in bad weather made it a likely candidate. Earlier in 1917 Commiskey had floated the idea of a nation-wide pro football league, using the same exact players from the baseball teams supplemented with local pros. At the time they thought it could only work on the West Coast because of the weather.
We all know Halas and Thorpe started out in baseball, and that a lot of great football players surrendered their place on the field to go play in the park, and that pro football did everything it could to emulate baseball, and that during this era and for a long time afterwards all these other sports could do was wish they were more like baseball.
Let history show despite their wishes it was not the baseball men that made professional football.
It was great pros like Stan Cofall and Heinie Miller, who took every game they could get, and smart guys like Bert Bell and Swede Youngstrom who had a love for the game, football men.
And of course it was people like Leo Lyons from the Rochester Jeffersons, who showed George Halas what it takes to become an NFL Immortal, and knew 100 years ago that football would be bigger than baseball.
Week 3: https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/77t4vs/100_years_ago_in_pro_football_canton_bulldogs_54/
Week 2: https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/76e5t7/100_years_ago_in_pro_football_canton_bulldogs_80/
Week 1: https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/75119e/100_years_ago_in_pro_football/

The 9-0 Canton Bulldogs conclude their 1917 Ohio League championship season, losing to the Massillon Tigers 6-0 at League Field in Canton, Ohio.
While Canton assumed the championship had been secured when they defeated Massillon 14-3 the week prior, the loss gave the Tigers cause to claim the title for themselves, as the tradition in the Ohio League had always been to assign more importance to games later in the season. At 5-3, Massillon had lost to Akron and Youngstown, and of course Canton. Canton stood at 9-1, having defeated Massillon, Akron, and Youngstown twice.
The league determined Canton deserved the 1917 championship more than Massillon based on the head-to-head games, with the combined score of 14-9 providing the final justification.
While the Tigers were surely frustrated by the decision, there must have been some satisfaction on the field and back at home when the final gun sounded and Jim Thorpe and the mighty Canton Bulldogs had finally been defeated.
For Stan Cofall and the core group of players who migrated from Youngstown to Massillon the game would be the fourth meeting with Thorpe’s Bulldogs since November 4.
A hundred years ago today, Cofall made a play in the second quarter that injured Thorpe and he limped through the rest of the game. Cofall would connect on both his field goal tries to provide all of the scoring and give Massillon the win. Years later, in 1920, at the first meeting that led to the founding of the NFL, Jim Thorpe and Stan Cofall were the only players present.
Researcher Bob Gill analyzed 14 big games in Jim Thorpe’s pre-NFL Canton career (1915-19) to see what kind of a player he really was. Fortunately, today’s game is on the list.
Gill also compiled cumulative statistics from these games.
What Gill found is that Jim Thorpe deserves the accolades accorded to him over the years, and certainly a place in the Professional Football Hall of Fame, despite not doing much while he was in the NFL. There are but few enshrined in Canton who can make such a claim.
A hundred years ago today, Thorpe would rush for 70 yards, including a 36-yarder, but he also had a punt and field goal blocked.
Canton quarterback Milt Ghee, whose record 17 touchdown passes in the 1917 season stood for a decade, had five interceptions, including two by Cofall.
Canton outgained Massillon on the day 194 to 51, but the miscues were too much to overcome.
While some of the data could not be gleaned from the play-by-play information, Gill is confident in his overall numbers:
Rushing
Jim Thorpe (13 games): 158 carries, 768 yards, 7 TDs, 4.9 average
Other Canton players (14 games): 428 carries, 1,201 yards, 2.8 average
Opponents (14 games): 434 carries, 640 yards, 1.5 average
Stan Cofall (6 games): 45 carries, 51 yards, 1.1 average
Gus Dorias (4 games): 27 carries, 49 yards, 1.8 average
Thorpe certainly shines in this comparison, but remember the same great Canton line that blocked for Thorpe would be on the field defensively to stuff his opponents. Fats Waldsmith at Center, Doc Spears and Fred Sefton at Guard, all would likely have gotten all-Pro consideration if such a metric existed a hundred years ago. The other great Canton backs also posted quality numbers. For example, Gill found that Pete Calac averaged 3.0 yards over eight games and F.A. Dunn averaged 3.2 over four. Joe Guyon, an NFL Hall of Famer and Carlisle Indian School alum who joined Canton in 1919, averaged 3.7 yards a carry over three games, and Carp Julian, who ran with Thorpe in 1915-16, averaged 4.3 over the four games in the study.
The other important skill Thorpe brought to the early game was punting. Real games were low scoring affairs. Consider, over the course of 30 games from 1916 to 1919, the Canton Bulldogs only surrendered 43 points.
Punting
Jim Thorpe (13 games): 80 punts for an average of 40.7
Other Canton players (14 games): 36 punts for 31.2
Opponents (14 games): 126 punts for 34.3
Other stats compiled over the 13 games Thorpe played in the study:
17 punt returns for a 14.8 average and a TD
9 kickoff returns for a 19.7 average
Of course in his own time Thorpe faced the racism we would expect to see a hundred years ago, given even The New York Times used the word “Redskin” in its sub-head when announcing Thorpe’s arrival in Queens for the Olympic qualifiers.
Some go further, claiming racism led to Thorpe being stripped of the gold medals he won in the decathlon and pentathlon representing his country (when charged, Thorpe admitted to playing minor league baseball for what amounted to chump change, pleaded ignorance). The medals were not reinstated until 1982, almost thirty years after his death.
It’s worth considering, if Thorpe had retained his amateur status, he would not have become the quintessential pro. Recognized as the greatest athlete of his time and perhaps of all time, Thorpe gave professional football the star power it so desperately needed, enough to carry it through the war. Everyone today has heard of professional football, expects it on Sunday. A hundred years ago, this was far from the case.
President Teddy Roosevelt himself spoke out against the violence in the game, citing the players who died and were maimed during the course of the season, at a time when his son played for Harvard and he himself was a fan.
The rules commission made some changes to make the game safer, and at that time the pro game did not have its own rule book, so whatever came down from the college ranks was immediately implemented.
For instance, the neutral zone over the line of scrimmage was introduced to keep players from wrangling even before the play had started. Also, rules about the number of players that needed to be on the line of scrimmage prevented teams from running plays like the flying wedge, where the offensive linemen would get a running start before the snap.
While these changes were put into place over the course of a decade there were many changes that ended up promoting the offense. Most of these rules are naturally taken for granted today, yet it’s worth looking back to better understand the game’s evolution.
First and foremost there needed to be rules about the football itself. Each field had their own balls, sometimes with differences in construction, wear, inflation.
Perhaps the rule change that opened up the game the most was the addition of hash marks to the field. Prior to the hash mark, the ball would be spotted wherever the last play ended. This made players reluctant to run outside. After an out-of-bounds play, the ball would be spotted about a foot from the end line. The center would snap the ball as normal with the rest of the offensive line to one side. Without hash marks, after an out-of-bounds play the next play was often for a loss as the offense tried to bring the ball back into the center of the field. Under these circumstances, it’s clear why the offense would often punt away before fourth down.
For a time, when you scored, you got the ball back. This “make it take it” approach resulted in some tremendous blow-outs as inferior teams were unable to get their offense on the field.
Originally, when you scored a touchdown, you had to kick the extra point from wherever you crossed the goal-line, so if you took the play outside it was almost impossible to hit from that angle.
Nowhere did the rules change as much as in the passing game. First it was legalized, with restrictions. An incompletion in the end zone would be a touchback. In some old pictures you see players on a checker-boxed field; this is because of the passing rule, where five-yard increments were needed on the field to help the referees determine if the play was legal.
It took two players at a small college in Indiana to prove the effectiveness of the passing game. When Gus Dorias threw the football to Knute Rockne during the 1913 Note Dame season the game took another step towards both safety, as the threat of a pass forced defenders away from the line of scrimmage, but also now had a new level of excitement, one that would be embraced then as now more firmly by the pro game.
A hundred years ago, the close relationship we see today between professional and college football did not exist. Up until the founding of the NFL and even afterwards, there was little encouragement of the pro game from the college ranks. Consider perhaps the greatest name, Amos Alonzo Stagg, continually spoke out against playing football for money; of course he managed to find a way to make a living for himself off the game.
When Red Grange signed with the Bears after his college eligibility ended in 1925, the Illinois coach, Hall of Famer Bob Zuppke, while giving his speech from the podium at the team’s end of year dinner, openly ripped into anybody who thought making money from playing football had any honor to it, and his star player, who had given the team so many good memories, left the event with his head held low.
Once in the pro ranks it would be Grange who proved that the baseball stadiums could be filled in the off season, the way their proprietors had longed dreamed. The baseball men had it all, but they had high hopes for football, given it could be played in poor weather, when their colosseums sat empty. None of them could imagine a sport surpassing baseball in popularity, least of all professional football.
Grange redefined the game. Fans around the country liked the idea of being able to see the revolutionary player at their local field. Grange had played in what was known as the Western Conference, making it difficult for fans on either coast to see him. With Grange the Bears took two barnstorming tours, one on each coast, playing games every couple of days in front of what were usually record-setting crowds for a football game at each venue. The seeds of the game’s popularity had been sown.
Prior to returning for the 1926 season, Grange tried to negotiate a deal with George Halas that he felt better reflected his star power. After all, the Bears had gone from playing in front of 5,000 fans to 25,000, with everyone lined up to see the Galloping Ghost. The Bears as a franchise had already benefitted from Grange’s presence, as Hall of Famers like Link Lyman joined the Bears for the barnstorming tour, sensing a big payday, and then simply remained with the team after it was over, making the Bears one of the dominant teams in the league’s early years, and likely the reason they were one of the few that survived without having to change location.
Grange, when he wasn’t able to get the money he felt he deserved, didn’t form his own team, he started his own league, the American Football League. While the league only lasted one year, it had a lasting impact on the NFL. Grange wanted the teams in his league to be in big cities, a policy the NFL adopted, and with the exception of Green Bay, maintains today.
In 1926 there were almost as many pro teams as today, as the NFL began the season with 22 teams, and the AFL had 9.
Teams from Philadelphia won both Championships. The leagues found a merger of sorts for 1927, and the New York Giants won their first NFL title. The game of professional football had found a home on the East Coast. By 1933 all of the Ohio League teams were gone, and the smallest city with a team was Portsmouth, which would move to Detroit for the 1934 season.
