1921 NFL Championship controversy
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Date | December 4, 1921 | ||||||||||||||||||
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Stadium | Cubs Park, Chicago, Illinois | ||||||||||||||||||
Attendance | 12,000 | ||||||||||||||||||
Hall of Famers | |||||||||||||||||||
Staleys: George Halas (owner/coach), Guy Chamberlin, George Trafton |
The 1921 NFL Championship controversy, known among Buffalo sports historians and fans as the Staley Swindle, is a dispute in which the
Background
The Buffalo All-Americans finished 1921 with a 9–0–2 record; meanwhile, Chicago captured second place with its only loss coming against Buffalo on
The All-Americans defeated the Pros, 14–0, then the team boarded a train for Chicago. Several of their players instead left to play in the
Halas decided to declare that the title belonged to Chicago and began to persuade the other owners in the league to give his Staleys the title. Halas based his claim for the championship on his belief that the second game of the Buffalo-Chicago series mattered more than the first. He also pointed out that the aggregate score of the two games was 16–14 in favor of the Staleys. McNeil insisted that Buffalo was the champion and maintained that the last two games his team played were merely exhibitions, to which Halas rebutted that there were no such things as exhibitions, since no set end of the season existed, and thus, according to him, all games had to be counted, whether Buffalo intended them to or not. (Both the All-Americans and the Staleys had disputed the previous year's title, but were both overruled and the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup went to the Akron Pros.)
The league then instituted the first tiebreaker for the championship. The new rule stated that a rematch counted more than a first matchup, which handed the championship to Chicago.[2] In their decision, based on a generally accepted (but now obsolete) rule that if two teams play each other more than once in a season, the second game counts more than the first, the executive committee followed established tradition. Had Buffalo not played the last game (or if it had not been counted per Buffalo's wishes), they would have had an undefeated season and won the title.[3] This tiebreaker was discontinued by the NFL in 1933.
The winner of the game was supposed to have received possession of the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup, the championship trophy established as a rotating prize the previous season. However it never arrived, so the Staleys did not receive the trophy, which is now thought to have been lost.
Throughout the rest of his life, McNeil made numerous attempts to get the league's decision overturned. Buffalo never again reached the level of success they did in the 1918-1921 period; the franchise barely stayed over .500 winning percentage for the next three seasons, after which the team fell to the bottom of the league in the standings for most of the rest of the decade, suspending operations in 1927 and folding in 1929.
The Professional Football Researchers Association has recognized both sides of the debate. Jeffrey J. Miller, who coined the phrase "Staley Swindle" to describe the controversy, has argued most fervently that the All-Americans were wronged by the league's decision, which stands to the present day.[3] Kenneth Crippen, in contrast, has noted that Buffalo's competition was not as stiff and that, overall, the Staleys had a better season when factoring in margins of victory and strength of schedule.[2] Ultimately the legitimacy of Buffalo's claim to the title rests on whether the game in question was on or off the record.
Game box score
Box score
Period | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Total |
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All-Americans | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 7 |
Staleys | 7 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 10 |
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- Date: December 4, 1921
Game information |
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Long-term impact
The league was also forced to place a finite end to the season to prevent a repeat of this incident: in 1924, Chicago attempted to do the same thing with a post-season match against the Cleveland Bulldogs, but the league disallowed it, meaning the Bulldogs kept their title, and banned the use of postseason championship games.[4]
In
The NFL Championship Game would become permanent in 1933 when the NFL was divided into Eastern and Western divisions with a standardized schedule: the "greater weight to a later game" tiebreaker was also formally abolished.
References
- ^ Howard Roberts (1947). The Chicago Bears. G. P. Putnam's Sons. p. 19.
- ^ a b "Who really won the championship in 1921? (p/o "History of Professional Football in Western New York")". Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved October 2, 2007.
Since there were no championship games in 1921, the championship was once again decided by a vote of the Association's executive committee in January 1922. The executive committee ruled that the Chicago Staleys were the champions, based on the generally accepted rule that if two teams play each other more than once in a season, the second game counts more than the first. Buffalo and Chicago played on Thanksgiving Day, with Buffalo winning 7-6. The second game was held December 4. This time, Chicago won 10-7. Buffalo claimed that the second game was just a post-season "exhibition" game, and it should not count in the final standings. Chicago claimed that the Association did not have a set date for the end of the season, therefore the second game could not have been held in the "post-season."
- ^ a b Jeffrey Miller. "1921:The Staley Swindle". Retrieved November 9, 2009.
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 27, 2010. Retrieved September 8, 2010.
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