WHEN THE TANKS WERE TOPS
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| November
30, 1930, was a classic Indian summer day in southern Ohio. Balmy,
shirt-sleeve temperatures greeted the 10,000 football fans who flocked
into the Old Redland Field in Cincinnati to watch the upstart small-town
Ironton Tanks battle the "Monsters of the Midway," the Chicago
Bears.
That it was a glorious day for the semi-professional Tanks is perhaps an understatement and victory coming just two weeks after the Tanks destroyed the New York Giants, another NFL power! Were the Tanks for real? All too real, it seemed to other semi-pro and professional teams, as the Tanks stalked 85 victims in 12 years and tasted defeat only 19 times. The Tanks, a combination of ex-college athletes and local boys, provided a much-needed source of pride to Irontonians-and an unending source of conversation at the local Elks Club. Remember the $10,000 field goal? The day the moving van loaded with Columbus players pulled into Portsmouth? And yes, those Portsmouth Spartans, now they were the scourge of the earth... November 30, 1930, was an odds-defying day for the Tanks, who a year later did not exist and who, seventy years later have not been forgotten. Glenn Presnell, one of the stars of the Chicago game (see Tanks vs. Bears) recalls the Tanks: "People ask me how a little town like Ironton could support a team that could beat a team like the Chicago Bears. I would have to explain how football was organized at that time and how the Tanks could attract and keep the caliber of players we had. It's really a long story and is a little hard for a modern football to understand." |
The National
Football League, or as it was originally called, the American
Professional Football Association, was founded in July 1919 in an
automobile showroom in Canton, Ohio. representatives of five teams
attended and paid $25 each for a franchise in the league. Each team
developed it's own schedule against other league teams or the numerous
semi-pro teams which had sprung up around the country following World
War I.
During the 1920's the cost of a franchise rose to $100, and the number of teams in the NFL fluctuated between 13 and 20. The league was loosely organized with players jumping from team to team and back. Teams shifted in and out of the leagues. League championships were claimed-but regularly disputed. Meanwhile, football fans and the media generally ignored the pro game. The really big break for pro football occurred in 1925 when Harold "Red" Grange finished his spectacular college career at the University of Illinois and joined the Chicago Bears for a barnstorming tour. Grange, the 'Galloping Ghost," was a classic triple-threat back. Graduating from college in 1925, he was a three time All-American and that era's most highly publicized college football player. Grange was more than a franchise; he became a league in 1926. The NFL expanded to 22 teams for the season, and a new nine-team league known as the American Football League was developed around Grange and his New York Yankee team. This over-expansion was a disaster for all concerned, and by 1927, the American League folded and only 12 teams played in the NFL. From 1927 through 1930, the number of teams ranged from 10 to 12. In 1930, one of the teams to join the 'big league' was the Portsmouth Spartans........ Page 2 ---> |
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