Professional football has always held a bad reputation in certain quarters, not just because of the violence, but also the gambling and drinking. Imagine this reputation a hundred years ago in the age of temperance, when states were adopting the prohibition of alcohol, and women who had tired of losing their men to vice wanted the right to vote so they could elect leaders ready to make the sort of activity rampant at football games illegal. Ohio went dry in 1918 and the country followed suit in 1920, the same year women earned the right to vote and the NFL was founded.
While drinking alcohol had now become illegal, speak-easies popped off offering a wide range of concoctions, and it was well understood, then as now, that there would be plenty of drinking in the bleachers. Football fans would stop at the speak-easy for a bottle on their way to the game. One Decatur Staley player claimed that by the second half it was impossible to hear the quarterback because of the sound of breaking glass as fans began ditching their empties under the stands.
Is this why the NFL resists putting too much emphasis on the old days of the game? Readers of this series well understand it is impossible to tell these stories without going into detail about what we know was happening on and off the field. Many of the old owners were familiar faces at the track. Any organization proud of its traditions gladly puts its history forward. If this were true of the NFL, they would find 30 seconds of a four-hour nation-wide broadcast to recall how, a hundred years ago on Thanksgiving Day 1917, the tradition of professional football in Detroit began when the mighty Canton Bulldogs came to town in what might have been the first national championship game.
The study of old-time football is humbling. It doesn’t take much to become an expert because there’s simply not that much out there.
Today’s standards did not exist on the front page of the newspaper, let alone the sports page. The people who wrote about sports were full of hyperbole and tall tales, and their editors knew the big bosses wanted headlines that sold newspapers, and there were less headaches when you stretched the truth about what had happened on the field.
The few newspapers yet to go extinct and others have digitized their archives, but they rarely if ever covered sports with the sort of detail we would expect to find today.
A hundred years ago, sports meant amateurs, professional athletes did not warrant much mention, especially football. It would be like opening your local daily and seeing the results of Wrestlemania XXXIII alongside news of Major League Baseball’s opening day.
Sometimes the local newspaper in a football town would print a lineup, but is “Brown” really a player named “Brown,” or is he a household name trying to hide his identity? For instance, today’s Massillon lineup featured a player named French, who was really NFL Hall of Famer Champ Chamberlin, then an All-American at Nebraska.
This cross pollination of college players into the pro ranks was perhaps the most important factor driving the creation of the NFL, and it was serious business for the new league, as the Green Bay Packers found out in January 1922 when Joe Carr kicked them out for fielding Notre Dame players in what had always been common practice.
By such high standards the NFL began laying the groundwork for the close collaboration that still exists between the two levels of the sport, and ultimately sits at the heart of the pro game’s success.
While today it is a joke to say a college team is good enough to beat a pro, or a pro team is so bad they might lose, in the early days of professional football the opposite was true. The top college programs had great players recruited from around the nation, who were well coached, had proper equipment, medical resources. These massive stadiums were already being filled every Saturday.
This reality existed for some time in the minds of historians but the truth about professional football is your team was usually as good as you could afford it to be.
While a hundred years ago professional football had no governing body capable of awarding all-pro status, newspapermen would often make their own picks, such that a paper in Indiana listed only local players, and so on, as the reporters did not have the budget to travel and see anything other than local talent.
A Cleveland paper attempted to compile a more diverse list for the 1917 season:
QB Milt Ghee, Canton Bulldogs (Dartmouth)
LH Jim Thorpe, Canton Bulldogs (Carlisle)
RH Stan Cofall, Youngstown/Massillon (Notre Dame)
FB F.A. Dunn, Canton (Dickinson)
C Bob Peck, Youngstown/Massillon (Pitt)
LG Al Nesser, Akron (No college)
RG Doc Spears, Canton (Dartmouth)
LT Pike Johnson, Massillon (Washington & Lee)
RT Charley Copley, Massillon (Muhlenberg)
LE Nasty Nash, Massillon (Rutgers)
RE Roy Burrell, Akron (No college) Conspicuously absent are Greasy Neale, probably the top end in the game at the time, and Pete Calac, likely second only to his old teammate Thorpe when it came time to smash the line, who both played the 1917 season for Canton under assumed names due to their relationship with West Virginia Wesleyan, one as coach, the other as star player. Of this list, only Jim Thorpe made it into the Professional Football Hall of Fame.
Any football fan might ask, why is the Hall of Fame in Canton?
This series has attempted to answer that question by following the Canton Bulldogs through the 1917 season, as this team itself provides a big part of the answer. Not only this dominant Canton team but the great one that first went pro in the early 1900s alongside Massillon, Akron, Shelby and the other Ohio League stalwarts, when the state first made its claim to having the best teams in the country.
After folding after a game-fixing gambling scandal in 1906, oilman Jack Cusack revived the team from the ashes, making Jim Thorpe the highest paid football player in the country, surrounding him with reliable pros, ultimately bringing the Ohio League Championship to Canton in 1916, and defending it in 1917.
Cusack went back to Oklahoma when it was clear there would no team in 1918, selling the rights to local businessman Ralph Hay, perhaps the game’s greatest promoter. Hay made sure the Bulldogs returned for the 1919 season, including Jim Thorpe and Pete Calac. He improved the team, adding Joe Guyon, and they again won the Ohio League Championship. Hay went up to Youngstown to make sure they fielded a team, even though it was only for a week. He did whatever he had to do to make sure professional football survived. So it makes sense that the first meeting that led to the NFL happened in his office, and the second larger meeting that solidified the creation of the nationwide league was held in his Hupmobile showroom, with George Halas sitting on a running board.
There is a larger answer as well, and that is the people in Ohio love football. Even today you see the fans’ enthusiasm despite getting little in return from their teams. Back then this willingness to buy a ticket and go to the game meant the owner could recruit top talent for fans to watch and win bets on. The Canton paper complained after the 1917 game in Youngstown because their backers had took the train up there with pockets full of cash, unable to find locals willing to put money on their team. The bookmakers were right next to the field.
At the dawn of professional football the Midwest had seen a tremendous influx of industry and population growth. Since the war had been raging in Europe since 1914, the area had been in the midst of a boom-time that encouraged both the funding of player salaries and the “judicious bets” the owners and people around the team would make to cover any losses at the gate. These benefits seemed to wane after the war, yet four of the first five NFL champions hailed from the state.
Also worth considering is Ohio’s geography, close to western Pennsylvania where the pro game took life, yet not governed by the religious Blue Laws that prohibited playing football for money on Sunday. Just as these first enterprising athletic clubs around Pittsburgh were closing the doors on their often controversial football program, the teams in Ohio were going pro, and brought in the top players from the east to settle local rivalries.
The Ohio League teams needed to create the NFL. They needed a stronger league not only because the use of college players had become more controversial and harder to conceal, but because the competition to bring in top players had spread far beyond the state’s borders. Without the Ohio League there is no NFL, yet Massillon folded in 1919 and the other teams would drop off one by one. The Canton Bulldogs returned to dominance in 1922 and 1923, becoming the first back to back NFL champion under Champ Chamberlin.
In Cleveland, frustrated by his own team’s lack of success, the owner simply bought the entire Canton Bulldogs franchise for $2,500, cherry-picked Chamberlin and his core group, which included Hall of Fame linemen Fats Henry and Link Lyman, and won the city’s first NFL championship in 1924.
The Canton Bulldogs had become the Cleveland Bulldogs, more than symbolic of the NFL’s move from the small towns to the large population centers. Once rooted in places like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, the love affair between the city and their team continued to grow, ultimately becoming the NFL of today, the most popular sport in the country.
Other entries in the series:
November 29, 1917 (Thanksgiving Day game) Game 9 - Canton Bulldogs 7, Detroit Heralds 0 https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/7gj33x/100_years_ago_in_pro_football_thanksgiving_day/
November 25, 1917 Game 8 - Canton Bulldogs14, Massillon Tigers 3 https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/7ffpbu/a_hundred_years_ago_in_pro_football_canton/
November 18, 1917 Game 7 - Canton Bulldogs 13, Youngstown Patricians 0 https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/7dt1i2/100_years_ago_in_pro_football_canton_bulldogs_13/
November 11, 1917 Game 6 - Canton Bulldogs 14, Akron Indians 0 https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/7c9hvf/100_years_ago_in_pro_football_canton_bulldogs_14/
November 4, 1917 Game 5 - Canton Bulldogs 3, Youngstown Patricians 0 https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/7aqzn1/100_years_ago_in_pro_football_canton_bulldogs_3/
October 28, 1917 Game 4 - Canton Bulldogs 41, Rochester Jeffersons 0 https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/79b7il/100_years_ago_in_pro_football_canton_bulldogs_41/
October 21, 1917 Game 3 -Canton Bulldogs 54, Columbus Panhandles 0 https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/77t4vs/100_years_ago_in_pro_football_canton_bulldogs_54/
October 14, 1917 Game 2 -Canton Bulldogs 80, Altoona Indians 0 https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/76e5t7/100_years_ago_in_pro_football_canton_bulldogs_80/
October 7, 1917 Game 1 - Canton Bulldogs 12, Pitcairn Quakers 7 https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/75119e/100_years_ago_in_pro_football/
Contribute to the New Subreddit /OLDTIMEFOOTBALL Pre-NFL professional football is a local story.
It’s obvious the NFL is going to do a bad job retelling its own history.
While the league’s centenary is still years away, the Packers will turn 100 in 2019, meaning the celebrations are sure to begin even sooner. Hopefully the Packers fans will contribute to the subreddit and see it as a place to celebrate the long storied history of the franchise. They are the best representatives of old-time football, in that they come from a small town and were sponsored by local business.
The Bears turn 100 along with the league, but even before the top team out of Hammond played their games in Chicago, and so hopefully Bears fans will also see the subreddit as a place to share the city’s history and the tales from the NFL’s most tenured franchise (the Packers joined the league in 1921).
New York Giants fans will also have great memories to share, and while the team will not turn 100 until 2025, it will soon after celebrate the anniversary of its first championship in 2027. Even prior to the Giants the city has a rich history of old-time football, considering the 1902 World Series of Professional Football held at Madison Square Garden, and that the most attended game in the NFL’s first season was at the Polo Grounds.
Hopefully this new subreddit will be a place to find all of the locally sourced history of the game’s early days, and as interest in the anniversaries continues to grow, so will the subscriptions on the subreddit.
Fans around the country might be surprised to find their local community also once supported its own football team, and that they had a star player.
Also fans should post pictures, as these are also often difficult to find on the internet, and of course any video is priceless.

