You’ve probably heard of the "founding fathers" of the United States, but the guys who dreamt up the National Football League were a lot less formal and a lot more desperate. Honestly, the whole thing started in a car dealership. It wasn't some high-rise boardroom in New York City with men in three-piece suits. It was 1920, and a bunch of guys sat on the running boards of Hupmobiles in Canton, Ohio, trying to figure out how to stop stealing each other's players. If you want to know who made the NFL, you have to look at Ralph Hay and a cast of characters that sounds more like a rough-and-tumble social club than a multi-billion dollar sports conglomerate.
Football back then was a mess. Absolute chaos. You had teams in tiny towns like Rock Island and Decatur playing whoever showed up. Players would jump from one team to another for an extra five bucks a game. There was no schedule. There were no standings. It was basically the Wild West with a pigskin. Ralph Hay, who owned the Canton Bulldogs, finally got tired of the financial bleeding. He invited representatives from several teams to his showroom—the Ralph Hay Pioneer Buick Company—on September 17, 1920. That is the moment the league, originally called the American Professional Football Conference (and later the APFA), was born.
The Men on the Running Boards
We talk about the NFL now like it’s this inevitable titan, but in 1920, it was a gamble. Ralph Hay is the guy who provided the space, but he wasn't alone. You had George Halas there representing the Decatur Staleys. Halas is probably the most important name in this entire history. He didn't just help start it; he kept it alive through the Great Depression when everyone else was folding. He was a player, a coach, and an owner all at once. He was the definition of "doing it all."
Then there’s Jim Thorpe. If you’re asking who made the NFL what it is today from a marketing perspective, it’s Thorpe. He was the most famous athlete in the world at the time. An Olympic legend. A household name. The founders knew they needed legitimacy, so they made Thorpe the league's first president. He didn't really do much of the administrative "heavy lifting"—he was too busy playing for the Bulldogs—but his name on the letterhead meant people actually paid attention.
The Original Lineup
It wasn't just Canton and Decatur. You had the Akron Pros, the Cleveland Tigers, the Dayton Triangles, and the Rochester Jeffersons. It’s wild to think about now, but these were the giants of the era. Leo Lyons represented Rochester. He had been trying to get a league started for years. Frank Nied and Art Ranney were there for Akron. These guys weren't billionaires. They were local businessmen, sports enthusiasts, and former players who were tired of losing money because they couldn't control their costs.
The meeting itself cost almost nothing. They reportedly drank beer, sat on cars because there weren't enough chairs, and agreed to a membership fee of $100. Fun fact: nobody ever actually paid it. The NFL was founded on a $100 fee that stayed in everyone's pockets.
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Why George Halas is the Real Architect
While Hay hosted the meeting, George Halas is the reason we are still watching football every Sunday. He moved his team to Chicago in 1921. He renamed them the Bears. He understood that for the league to survive, it had to be in big cities. He was a ruthless businessman and a visionary scout.
In 1925, Halas made a move that changed everything. He signed "The Galloping Ghost," Red Grange, straight out of the University of Illinois. Before Grange, pro football was seen as a "dirty" game for people who weren't good enough for the "pure" college game. Halas took Grange on a barnstorming tour across the country. They drew 73,000 people to the Polo Grounds in New York. That tour proved that professional football could be a massive, profitable spectacle. If Hay made the league, Halas made the business.
The Joe Carr Era
We can't talk about who made the NFL without mentioning Joe Carr. He took over as president in 1921 and stayed until 1939. If Halas was the heart, Carr was the brain. He was the one who actually created a standard contract. He made sure teams couldn't just sign college kids who still had eligibility left, which kept the college coaches from hating the pro game. He also moved the league headquarters to Columbus, Ohio. Carr was the one who realized that the "league" needed to be an actual organization with rules and records, not just a loose affiliation of teams.
The Darker Side: Who Was Left Out?
It’s easy to romanticize the Hupmobile showroom, but the history of who made the NFL has some ugly chapters. In the early 20s, the league was actually somewhat integrated. Fritz Pollard and Bobby Marshall were the first Black players in the league in 1920. Pollard even coached the Akron Pros, making him the first Black head coach in NFL history long before the modern era.
