The Staley Swindle and the Super Bowl

​Jim Whiting
The Running Encyclopedia

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     In pro football’s early days, there was no set way of determining the league champion. In 1921, the Buffalo (New York) All-Americans had the best record (8-0-2) in the American Professional Football Association. Runners-up were the Chicago Staleys, named for team sponsor A.E. Staley Starch Company, with a 7-1 mark. (The team would become the Bears the following year.) The Staleys’ only blemish was a 7-6 loss to Buffalo on Thanksgiving Day.

      Chicago player-owner George Halas lusted for revenge. He persuaded Buffalo owner Frank McNeil to travel to Chicago for a game the day after the All-Americans’ final game on December 3 in nearby Akron, Ohio. McNeil agreed, with one stipulation: the game would be an exhibition and not count in the final standings.

      The Buffalo players took an overnight train to Chicago after a hard-fought triumph.  Still recovering from the rigors of that game and lack of sleep, the All-Americans lost to the Staleys 10-7. Halas saw an opportunity. He quickly scheduled two more games with other teams, winning one and tying the other. In his eyes, the results of those additional games meant his team was now 9-1-1, while Buffalo was 9-1-2 (tie games didn’t figure in the standings). Despite the seeming identical records between the two teams, Halas appealed to the other owners. He said his team deserved the league title on two grounds: the second game between Chicago and Buffalo was more important than the first, and his team had outscored Buffalo 16–14 in their two contests. 

      The owners sided with Halas despite McNeil’s vehement protests that the second Chicago game was an exhibition. McNeil spent the rest of his life trying to overturn what he called the “Staley Swindle.” The league—now the National Football League (NFL)—decided that henceforth the season would have a definite ending date, though rejecting the idea of a championship game. 

       In 1932 Chicago and the Portsmouth Spartans had identical records. The NFL sanctioned a game between them to determine the champion. Chicago won 9-0. The game attracted so much interest that the NFL split into East and West divisions, with a playoff between the division winners to crown the champion. That playoff has continued to the present day (though adding several rounds to determine the finalists).  Super Bowl Sunday has become so important in the United States that many people (not entirely jokingly) have suggested making it a national holiday. ​

The Chicago Staleys founder George Halas

The Super Bowl is one of the most watched annual sporting events in the world. On average, more than 100 million people from the United States and another two million international viewers are tuned into the Super Bowl at any given moment.

The 1920 Decater Staleys . They became the Chicago Staleys in 1921 and would later become the Chicago Bears.

The Vince Lombardi Trophy has been awarded to the Super Bowl winner each year since its inception. Wikimedia Commons

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Jim Whiting’s hometown team, the Seattle Seahawks, didn’t make it to the Superbowl this year, but you can still read about them in his book NFL Today The Story of the Seattle Seahawks.   Click here to see the list of books Jim has written devoted to football teams and other sports.

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MLA 8 Citation
Whiting, Jim. "The Staley Swindle and the Super Bowl." Nonfiction Minute`, iNK
     Think Tank, 2 Feb. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
     the-staley-swindle-and-the-super-bowl.