24/30 rankers reporting this week

#	Team	Δ	Record	Comment
1.	Warriors	--	72-9	72-9. That's insane to look at. After Boston squeeked out a tight one in Oracle and a young Wolves team came into town and put the beat down, it was looking like the Warriors wouldn't get there. Well it happened by getting that win in San Antonio which hadn't happened in 19 years.
2.	Spurs	--	65-15	The dream of having a perfect home record is over for the Spurs, but we were still able to secure our best record in franchise history. At this point, the only thing that matters is health going into the playoffs - everyone seems to be good to go, aside from Boris who has missed a few games. In a potential matchup with Golden State, he may be our 3rd most important player (not to mention being vital against any team we matchup with).
3.	Cavaliers	+1	56-24	The Cavs still look to lock in their top spot in the east, still needing to win one more game to guarantee the spot. They can not bank on the Raps losing, as Toronto's last two games are not against playoff teams. Going into the post season, the Cavs' biggest weakness still seems to be the consistency of its bench. The Cavs also have two potential teams they can play: The Pacers and the Pistons, two teams that definitely have potential to give the Cavs trouble if the Cavs don't come into the series focused.
4.	Thunder	-1	54-26	Soft defensive performances & a string of road games (6 of last 7 away) have seen the Thunder pile up a few untimely losses as the playoffs loom. Their ceiling remains unquestioned, as they notch wins over both LAC & SAS, but they're still searching for consistency.
5.	Clippers	+2	52-28	With a few games left in the season it looks like the clippers will be playing the Blazers in the first round. While the Blazers are a quality team it's hard to see them upsetting the clippers who they struggled with without Blake griffin. The clippers have also quitely been one of the better defensive teams in the league this year and with the playoffs on the horizon this team has been a after thought for most people when it comes to contenders. But with their best player returning and Chris Paul having a great year this team may be the best bet to upset the Warriors. If you want a dark horse this team is it.
6.	Raptors	-1	54-26	The big news in Jurassic Park is the surprising return of JYD 2.0, who logged 31 minutes over 2 games last week. His performances were quiet but promising; his shooting touch looks no worse for wear as he hit both his 3s and both his FTs in this time. Defensively, he looks like he will be ready to take on first options as the top wing defender slot for the Dinos, which comes as quite a shock to most fans.
7.	Hawks	-1	48-32	The Skwah have gone 4-2 since the last rankings with two huge wins. One to prove to ourselves we can beat the Raptors and one to maintain the third seed over the Celtics. We control our own destiny for the third seed, but it won't be easy with both of our final games on the road against the Cavs and Wizards. Keeping the third seed could be huge for a favorable 1st round match-up against the seemingly locked into 6th Hornets and avoiding the Cavs until the ECF.
8.	Celtics	--	47-33	Since our last ranking, the Celtics finished their grueling West Coast road trip with 3 wins and 2 losses. The losses were softened by their most notable win against the previously undefeated-at-home Warriors. The Crowder-less Celtics played possibly their best game of the season, forcing 22 turnovers and winning 109 to 106 in a thrilling game. The Celtics came back home and took care of business against the Pelicans and Bucks but lost a tough game against the Hawks. We round the season out with two home games against the Hornets and Heat in a battle for home court advantage in the upcoming playoffs.
9.	Heat	+1	47-33	Thank you Pat Riley for another wonderful year of being a Miami Heat fan. We signed Briante Weber who is supposed to be a great prospect for us from the D-League affiliate for depth and more development, our rooks still producing and everyone getting ready for playoffs. Hype Train is gaining steam!
10.	Hornets	-1	46-34	Yesterday’s loss in Washington was about as bad as they come. The Wizards entered the game with no postseason incentive; for the Hornets, every remaining game is critical. Washington even rested Wall AND Beal, but the Hornets still lost. It is important, of course, to remember that this was just one game, and that Charlotte still very well could win a series—but God help us if we play an afternoon game in the playoffs.
11.	Trailblazers	+1	43-38	Nobody thought this Portland team would be notching off some big wins (vs OKC, vs MIA) to potentially enter the playoffs as a 5th seed, that's for sure. The defense is tad suspect but the points are flowing. The way things are shaping bode well for the Blazers as the Blazers swept the season series vs the Clippers in the potential 4 vs 5 match up. Should be a fun series.
12.	Pacers	-1	43-37	It was a bit of an uneven two weeks for the Pacers, but the got the job done in the end. By trouncing Brooklyn's D-League affiliate on Sunday night, they simultaneously clinched the final playoff spot in the East, and eliminated rival Chicago. Playoff Paul George has arrived, and Myles Turner is over his rookie wall slump just in time for the postseason. Some jockeying can still take place over the last two games; Indiana holds the head-to-head tiebreaker over Detroit, so wins in their last two would move the Pacers to the more coveted 7 seed.
13.	Pistons	--	43-37	The Pistons are all but locked into the 7th or 8th seed. These last few weeks have been full of ups and downs. Overall the Pistons are picking up a little bit of steam heading into the playoffs and judging by past performance I don't they would mind playing the Cavs too much.
14.	Mavericks	+5	41-39	The Mavericks snapped out of their funk with a favorable schedule, winning 6 consecutive games while unleashing JJ Barea. Nothing is clinched yet, but Carlisle has worked his magic again as his team faces a road game in Utah to potentially decide their positioning. Remember, a starting five of Calderon/Ellis/Marion/Dirk/Dalembert took the eventual champion Spurs to Game 7 in 2014.
15.	Jazz	-1	40-40	The Jazz have a favorable end to the season as they look to hold their playoff spot. A home game against the 7th seeded Mavs & Kobe's final game in the NBA. Their frontcourt is formidable, their coach is great & perimeter standouts like Neto, Hood, Mack & the Burke/s have all had their time in the sun this season. This team has to feel good about where they are.
16.	Rockets	--	39-41	The Rockets followed up a great win over OKC with disappointing losses to Dallas and Phoenix, narrowing their path to the playoffs. Unless the Jazz finish the season 0-2, the Rockets will need wins against the Kings and Wolves to have a chance of playing in the postseason. Even if they do make the playoffs, the Rockets face a probable sweep by the Warriors and will have to give up their draft pick to the Nuggets.
17.	Bulls	+1	40-40	The Bulls beat the Cavs but were officially eliminated from the playoffs the next day. That snapped the NBA's 3rd longest post-season streak at 7 years. If 2015's 50 win season led to a HC firing, Chicago fans eagerly await the off-season bookend for this train wreck. Something has to be done to shake up one of the 5 worst offenses in the league. Upcoming FA Pau Gasol has had one foot out the door for awhile, hopefully he holds it open for some members of the front office to follow him.
18.	Grizzlies	-3	42-38	After what I saw, the Grizzlies have a slim chance of winning on wednesday. Even the warriors players were dejected, I just didnt see the confidence in the post game conference I was used to in that win. No laughs, no smiles, nothing. But, it seems """"""history"""""""" has already decided the world needs a 73-9 record. Hooray! the fans of the nba should rejoice. We'll see though, hopefully it'll be a close one. Having said that, I'm really proud of the grit and grind the team has shown, and look forward to the playoffs. In other news, we signed Mumford. Nice pickup.
19.	Wizards	-2	39-41	Another season plagued with injuries to Bradley Beal, another year where coaching & management are a source of fan frustration, but few expected this to be a season where John Wall watched the playoffs from his couch. Regardless of injuries, speeding up the pace didn't seem to hold the answer for this team's offensive problems. The Wiz have that in common with another EC disappointment.
20.	Magic	+3	34-46	Even though the team just traded wins and losses, getting Vucevic back from injury was big, averaging 22 and 8 and shooting over 60% from the field since returning to the lineup. With only two games left in the season, the biggest thing is seeing some growth from the young guys and hoping for a big splash in the draft and free agency.
21.	TWolves	+4	28-52	Coming down to the end of the season and the Wolves may be playing their best basketball in a few year. They completed their first 3 game road trip sweep since 2005. A win streak largely fueled by the play of KAT and Wiggins but the team has also finally received contributions off the bench with solid play from Tyus Jones, Bjelica, and Shabazz Muhammad. In another losing season the hope for the future still shines bright.
22.	Nuggets	-2	33-48	After being eliminated from the playoffs, the Nuggets have been sputtering to the finish line. However, they've used these last few games to experiment with some intriguing lineups (Nurkic + Jokic is oozing with potential), and let the young guys run the show. Fun fact, the Nuggets are the only team to beat the '95-'96 Bulls, this year's Warriors, and this year's Spurs.
23.	Bucks	+1	33-47	Giannis has been shooting and making a decent amount of threes. At this point I think most of us are only watching to see how Middleton, Antetokounmpo, and Parker perform (while also secretely dreaming of a top 4 lottery pick by some Cavaliers-esque stroke of fortune).
24.	Kings	-3	32-48	For at least a month now the focus has shifted from playoff chances to draft position - the Kings pick is top-10 protected and they are currently tied for the 7th worst record. Losing handily to middle of the pack teams has been an issue in recent weeks/all year; the Kings have now been swept by Portland, Minnesota and New Orleans for a combined record of 0-12.
25.	Pelicans	+1	30-50	For only the second time this season the New Orleans Pelicans decided to give some effort. And the only reason it's happening now is because a group of D League players are playing for their jobs. And somehow they're winning games. With the emergence of Tim Frazier (looking like a potential starter in the league) and role players like Jordan Hamilton and James Ennis, the Pelicans are clicking at the worst time. The only thing success brings us now is a chance at losing the sixth worst record, dropping up a spot in the draft. But the tank should roll on for the last two games of this season.
26.	Knicks	-4	32-49	At least the Knicks can still beat the Nets and 76ers. The Knicks are still settling in as is Phil and Fish. The hope at the moment is picking up a few free agents to fill the gaping holes in the oddly constructed roster.
27.	Suns	+1	22-58	After going through a miserable mid-season stretch, Phoenix is an almost respectable 8-14 in their last 22 games. All of those wins came without Bledsoe and Warren, and some without Knight as well. But are these wins coming at the worst of times for a tanking team?
28.	Nets	-1	21-59	Shit sucks, fam. After going 0-8 and losing all of them by double digits, it's safe to say a lot of fans have tuned out the team until the offseason when we begin retooling this roster. Thomas Robinson has been a bright spot, averaging a double-double in the extra minutes he's been getting with Thad and Brook out. Marks pls save us.
29.	Lakers	-1	16-64	Well this is the end of an era. Kobe's retirement means that the retooling of the roster can finally start to occur this offseason. It's obvious in these last handful of games that the point is to get Kobe going early to give the fan their moneys worth while disregarding anything related to solid team basketball. Our lottery spot is locked up at the #2 spot and this entire season was basically riding on keeping this pick. Look for Byron to be let go and a new coach to be brought in. Big offseason coming up that will dictate the future of our franchise more than any in the recent past.
30.	76ers	+1	10-70	Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Edit: Something flipped the Lakers and the 76ers. This has been fixed

