The Wide World of American Football: 1953-54 Edition

MWFC ADDS THREE TEAMS, GETS NEW NAME
After president Virgil Bradshaw promised two new teams for this season, many were surprised when he not only announced that three new teams would join the league for its 1954 season, but the league would be getting a new name. All three teams were in surprising locations for the Midwestern-based league, as Bradshaw announced the addition of the Baltimore Barons, Richmond Patriots, and the Boston Rebels to the newly-named Premier American Football Championship. In the AFL’s push for the east coast, Bradshaw had the revelation that a majority of football talent was in the south, whose professional league was abandoned shortly after the U.S. joined WWII in 1944. The first step was negotiating the return of the Richmond Patriots, the Southern Football League’s most successful and recognizable team, with former owner Beau Tackett back at the helm to run the team once more. The other team that Bradshaw wanted for his “Southern Expansion Plan” that he persuaded to join were the NYPL’s Baltimore Barons. Baltimore owner John Simpson wanted to show how truly great his team had become, and agreed to join the PAFC with the guarantee that they could have additional subsidies to sign the top players from the 1952 national championship Calvert Terriers team. Bradshaw was more than willing to give up enough to help Baltimore reach its true potential, though this brought great ire from the other less funded teams in the PAFC. A majority of PAFC teams not named Chicago, Fort Wayne, or Indianapolis are struggling with financial and attendance issues. 3 teams have been struggling the most, as the Minneapolis Bears and St. Paul Saints are splitting fan bases while not providing the on-field content to warrant the split, and the St. Louis Arrows struggled both on the field and financially. With almost no intervention by the league, which was more interested in getting the new teams well acquainted, the St. Paul Saints were forced to merge with the Minneapolis Bears and the St. Louis Arrows merged with the Kansas City Cowboys, making the Saints and Arrows effectively defunct. Bradshaw was incensed at losing two teams within top cities, stating in a tone-deaf message that those teams should have done more to do well instead of calling it quits. He was more upset over losing the St. Louis market, stating in an interview with the Chicago Tribune “It’s a disaster that we lost St. Louis. It seems that [St. Louis fans] couldn’t be bothered to show up or support [the Arrows] in any meaningful way. It’s a let down. We have no choice but to move on to more deserving markets. We have three joining us this year that should give us the support we want.” St. Louis fans were irate over Bradshaw’s claims, mainly due to the fact that the Arrows had one of the highest average attendance in the MWFC, and that Bradshaw had no interest in bringing the city another team. The PAFC/MWFC has doubled in size since the split, and already the league is seeing the downsides on the sole focus of expansion. Bringing three relatively successful teams may be enough to bring the league the stability it needs, but the lack of focus on keeping parity within the league is a major problem. The league has still not instituted a draft and still relies on teams to sign their own players, with very few teams making transactions with other teams, with the Chicago Stars and Indianapolis Flames being the only two teams making moves. While the PAFC may have more teams, at this point the AFL has eclipsed it in popularity, and it’s only a matter of time before Bradshaw and the PAFC admit defeat.

NYPL TO CEASE OPERATIONS
Even with the NYPL down to 6 teams, the league still struggled financially. Only the New York Dutch Lions turned a profit this year, as they were by far the most popular among fans in the league. The Philadelphia situation the league had was supposed to improve, but the Philadelphia Americans went bankrupt just 5 weeks into the season, folding immediately after their last game against the Newark Tigers. The Dutch Lions and Tigers would dominate with the limited playing pool, with the Dutch Lions winning their 6th championship over Newark in the title game. However, that would be the last bright moment for the league. The Baltimore Barons rightfully jumped ship to the PAFC, thus leaving only 4 teams for the 1954 season. The Bronx Bulldogs and Brooklyn Kings were about to go bankrupt as well, leaving just New York and Newark as the sole teams with solid financial and fan support. League president Luther Cryer had one last chance to save the NYPL and keep it alive for at least a few more years, and that was the hope that 3 Brooklyn College players would sign with NYPL teams. After 4 successful years at Brooklyn College, including a national championship this year to end their college careers, QB Brendan Turnbull, RB Jesse Brown, and WR Joey Stanikovski were heavily scouted while in college by NYPL teams in hopes that they each would sign with a NYPL and bring a new spotlight to the league. However, in a massive shock, each player declared for the AFL draft this year. Cryer resigned as president in shame shortly after, stating in the New York Times “This was the final nail in the coffin for New York football relevance. The writing is on the wall: football is a Midwestern sport. With 4 teams, we have no sense of credibility as a league. It’s a shameful day for the sport.” Cryer practically abandoned the Bronx Bulldogs and the league at that point, leaving the team without a majority owner and the NYPL without a leader. In the power vacuum, New York Dutch Lions owner Peter Stuyvesant became the de facto president of the dying league, and swiftly worked to provide at least one last season of an inter-New York City league. First, he and Newark Tigers owner Robert Ritchie took control over the Bronx Bulldogs, allowing them to survive for at least one season. Secondly, he expanded his talks with the AFL and commissioner Donovan Hasenkamp in a potential merger, knowing that the league was going to expand to Boston within the next two years. Hasenkamp and the AFL graciously accepted the proposal, as Stuyvesant wanted the AFL owners to join him in New York for their annual spring meetings in March. Stuyvesant’s olive branch may have saved football in New York, but the meetings in Manhattan in March can make or break the future of football on the East Coast.

NEFL STABLE, RESTRUCTURING IN WORKS?
Surprisingly, even with one its “premier” teams leaving for the PAFC, the NEFL enjoyed a year of relative stability. The Portland Lumberjacks solidified themselves as the best team in the league, winning their 3rd championship in 4 years with a dominating win over the New London Captains. However, this stability may be short-lived, as the Boston Globe first reported in January that Boston Bards owner and acting NEFL commissioner Robert McNamara wanted to reorganize the league once it became the farm league for the AFL. This came from plans of where he was going to move the Boston Bards to once the new Boston team joins the AFL, which also had some potential locations of other cities in the Eastern United States for teams. From people close to him, McNamara didn’t say which teams would be moved or folded, just that he wanted to keep the league at 10 teams while redistributing teams outside of just New England. The NEFL has been centrally located around Boston for the longest time, and only recently started expanding outwards, so it may be more likely that if this reorganization were to occur a lot of the smaller teams may be at risk of either folding or relocating. The Montpelier Greens and New London Captains were the two named teams in the Boston Globe article that seemed most at risk of being moved, being in small markets that seemed too small to support even a minor league team. These rumors are becoming more like reality recently, as the Greens announced their relocation to Burlington, VT on the campus of Vermont University for better facilities than in Vermont’s capital. Montpelier was one of the few NEFL teams that did not have a stadium with at least a capacity of 10,000, and desperately needed a permanent home that wasn’t a temporary field or shared with a high school team. This move could either be seen as preeminent or just a coincidence, but the truth about these plans could be revealed as soon as the meetings in March.