However, by 1933, an unwritten "gentleman’s agreement" led by Redskins owner George Preston Marshall effectively banned Black players from the league. This "color barrier" lasted until 1946. When we look at the architecture of the league, we have to acknowledge that for over a decade, the "creators" intentionally narrowed the field. The re-integration of the league happened because of pressure in Los Angeles when the Rams wanted to move there and use the public Coliseum. They were forced to sign Kenny Washington and Woody Strode.
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The Evolution of the Shield
The NFL didn't even get its current name until 1922. Before that, it was the APFA. The change to "National Football League" was a play for prestige. They wanted to sound like Major League Baseball. They wanted to feel permanent.
The league nearly died a dozen times. In the 1920s, teams were folding every week. The Oorang Indians, a team made up entirely of Native Americans and led by Jim Thorpe, only existed for two seasons as a traveling novelty act. The Pottsville Maroons were "robbed" of a championship in 1925 in a dispute that fans in Pennsylvania still complain about today. It was messy. It was chaotic. But it survived because a few key owners, like the Mara family (Giants) and the Rooney family (Steelers), put their own personal wealth on the line to cover payroll during the lean years.
The Bert Bell and Pete Rozelle Factor
If the 1920s guys built the foundation, Bert Bell and Pete Rozelle built the skyscraper. Bell, who became commissioner in 1946, created the NFL Draft. He realized that for the league to be popular, it needed parity. He didn't want the rich teams getting all the talent.
Then came Pete Rozelle in 1960. He’s the one who sold "The League" as a single entity to TV networks. He convinced owners to share television revenue equally. This was huge. It meant the Green Bay Packers could survive in the same league as the New York Giants. Without revenue sharing, the NFL would have ended up like European soccer, with three or four super-teams and everyone else just existing to lose.
What Most People Get Wrong
People often think the NFL was always the king of American sports. It wasn't. For the first 40 years, it was a distant third behind Baseball and Horse Racing. Even College Football was way more popular.
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The "Greatest Game Ever Played"—the 1958 NFL Championship between the Colts and the Giants—is what finally pushed the NFL into the mainstream. It was the first overtime game, and it was televised nationally. It showed the world that pro football was the perfect television product. The drama, the breaks in action for commercials, the violence, the strategy—it all clicked.
So, when you ask who made the NFL, you aren't just looking for one name. You’re looking at:
- Ralph Hay: The guy with the car dealership and the vision to organize.
- George Halas: The relentless promoter who kept the lights on.
- Jim Thorpe: The superstar who gave the league a face.
- Joe Carr: The administrator who turned a club into a business.
- Pete Rozelle: The genius who married football to television.
Actionable Insights for the History Buff
If you really want to dive into the roots of the game, there are a few things you should actually do. Don't just read a Wikipedia page. The history is actually "touchable" if you know where to look.
- Visit Canton, but skip the flashy stuff first. Go to the site where the Hupmobile showroom stood. There’s a marker there. It’s a humble spot for such a massive industry, and it really puts the "small town" origins into perspective.
- Research the "Forgotten" Teams. Look up the Dayton Triangles or the Providence Steam Roller. Understanding why these teams failed helps you understand why the current teams succeed. Most of it came down to stadium size and local population.
- Read "The Day the NFL Was Born" by Chris Willis. He’s the head of the Research Library at NFL Films. If you want the actual facts without the marketing fluff, his work is the gold standard.
- Watch the 1958 Championship highlights. You can find them on YouTube. Look at the equipment. Look at the field. It helps you realize that the "made" version of the NFL we see today is a high-tech evolution of a very gritty, muddy past.
The NFL wasn't "made" by a decree. It was scraped together by guys who were mostly just trying to make sure they didn't go broke by the end of November. It’s a story of survival as much as it is a story of sport. Next time you're watching a game on a 70-inch 4K TV, just remember it all started because some guys were sitting on the bumpers of cars in an Ohio garage, passing around a hat and hoping for the best.
The league is a monument to persistence. It took nearly 40 years of struggle before it actually became a stable, profitable entity. The "Who" in who made the NFL isn't just the founders—it's the decades of owners who lost money, the players who played for peanuts, and the commissioners who realized that the "shield" was more important than any individual team. That's the real legacy of that 1920 meeting.