At a distance measured in several orders of magnitude of kilometers away from Sol, the Procyon System sat at the far edge of explored space. The binary star system, a marriage of a white main-sequencer and a white dwarf, was the 23rd century-equivalent of North American state California, prior to the gold rush - uncolonized simply because it was too much trouble. Probes launched this far out had either been funded by funeral insurance companies or prospecting signal chasers - and it was generally cheaper to just launch grandma’s coffin sunward on a disposable ion thruster. According to the logs of the local census probe, the last ship to pass through had been one of the final deep-space missions launched by the pre-war CNSA. The probe itself was equipped with two other pieces of information: that the system itself had six barren planets with absolutely zero settlements, outposts, or value, and that it was, hands down, the most boring place in the entire universe.
“You know, I could be wrong,” David Carlisle mused from seven kilometers away. “But I think this planet is real.”
Although both were currently in question, it was mostly the last part that Ajay Landon was struggling with.
Not to mention the fact that two centuries’ worth of cartographers could somehow fail to notice an entire moon.
Ajay hit the response-key on his console, his classical playlist played in the background. Pilots were technically supposed to use interface-only contact to communicate with their ships; the physical instruments were merely backups. Ajay had stopped caring what the company thought towards the end of his eighth run, about the same time that he’d stopped having a left arm from the elbow down and had discovered that his contract didn’t include regrowth therapy in the medical package. “If you’re taking bets, I’ll put two chennai on you being wrong.”
Carlisle clicked his tongue reproachfully; over the comms suite, it sounded like short bursts of feedback. “Gambling? On a company boat? Never, in my life.”
Ajay’s console received a fatigue notice from the bridge biosensors and routed it directly to his neural implant, which displayed it as a flashing red window at the edge of his vision. Ajay silenced it, taking a stimulant from the bottle on the edge of the console. “Five credit transfer-slips timestamped 2100 hours last night disagree.”
“That was a fluke.” The biologist sounded vaguely wounded. “Two consecutive straight flushes? How the hell does that happen?”
Ajay laughed. “Hey, Isabel.”
Isabel Brandt’s sigh hissed through the speakers on a wave of static. “Yes, Ajay?”
“What’s the difference between a pro gambler and an amateur gambler?”
“I don’t know.”
“The pro is always ahead. What’s the difference between an amateur gambler and a crappy gambler?”
“I don’t know.”
“The crappy gambler doesn’t know to quit when they’re ahead. What’s the difference between a crappy gambler and David?”
In Ajay’s mind, the geologist rolled her eyes, suppressing a grin. “I don’t know, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”
“At least the crappy gambler gets ahead.”
The bridge filled with static and silence for a moment. Then, Carlisle: ”Hey, XO?”
“Yep?”
“Turn the fucking music down.”
 
The science vessel Sarajevo had been en route to New Seoul with an update of deep-space data from the array on Madras when the comms array began spitting out error codes. With the ship’s diagnostics suite having been salvaged due to budget cuts, they had been forced to collapse the ship’s Alcubierre bubble in the middle of nowhere to allow for an EVA to assess the damage. The ship had decelerated to sublight speeds in the Procyon system to perform the necessary repairs and had come out nearly on top of an unmapped Class-D moon. A comprehensive search of the ship’s database had revealed a single piece of information, analyzed from a scan of a physical chart from the late 21st century: the name ‘Miranda’.
For the first few hours, David Carlisle had been excited. He’d never been entirely comfortable with the sloping coriolis generated by the rotation of the Sara’s crew compartments and some primal instinct deep down rejoiced every time he set foot in a gravity well. Carlisle figured a brief stop to collect samples to cross-check against the net’s geological catalogue couldn’t hurt - at best, he’d have solid material with which to embarrass Declan, his cartographer brother, at their mother’s hundred and sixty-second birthday; at worst, he’d get to spend a few hours dusting his boots in all-natural gravity.
After the seventh hour of sample collection, he was starting to have second thoughts.
Carlisle stuck his two hundred and first sample vial into the library rack next to the two of them and stood, stretching. Grey dust drifted from patches on the knees of his EVA exosuit where he had been kneeling. A flash of light lit the surrounding region as their shuttle’s computer targeted incoming meteorites with its industrial laser, from where it was parked on the edge of a nearby crater - illuminated for milliseconds, a grey, featureless landscape wound its way towards a distant mountain range. In high orbit above them the Sarajevo floated, a silhouette among the stars.
Carlisle sighed.
“David.”
Carlisle interfaced with his suit and convinced it to switch on the mic. “What’s up?”
Isabel Brandt, standing a few meters away, looked up; a spray of light was reflected in her visor as the shuttle eliminated another asteroid. “The shuttle’s suite just finished its chemical analysis. I’m sending you the feed.”
“Got it.” Carlisle’s suit chimed and his neural implant threw up a notification. He selected the icon to open it and a window appeared. Data began scrolling through it. “What exactly am I looking at?”
“Uh. Hang on.” Isabel’s suited fingers were dancing across empty space, manipulating virtual displays; the skintight nanite-weave bodysuit worn underneath full EVA gear was exposed from the wrists down to increase precision, the bodysuit layer taking the brunt of temperature control, vacuum protection, and radiation shielding for her hands.
Abruptly, her fingers froze. She touched her thumb and forefinger together then spread them to enlarge something that only she could see. “What…?”
Carlisle frowned. “What’s wrong?”
The geologist made a flicking gesture and an additional window appeared in front of Carlisle, a three-dimensional model of a tubular hexagonal molecular structure. He reached out, rotating it with a finger. “What is it?”
Isabel’s tone was distracted. “Carbon nanotubing. Highly tensile and strong, extremely conductive of both heat and electricity. Discovered early 21st century.”
“Artificial? What’s it doing all the way out here?”
“Trying to figure that out now. Wait, look at this.” The geologist sent another window Carlisle’s way, a bird’s-eye photo of an undersea crater. “Early 22nd century. Trace amounts of carbon nanotubing discovered in the Yucatan Peninsula on Earth, dating back four billion years and showing evidence of exposure to extremely high temperatures. Hypothesized to have been part of the asteroid that created the massive crater off the coast of Mexico, likely…” Her voice trailed off. “Likely an artificial structure launched at Earth by extraterrestrial...”
Carlisle went to look over her shoulder and Isabel linked her neural implant with his absentmindedly, allowing them to both see into each others’ virtual space. The geologist’s fingers were practically flying over her keyboard. She hit enter and a red “X” appeared over the search window. A notice scrawled across her viewspace.

