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Tri-Cities Hawks

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The Tri-Cities were a prime football market with local Tri-Cities College becoming a powerhouse on the collegiate level. Thus, the Tri-Cities Black Hawks were formed in 1919 as an inaugural team in the AA, playing their games across the river from Tri-Cities College in Davenport, Iowa. They survived through that catastrophe of a league and independent leagues for another 6 years with relatively poor play, and got invited to the MWFC as charter members. They struggled for a while, and were on the verge of folding when the Depression hit Davenport hard. The team was saved in 1934 by local real estate magnate Bert Hester, who bought the team at the behest of his old friend Donovan Hasenkamp. He made two large changes to the team, the first was the shortening of the name to just the Hawks, and the second was finally bringing the team some sort of success. He brought former Detroit Knights executives to help him scout talent the same way they did it back in the Motor City, and it instantly
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Buffalo Hammers

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The first and older of the two teams joining is Buffalo, who was one of the charter members of the New York Professional Football League in 1923, which eventually became the New York-Pennsylvania League a few years later. The Hammers are actually one of the older teams in the U.S., founded in 1905 as a company team for the newly-relocated Lackawanna Steel Company. They became an amateur team in 1913, and went pro when they joined the NYPL in 1923. The team almost didn’t make it to going pro, as Lackawanna was in the process of being bought out by Bethlehem Steel and was going to end its company team after the purchase was complete. Willis Ware, who was an executive in Lackawanna, rushed in at the 11th hour and used what he had left of his savings to buy the Hammers and joined the NYPL, where they stormed through the whole league and won its first-ever title. The Hammers have always been successful during their time as a pro team, finishing in the top half of the NYPL in all but 2 of th
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Chicago Hogs

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The Hogs are one of the oldest teams in the nation, first coming together in 1919 as the Rockford Athletic Club during the AA. After it fell apart, the Athletics limped along for almost 10 years, with the Depression almost forcing the team to fold. They were saved at the 11th hour by former AA star Donovan Hasenkamp in 1929, who moved them to the south side of town to play in a better and more comfortable market. Unfortunately for Hasenkamp, Chicago was already occupied by MWFC commissioner Virgil Bradshaw and his Chicago Stars, and a deep hatred developed between the two. Two years later, the Stars and Athletics played a particularly brutal game in muddy conditions, with Bradshaw proclaiming that Hasenkamp coached his players to “behave like feral hogs in a bloody pigpen.” Hasenkamp was already considering changing the team’s brand at this point, and loved his rival’s insult so much he changed the team’s name to the Hogs. After the rebrand, the Hogs’ play began to improve, winning the
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