CLASSIFIED MATERIAL - ACCESS DENIED

“The hell?” Isabel murmured.
“Guys?” Static flared as Ajay cleared his throat. “Not to interrupt, but comms finally finished repairs. And we may have a problem.”
 

“THIS IS AN AUTOMATIC ALERT. THE SPACE YOU ARE NOW ENTERING HAS BEEN PLACED UNDER LEVEL ONE QUARANTINE AND IS NOT TO BE APPROACHED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. FAILURE TO COMPLY IS A DIRECT VIOLATION OF COALITION LAW. MESSAGE REPEATS. THIS IS AN AUTOMATIC ALERT-”

Jane Bacari paused the repeating loop and massaged her forehead. “And we’ve been receiving it for how long?”
Ajay swallowed. “About two hours.”
The captain sighed. She waved a hand at the bridge viewscreen and the notice disappeared, replaced with the usual feed from the ship’s external cameras. “Why the hell didn’t the Sara raise any flags when Dom set Procyon as our re-entry point?”
“Um. Because there aren’t any?”
“Right. Almost forgot.” Bacari slumped backwards into her chair. “Orbiting a planet that doesn’t exist. Well, we didn’t do anything implicitly wrong. Or, at least, anything that corporate can raise charges on.” She pointed at Ajay’s bottle of stimulants. “Gimme.”
Ajay tossed the bottle at Bacari, who snatched it from the air one-handed. “So. Orders?”
Bacari snapped her fingers, using her interface to open a channel to the surface team on the main viewscreen. “Oh, we get the fuck out of dodge,” she said around a mouthful of amphetamines. “Isabel! Carlisle! Get your asses back to the Sara. We’re getting the hell off of this rock.”
Ajay’s console routed another alert to his link, drowning out Carlisle’s reply. He touched it and the red box unfolded into a blinking proximity alert. An icy fist knotted his stomach. “Oh, fuck me.”
Bacari half-turned in her chair; on the main viewscreen, Carlisle stopped in mid-sentence and Isabel looked up. “What?” Bacari asked.
Ajay moved the alert to the main viewscreen, swiping the surface team’s communications windows to one of the secondary screens. A long-range passive scan of a ship replaced the stars. It was long and black and dangerous-looking, all sleek lines and harsh angles. “A military bird just dropped stealth one klick away. The Sara’s scopes think it’s a prowler.”
“Fuck.” Bacari was suddenly whispering. “Have they seen us?”
“Er-” The cheerful tones of a communications request filled the bridge. Ajay looked over his shoulder. “Yes.”
“Don’t be shitty,” said Bacari. She exhaled a long breath and accepted the connection.
[The following is a transcript of an audio transmission record presented as part of the documentation of federal corruption in the Allied Coalition known collectively as the ‘Carlisle Report’. Identities of all speakers have been confirmed by voiceprint analysis.]
CAPT. HAYES: Unidentified vessel, heave to and power down your engines. Identify yourself.
BACARI: Jane Bacari, c.s. Sarajevo. We’re a research team for Excelsion.
CAPT. HAYES: A science ship? What the hell are you doing all the way out here?
BACARI: Data transfer from the Madras observatory. We stopped to repair a comms malfunction.
CAPT. HAYES: A comms- Jesus. Which is why you didn’t obey the warning?
BACARI: Yes. But we just finished repairs, so we can be on our way immediately.
CAPT. HAYES: I’m afraid that won’t be possible.
BACARI: We will, of course, cooperate with any necessary security measures.
CAPT. HAYES: You understand, captain. We have to maintain the security of-
BACARI: Of what, exactly? I was under the impression that the Fleet wasn’t allowed to maintain active covert military facilities after the Dresden Act.
CAPT. HAYES: Go ahead, Captain Bacari. Toe the line. At this point, nothing will make a difference.
BACARI: Look, I’m sure we can work something out.
CAPT. HAYES: I’m sorry, was I unclear?
BACARI: Was I? Let me clarify: we know everything. We have samples from the surface, sensor data, everything.
CAPT. HAYES: Shit. [sighs] Captain, how much do you know about the Morpheus missions?
BACARI: Excuse me?
CAPT. HAYES: The first interstellar launches-
BACARI: I know what the Morpheus missions are.
CAPT. HAYES: How many were there?
BACARI: Two unmanned, seven manned, right?
CAPT. HAYES: Yes. I would be lying if I said you were not correct. But I can truthfully say that you are not right.
BACARI: I don’t understand.
CAPT. HAYES: We’re taught to remember two unmanned Morpheus missions. In reality, there were five. Morpheus I’s trajectory was miscalculated and it missed Proxima Centauri entirely, decelerating in the Procyon System into orbit around this moon instead. The Morpheus carrier landed a probe on the surface to collect samples and found what I assume you did as well. Its return to Sol, carrying the information that an alien structure existed, sparked one of the largest cover-up conspiracies in history.
BACARI: So aliens exist. Is that all? Half of humanity thinks they’ve seen aliens in person. Why cover that up?
CAPT. HAYES: Not quite all. The probe launched by the Morpheus landed in a deep crevasse. Inside, it discovered an entire inner chamber containing living microorganisms resembling basic prokaryotic cells, suspended in an aqueous solution. Further investigation revealed similar materials imbedded in the seafloor off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula on Earth, in the crater of a massive asteroid.
BACARI: That’s…
CAPT. HAYES: You did ask. Remember, this was the Golden Age of Religion. What do you think would have happened if we’d came out and told everyone on broadband that our most distant ancestors were created by aliens and launched at Earth in a test tube? We would have started a war.
BACARI: Why wouldn’t you tell us now? That was decades ago!
CAPT. HAYES: No one wants to be responsible for letting the skeleton out of the closet. Do you?
BACARI: No. I really don’t.
CAPT. HAYES: Well then- wait no, don’t-
[Transmission ends.]
“...but I can truthfully say that you are not right.” Onscreen, the officer’s face was lined with fatigue. He reminded Ajay of Ajay’s great-grandfather who’d died just nine years earlier.
One of the Sara’s security bots bounced an alert to Ajay’s console and he opened it, moving slowly to avoid attention. He scanned it quickly, trying to pay attention to the conversation at the same time. A phrase caught his eye and he read it again carefully. Ice settled in the pit of his stomach again. Ajay looked up at the screen; the officer stared tiredly back. At least great-grandad didn’t try to kill people. As quietly as possible, he used his implant to open a keyboard.
 
When she was young, Jane Bacari could never understand why other children her age didn’t have parents. She’d grown up as a toddler under the arching domes of a colonial mining colony where family units were still used as a method of upbringing. When they moved to the core systems, where children were raised and educated by both federal and private agencies in collective wards, she was at a loss. Bacari never quite understood how they could go about their lives without a figure that they knew would always be there for them - at least until her father’s depression got the best of him, despite clinical treatment, and he cracked an airlock sans EVA suit. Her entire world had been shaken and, failing to understand the reasoning behind taking his own life at a mere ninety six years, she had never forgiven her father.
While Bacari still didn’t understand, she at least empathized with him now.
The officer was saying something about the Morpheus missions when her neural implant raised a notification; she’d received mail from Ajay, the subject line of which read: DON’T LET HIM SEE. Without moving, she opened the message; a file of plaintext opened in front of her.

SARAJEVO NETWORK UNDER ATTACK.

Onscreen, the officer was waiting for a reply. “So aliens exist. Is that all?” she asked absently. “Half of humanity thinks they’ve seen aliens in person. Why cover that up?” She kept reading.

PROWLER ATTEMPTING TO HACK LIFE SUPPORT CONTROL. DOING WHAT I CAN TO BUY TIME, BUT GOING TO GET THROUGH. THEY’RE STALLING, WANTS IT TO LOOK LIKE ACCIDENT. MY THOUGHTS: WE DON’T GIVE TO THEM THAT EASY.

Keeping her face expressionless, Bacari allowed herself to imagine a savage grin. She quickly wrote out a reply.

KEEP THEM OUT LONG AS YOU CAN. SEND EVERYTHING TRANSMISSION LOGS SENSOR DATA TO CARLISLE AND BRANDT TIGHTBEAM. PREP ENGINES FOR HARD BURN.

At the main console in front of her, Ajay turned and tossed her a two-fingered salute. Onscreen, the officer was talking again. “No one wants to be responsible for letting the skeleton out of the closet,” he said. “Do you?”
Jane Bacari looked him in the eye. “No,” she said quietly. “I really don’t.”
But someone has to.
 
Shock, incomprehension, dread; that was the expedition team, aghast, having been linked-in to the entire exchange with the prowler.
And also, hysteria.
“Holyshitholyshitwe’regonnadie!”
“Will you shut up?” Isabel snapped, muting Carlisle’s channel and raising the volume of the Sara’s transmission just in time to catch the chime signalling that the channel had been dropped. “Damnit.” She glanced over; Carlisle sat prone on the dusty ground next to the shuttle rocking back and forth, chin resting on his knees. “What the hell are we going to do?”
Carlisle looked up at her and mouthed something. “What?”
He mouthed something else and tapped his helmet. She remembered and unmuted him. “-ightbeam. They dumped everything into the shuttle’s data storage. Everything.” He continued to rock back and forth. “All of it.”
“David, slow down.” Isabel bent, helping him up. “What?”
The biologist made a flicking gesture and a box of plaintext appeared in front of her.

RUN. SENDING EVERYTHING TO SHUTTLE. ALL DATA. WE WON’T MAKE IT. WE’LL BUY YOU TIME. LET THE WORLD KNOW WE’RE NOT ALONE. GOOD LUCK.

Isabel’s hand went to her mouth. Carlisle was sobbing quietly. Her vision blurred and she angrily used the suit’s vacuum function to remove the tears. “David.”
Carlisle looked at her, his expression blank. Tear tracks ran down his face and his eyes were rimmed with red. “We’re all dead.”
She balled a fist and hit him in the faceplate, biting back a yelp as her knuckles sang with pain in the moment before her nanites began to repair the damage. Carlisle was rocked backwards, stunned but unhurt. “Fuck you, David! Get in the goddamn shuttle! Or they died for nothing!”
After a long, breathless moment, Carlisle turned and hit the access panel; the airlock cycled open.
 
The officer nodded. “Then we-” Ajay watched the realization flash behind his eyes. “Wait no, don’t-”
Bacari made a slashing gesture and the image onscreen disappeared. She looked over. “The away team?”
Ajay nodded. “Taken care of.”
Satisfied, Bacari leaned back in her chair and popped another amphetamine tab into her mouth. “Mister Landon,” she said, “it’s been a pleasure.”
On impulse, Ajay ran a quick search through his personal files. Gotcha. “No, captain -” He opened the ship’s speaker program and hit play. “-it’s been my pleasure.”
And one day, we will die. And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea.
“Likewise.” Bacari closed her eyes and laced her fingers behind her head. “Make it happen.”
But for now, we are young. Let us lay in the sun.
Ajay raised his head and opened the throttle wide.
And count every beautiful thing we can s-
The science vessel’s engines flare and it charges forward with a silent battlecry. This shout is matched by one of anguish as a pair of faces watch from high orbit as the second ship, long and dangerously sleek, moves to evade; streaks of light ignite and flash from hidden compartments, raking lines of fire down the science vessel’s hull. Too late - the science vessel crashes into its larger counterpart, stubby nose shearing through armor and bulkhead. And, abruptly, radiation shielding; space above the secret moon turns bright as an Earth-day as a pair of reactors go supercritical.
And then, there is nothing but the cold gaze of the stars-
-and the spark of hope that is a tiny shuttle raising an Alcubierre bubble and disappearing into the great unknown.
EDIT: Formatting.

The 3-0 Canton Bulldogs continue the defense of their Ohio League professional football championship with a 41-0 defeat of the Rochester Jeffersons at League Park in Canton, Ohio.
The name Jefferson is testimony to the team’s beginnings as a sandlot team, many of which popped up across the country during the late 1800s and into the early part of the century. These sandlot teams were limited in how far they could travel, leaving them to play crosstown rivals. As these rivalries unfolded, the teams began calling themselves and each other by the street name or avenue near where the team played, in this case Jefferson Avenue in Rochester.
The Rochester Jeffersons, under the leadership of owner Leo Lyons who started playing for the team at age 16 in 1908, grew from the sandlot and won the New York Professional Football League (NYPFL) title in 1915 and 1916.
On this day a hundred years ago, Leo Lyons didn’t just put his team on a train to Canton, he put them on track to become a charter member of the NFL.
Some researchers go further, arguing this game more than any other led to the creation of the NFL itself, seeing the new league as essentially a merger of the NYPFL into the Ohio League.
Leo Lyons, tireless promoter of professional football, had sparked a national interest, even in defeat.
He forced football players around the country, even old sandlot teams, to make a gut check: do you have what it takes to play the best?
The Rochester Jeffersons proved they did October 28, 1917, the first NYPFL team to challenge Ohio’s place as the center of the professional football universe. Teams with humble beginnings were competing all over the country. There was only one way to find who had the best football team, and that was to create a nation-wide league.
By age 18 Lyons was already involved with the team’s finances, promoting games, managing the team, a role he would maintain until the team ceased operations after the 1925 NFL season. Hall of Fame Immortal George Halas mentioned Lyons in his acceptance speech, as Halas had modeled his stewardship for the Bears. Lyons is credited as being “manager, owner, photographer, doctor, counselor, financier, field worker, game booker, agent, and scout.”
Talking with Jim Thorpe after the blow-out, Lyons remained upbeat, predicting that one day pro football would be the biggest sport in America. After the war when the invitations went out from Canton to create the NFL, one arrived in Rochester addressed to Leo Lyons.
The October 28, 1917 loss to Canton helped Lyons make bigger games and recruit better players. Unfortunately, the Jeffersons had a big problem that made it impossible for them to survive the times. Not even Lyons could overcome this issue: pro football fans in Rochester only wanted to see the local boys play. When Lyons recruited a big name player, attendance suffered. The Jeffersons played their last season on the road.
It seems historians, with no way to answer the question of whether there might have been a professional football team somewhere in America that could have been competitive in the Ohio League, find it’s easiest to simply dismiss the idea.
At this time, for a West Coast professional football team to test their mettle in Ohio, it’s just ridiculous, so we’ll never know. With no footage, first-hand accounts are all we have. The journalists covering pro football wanted to see the sport thrive as well, and would use hyperbole to make the game sound more interesting. When it’s time to make comparisons, who travelled enough to see all of these different teams? Even top sportswriters could only see so many games.
It’s easier to make a more seamless history and simply say “the Ohio League had the best teams in the world.” If pressed for evidence, well in 1917 the New York state champ lost 41-0; any questions?
Yet, Lyons might have made a better argument for the state of professional football outside of the Ohio League if he had instead chose to play a second-tier team, say the struggling Columbus Panhandles that Canton had just defeated 54-0 the week prior. In this comparison, Rochester appears to have outplayed Columbus. Still, Leo Lyons wanted to promote professional football, so it made more sense to play the best. He wasn’t going to go all the way to Ohio to play Columbus. For historians it would have been great if he did, because it would have provided a key data point.
In the absence of any evidence, the idea that Ohio in 1917 is the center of the football universe will persist.
This same lack of real data also allows each region to imagine how their local powerhouse might have fared. These independent teams were often led by a great veteran player, whose name had become synonymous with the team and as such, impossible for him to play anywhere else. It would have been highly unusual to see a West Coast player leave his home to play in the Ohio League, even though Thorpe was making $1,500 a game at this point.
Evidence this had already changed can be seen in 1925 when Champ Chamberlin used telegrams to recruit John Stockton’s grandfather Hust Stockton from Gonzaga to play in Philadelphia for the Frankford Yellow Jackets.
The Philadelphia and southeast Pennsylvania area is one place where we have evidence of independent teams playing against NFL teams. Of course everyone is familiar by now with the great teams from Schuylkill County, Pottsville, Coaldale, Gilberton, Shenandoah and Wilkes-Barre, the Anthracite League as they came to be known. One of the reasons these teams became famous is that they were playing pro football on Sunday, in defiance of the state’s Blue Laws. Supposedly the county DA was quoted as saying, “If you want to come up here and tell these coal miners they can’t play football on their day off, be my guest.”
It’s impossible to discount the effect the Blue Laws had on the development of professional football.
It should be no surprise Ohio became the center of the football universe, when you consider almost everyone east of the border would have to play football on Saturday at a time when college ruled the gate. If you wanted to play on Sunday, you needed to head west.
In Philadelphia professional teams played on Saturday. The Frankford Yellow Jackets were already hard at work by 1917, and upstart Holmesburg from right up The Kings Highway took the city championship in 1919 and 1920. If these were “neighborhood” teams we wouldn’t expect to find the score of the city championship game in the London Times and San Francisco Chronicle. They competed against other teams around the city and its environs, as well as traveling teams from New York and DC, Reading and Lancaster.
Play in the western suburbs throughout the pre-war era was dominated by Conshohocken, led at the time by Earl Potteiger, who would go on to coach the New York Giants’ 1927 NFL championship team.
When the NFL began play in 1920, there were only two teams east of Ohio, the Rochester Jeffersons and the Buffalo All-Americans.
After the 1917 season the Jeffs were forced to suspend operations like almost everyone else, even Harvard and Yale, with an exception being the city of Buffalo, which somehow managed a six-game pro season in 1918. When the Jeffs returned to the field in 1919 they lost the New York State title to the same Buffalo team that had won the city title in 1918, a team head-manned by one of pro football’s first great quarterbacks, Michigan’s Tommy Hughitt.
The torch for professional football in the state of New York had passed from Rochester to Buffalo.
In 1920, as the NFL came together, Buffalo, led by Frank McNeil, having defeated Rochester in 1919, felt his team worthy of joining the newly formed league and had already taken his team on a barnstorming tour through Ohio. Looking for star power he recruited Dartmouth’s Swede Youngstrom and started calling the team the All-Americans to highlight the abundance of college talent on the roster.
The Rochester Jeffersons posted a winning record in the NFL’s first year, finishing ahead of Canton in the standings, even though they only played one other NFL team, a 17-6 loss to Buffalo, which finished the season 9-1-1. Like the Bills of the 60s and 90s, the Buffalo All-Americans were probably the best team from their era that didn’t win a championship, finishing 9-1-2 in 1921, again only good enough for second place.
The All-Americans went into the last game of the 1920 season knowing they were one win away from the championship, while their opponent, the Akron Pros, only needed a tie. The game ended 0-0, and with it, Buffalo’s hope for a championship in the NFL’s first year. According to modern NFL tie-breakers the Buffalo All-Americans would be considered co-champions of the 1920 season, as Akron finished 8-0-3. For fifty years the NFL had the title listed as undecided, until records were found that at one of the meetings prior to the 1921 season Joe Carr had put forward Akron as champion and those present had voted aye.
None of the players from this great Buffalo team are in the NFL Hall of Fame. Not Hughitt; not Youngstrom, who at least made the “Hall of Very Good” Class of 2012; not Cornell’s Ockie Anderson, perhaps the NFL’s first star running back, whose career was cut short by injury; not Penn’s Heinie Miller, who Walter Camp described as the greatest end he’d ever seen play; not Lehigh’s Butch Spagna, who would later make NFL all-pro; not Tackle Lou Little, who played with Miller at Penn and went on to win the Amos Alonzo Stagg award and entry into the College Football Hall of Fame for his work at Columbia, where he developed Sid Luckman; not their Penn teammate Center Lud Wray, who co-founded the Eagles and became their first coach a year after being the first coach of the Redskins. What else could he have put on his resume? Star player in the league’s first year for a great team, first coach for two NFC East rivals, co-founder of the Eagles; forget about Canton, Philadelphia born and bred Lud Wray can’t even make the Ring of Honor at the Linc.
Instead, most of the accolades are reserved for Bert Bell. So what is it about greatness that tends to diminish the contributions of those around them? No one does it alone.
Bell, Wray, Miller, Little, the four Penn players served in the same unit during the war, and Bert Bell was the first to his feet when the officer asked for volunteers on a suicide mission. Then they returned to Penn for one last year of college ball. It should be a movie. One researcher found that Lud Wray, despite being in the Army, was on the League Island Marine Team in 1918, another dominant team playing in the eastern Pennsylvania area at the time. The military fielded some great football teams in this era out of military camps and bases around the country, and these teams would sometimes play against local pros.
According to Bert Bell’s biographer, it was Wray who handled the negotiations that allowed the buying group to obtain the territorial license for Philadelphia the Yellow Jackets had relinquished after the 1931 season, agreeing to settle debts with the Bears, Packers and Giants that the team had built up as the depression took hold of the team’s community-sponsored finances in Frankford.
Supposedly, Bell didn’t even have his share, the crash of ’29 had cost him dearly, and he borrowed the money from his fiancé, Frances Upton. At that time, Upton might be compared to Janet Jackson circa Poetic Justice, already famous as a singer and dancer, she went out to Hollywood and just killed it.
Another way to measure Upton’s star power, when someone had the idea to do a live shortwave radio broadcast for Admiral Byrd in 1929, who was in Antarctica at the time in search of the South Pole, she made the cast. Bell met her when she arrived with her entourage at the Ritz-Carlton, where he worked after his playing days had ended.
He took her on a date to Franklin Field to watch Penn play; she pointed out the pro game was more exciting. “At least they throw the ball.”
As one of the country’s most popular entertainers it was natural for her to float in the same circles as the top athletes of the day, and she had seen pro football at the Polo Grounds and Wrigley Field before ever meeting Bell. In the depths of the depression, this woman bankrolled the creation of the Philadelphia Eagles, not because she had stars in her eyes, but because she believed in pro football, and she believed in Bert Bell.
More importantly to the history of professional football, she told Bell it would be impossible to marry a drinking man, and for her he sobered up, opening the door for him to become an NFL Immortal.
Bell bled the bluest of blood, and some argue this led him to the football field in the first place, similar to Hall of Famer Benny Friedman, whose biographer claimed he wanted to play football in part to dispel the myth that Jews were somehow a weaker species of man.
No one questions the toughness of a football player, especially not back then.
Bell, at 155 pounds, played the quarterback position with a desperation that gave caution to those who might think to tease him about his given name, deBenneville, an homage to his mother’s lineage that extended back to before the Revolutionary War. His father had been the Attorney General of Pennsylvania. The old man, instrumental in the creation of the NCAA, told Bert “he could go to Penn or he could go to hell.” When Bell returned a war hero his father bought him a $1,000 touring car that became famous around campus during the 1919 season.
Yet, Bell had what we would call today a gambling problem. In 1919 he was so sure Penn would defeat Swede Youngstrom and Dartmouth that he bet everything he had on the game.
He left the keys in the touring car, put it the lot outside of Franklin Field before the game, and when Dartmouth came away with the upset it was never seen on campus again.
Bell’s father of course wanted him to marry well, and made a $50,000 investment to that effect, money he squandered at Saratoga.
The story that best reveals Bell’s somewhat singular position in American history involves the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.
Naturally, the feds were concerned about mob involvement, but who can find the answer to such a question? They turned to Bert Bell. He was able to verify from Al Capone himself, then in jail, that the mob was not involved, crucial and reliable information Bell then passed along to the proper authorities, which then guided the effort to catch the kidnappers.
Of course Bell became an NFL Immortal not because of his work at the Eagles, which never had a winning record under his ownership and may have been the worst franchise ever. The stories abound; apparently they were down to their last football and after a field goal attempt the kids ran away with it, and these were some of their last remaining fans.
It was Bell’s time as Commissioner that made him a first ballot Hall of Famer.
And what does history measure as one of his first challenges and greatest accomplishments? Bell made sure the gamblers could not influence the outcome of an NFL game. He knew if there was ever a whiff these games were being fixed on the inside, it would be the end of the NFL as the fans would turn away. He saw how it had ruined boxing. In a way it was like putting Joseph Kennedy in charge of the newly founded SEC after the stock market crash; the only one who really knows how the fox keeps getting into the henhouse is the fox himself.
Back to Buffalo. One reason these players may not get the recognition they deserve is because they are at the center of a story that poses an embarrassing challenge to the myth that the best teams in the country were in NFL.
Many of these Buffalo All-Americans were “two-timers,” playing on Saturday for the self-proclaimed US National Professional Champions of 1920, which was unfortunately not an NFL team, nor an old Ohio League team, but the Union Big Red out of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.
It’s likely Bert Bell was in the middle of all this, as Youngstrom signed with Buffalo prior to two-timing with Union, and the two men were notorious rivals at the game of Bridge. There is a rumor Bell might have even suited up for Union.
The Union came into being in the post-war environment where soldiers returned with an interest in playing and watching sports. Phoenixville had fielded a dominant professional football team since 1907, but also needed to suspend operations in 1918, only managing to play one game in early December, a 48-0 blow-out of Paschall AC from Philadelphia.
Prior to the 1919 season, a rival club opened its doors in Phoenixville, the Phoenix Athletic Club, and signed the borough’s best players, such that Union, which noted researcher John Fenton of Ghosts of the Gridiron fame estimates compiled a 95-8-10 record over its existence, could only manage a scoreless tie against Phoenixville High School in what would be the only game they played. Long-time Union coach and captain Fats Eyrich left town to play for local powerhouse Conshohocken.
Phoenix meanwhile compiled a 6-0-2 record in 1919 ahead of the big game against Conshy. As was the tradition of the time, they looked for top college talent to help them win. They recruited Miller, Spagna, and Bodie Weldon and Johnny Scott from Lafayette, who played on the team that upset Penn in 1915. Snowy conditions contributed to a 0-0 tie in front of 5,000 fans at Norristown’s Great Stockade Grounds.
Prior to the 1920 season, Eyrich returned to Phoenixville with a proposal to create a first class football team. The top college stars recruited for the Conshy game would form the new team’s core. He made his pitch to about 50 local leaders and they raised more than $7,000 in one week. This wad of money became a magnet for top east coast talent.
Potteiger came over from Conshohocken, bringing with him end Whitey Thomas, who years later would make the pages of Ripley’s Believe it or Not for gaining over 100 receiving yards while playing for the Atlantic City Roses. Youngstrom, Miller, Wray, Little, Spagna, Weldon, Johnny Scott, the two-timers would suit up for an early game Saturday in the Philadelphia area and then take the train to Buffalo, joining Hughitt and the rest of the All-Americans for an NFL game on Sunday.
Miller, who coached Union, made all 22 games, while Wray and Little only each missed one (when Union defeated Ewing Little sat out as he was their coach).
Union ended up 11-0, giving Heinie Miller a combined 20-1-1 record for the 1920 professional football season. In 1925 Miller became coach at Temple, and he brought in Bert Bell and Lud Wray as assistant coaches. Keeping with the long story of their friendship, they argued incessantly, and Bell quit the team over Wray’s insistence on scrimmaging the team at practice. The two friends obviously patched it up by 1932 as it was Bell who recommended Wray to become the first coach of the Redskins, a team Bell’s close friend NFL Immortal George Preston Marshall had just purchased.
After romping through the local athletic clubs and coal teams, Union defeating long-time rival Conshohocken. It was at that point that they decided to go into the city and play Holmesburg and Frankford at the Baker Bowl (Phillies Park). Paid attendance for the Holmesburg game stood near 9,000. With the big gate looming Union brought in Stan Cofall, the Vice President of the NFL. When Union came away with the 13-0 win, they were so happy they sent a homing pigeon back to Phoenixville with the good news.
Two days later Union returned to the Baker Bowl to defeat the Frankford Yellow Jackets, 10-6 in front of 15,000 fans.
At 10-0, they now challenged any professional team to board the train and come to Philadelphia, with the mythical national championship on the line, and the promise of a big gate.
Obviously the Buffalo All-Americans could not answer the call, given they were the same team.
The Akron Pros, led by NFL Hall of Famer Fritz Pollard, who also two-timed with Union that year – scoring five touchdowns in two games – did not want to risk their championship claim, as everyone knew Union was a top team, perhaps none more than Pollard himself.
So it fell to Jim Thorpe and the great Canton Bulldogs, many of which arrived the night before at North Philly station to much hoopla.
On Saturday Union defeated Canton 14-7 in front of more than 17,000 fans at the Baker Bowl.
It’s tempting to use the final scores of these games to show that both Frankford and Holmesburg might have been able to give Canton a game in 1920. Yet, it’s hard to judge a team when the lineups are in flux. As the potential for a big gate grew so did the opportunity to bring in better players just for that one game.
Conversely, if the team felt confident, or the gate looked light, there would be no reason to spend extra money, and this of course this would be reflected in the final score. For instance, in 1920 Union defeated Ewing 14-0 while Frankford blew them out 41-0. As noted, Little didn’t play, but by the time Union played Frankford they had already put together what was probably the best team in America, and while Frankford would have also been working to bring in better players, they did not have the same kind of cash.
The Union-Canton game of 1920 is the most attended pro football game in the NFL’s first year, in part because so many All-American fans had come down from Buffalo to see their team play in a different jersey.
Imagine that, President of the NFL Jim Thorpe competing against Vice President of the NFL Stan Cofall in a game the young league could not possibly have sanctioned, but not even the president and vice president could say no to a gate like that.
Meanwhile, the most attended game between two NFL teams in 1920 was at the Polo Grounds in New York City. In this game the Buffalo All-Americans defeated the Canton Bulldogs 7-3. Youngstrom blocked a Thorpe punt and recovered it for a touchdown; as the story goes you could still see the imprint from the laces in his chest three days later.
The point of all this is, in the NFL’s first year the two most attended games took place in New York City and Philadelphia, and both games were won by effectively the same team of east coast all-stars. Looked at this way, it appears the end of Ohio as the center of the football universe had already begun at the time of the NFL’s founding.
While the Blue Laws would not be repealed in Philadelphia until the Eagles in 1933, with Bert Bell himself an outspoken critic and effective lobbyist, the idea that teams from the old Ohio League could take the train into Philadelphia on Saturday for a big gate, and then play in Schuylkill County on Sunday on their way out of town made it more attractive to extend the league eastwards. In fact Union’s boy manager Leo Conway was at the NFL’s spring meeting prior to the 1921 season.
The 1920 Union team so overwhelmed the small town of Phoenixville that Miller could not convince the locals to take another bite of the apple in 1921, and so Conway, with Miller still coach, moved into the city and played the 1921 season as the Union Quakers of Philadelphia, again fielding a top team. Carlisle and Canton veterans Pete Calac and Joe Guyon, after losing to Union in 1920, were now two-timing for Union in 1921. These pros knew where the money was, and Guyon would go on to be part of Potteiger’s 1927 Championship team in New York.
It seemed logical that the Union Quakers would become Philadelphia’s first NFL team for the 1922 season, but what about the two-timers?
Buffalo owner McNeil settled the issue midway through the 1921 season, causing a crisis for the young league by exposing the two-timers and acting like he just thought they were playing light games in Philadelphia. Miller went to the paper to say it was all about money, pointing to how McNeil had used the league’s new rules against Johnny Scott in what might have been the first contract dispute. Some of the two-timers stayed in the NFL, but those with ties to Philadelphia left the NFL behind.
In 1922, the Union veterans including Little, Spagna, Thomas, and Scott joined Frankford, replacing many of the starters. Miller served as coach and captain. This 1922 Frankford team defeated the NFL’s Rochester Jeffersons 33-0. In 1923 Little took over as captain and coach. In 1922 and ’23, the Frankford Yellow Jackets racked up a 6-2-1 record against NFL teams. After the 1923 season Frankford challenged the latest iteration of the Canton Bulldogs, this one a dominant team that had just finished its second undefeated NFL season, becoming the first back-to-back champ in league history, a long string of shut-outs to their credit. Up front the Bulldogs were led by NFL Immortal Fats Henry and Hall of Famer Link Lyman, both playing about 240, and coached by Hall of Fame End Champ Chamberlin from Nebraska. When the Bulldogs came to Philadelphia to play Frankford they needed a late field goal from Henry to secure the 3-0 win. Even in defeat, like Rochester before them, Frankford had proven it was possible to compete with even the best of the old Ohio League teams, and the Yellow Jackets became the first NFL team from Philadelphia in 1924.
That year, Chamberlin, Henry and Lyman won their third straight title, this time as the Cleveland Bulldogs, with a 7-1-1 record; both their loss and their tie came against the expansion team from Frankford, which fell far down in the standings given the struggle of playing at home on Saturday and then on the road Sunday, much like their two-timing predecessors.
In 1925 Frankford brought in Chamberlin, fresh off his three-peat, but an injury derailed what looked like a fourth straight title for a coach with a better winning percentage than Belicheck whose losses mostly came when he wasn’t playing; when he was on the field as a coach he was almost unbeatable.
In 1926 Chamberlin returned to lead Frankford to the first NFL championship for a team east of Ohio.
In what was effectively the championship game, a 7-6 win against the Bears, Chamberlin blocked the extra point and Hust Stockton engineered a fourth quarter two-minute style touchdown culminating with a pass to the smallest player in the NFL, Two-Bits Homan. This was a repeat performance from earlier in the year against the Packers, with Stockton again connecting with Homan late, giving Frankford the 20-14 win. Stockton earned his own place in Ripley’s Believe it or Not for averaging over 100 yards passing per game at Gonzaga under the guidance of coach Gus Dorias, who was Knute Rockne’s quarterback at Notre Dame.
With the New York Giants winning the NFL in 1927, the shift in power east out of the Ohio League had become patently evident, and remains in place today. Obviously this move towards the east coast population centers helped the NFL grow into what it is today, and that all started 100 years ago today with Leo Lyons and the Rochester Jeffersons.
Both the 1926 Yellow Jackets and Giants had roots that stretched back to the Union Big Red of 1920, with Youngstrom playing for Frankford and Potteiger coaching the Giants.
1926 played an important role in this shift in power, as NFL Immortal Red Grange split with Halas about how the money should be divided. The gate had gone from 5,000 to 25,000 when Grange put on a Bears uniform. Wouldn’t it make sense that Grange would be the one to get rich? Obviously, Halas could not relent.
To express his frustration, rather than simply forming a team of his own, Grange created an entire league to compete with the NFL.
For the new league, he wanted teams in big cities, and so Grange himself played for the New York Yankees.
The American Football League, as it was called, lasted only one year, but its argument that the success of professional football required a move into the big cities has held.
Grange made his point; in the end, it’s all about the gate. You want to have a good football team? Get your money out. The Union Club proved this in 1920.
By the end of the AFL season, only one of the four surviving teams was not being subsidized by Grange’s Yankees, and that was the Union Quakers of Philadelphia.
Yes, the old gang had reunited. This 1926 version of Union was again managed by Conway and featured Johnny Scott and some of the other players from Philadelphia’s storied past. They defeated Grange and won the AFL title. Imagine that, 1926, the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and the city of Philadelphia holds both major professional football championships.
Union, in their tradition, challenged NFL teams to what would have been the first Superbowl, the champion of each league facing off, but given the controversy of 1925, no one wanted to get on Joe Carr’s bad side, especially not the Frankford Yellow Jackets.
The 7th place New York Giants invited the Quakers to a game at the Polo Grounds. In the snow, after falling behind 3-0 at half, the Union Quakers of Philadelphia were crushed 31-0, forever ending the argument about which league had the better football teams.
Grange would take his Yankees into the NFL for the 1927 season, the only AFL team to make the transition.
For many of the great players at Union, it was the end of an era, one that featured big games both in and outside of the NFL, a story that remains surprisingly untold in Philadelphia, a place that loves its history almost as much as its pro football.
Most historians begin the narrative of professional football in Philadelphia with Connie Mack in 1902, but in 1899 Frankford had 2,000 fans watching the Yellow Jackets defeat Reading YMCA 28-0 at Wistar Park. Obviously the baseball men were desperate to use their monolithic stadiums for some other purpose, and football’s flexibility in bad weather made it a likely candidate. Earlier in 1917 Comiskey had floated the idea of a nation-wide pro football league, using the same exact players from the baseball teams supplemented with local pros. At the time they thought it could only work on the West Coast because of the weather.
We all know Halas and Thorpe started out in baseball, and that a lot of great football players surrendered their place on the field to go play in the park, and that pro football did everything it could to emulate baseball, and that during this era and for a long time afterwards all these other sports could do was wish they were more like baseball.
Let history show despite their wishes it was not the baseball men that made professional football.
It was great pros like Stan Cofall and Heinie Miller, who took every game they could get, and smart guys like Bert Bell and Swede Youngstrom who had a love for the game, football men.
And of course it was people like Leo Lyons from the Rochester Jeffersons, who showed George Halas what it takes to become an NFL Immortal, and knew 100 years ago that football would end up bigger than baseball.
Week 3: https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/77t4vs/100_years_ago_in_pro_football_canton_bulldogs_54/
Week 2: https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/76e5t7/100_years_ago_in_pro_football_canton_bulldogs_80/
Week 1: https://www.reddit.com/nfl/comments/75119e/100_years_ago_in_pro_football/