Growth and trials By 1923, the fourth season of existence of the
National Football League (NFL), organizational efficiency and athletic professionalism had begun to supplant the ad hoc, semi-pro nature of the league's first years. In December 1923, the sports editors of 13 football cities could truthfully write: "Professional football made rapid strides during the season just completed and the post-graduate game climbed rapidly in public favor.... Pro football of today is different than in the olden days.... The majority of elevens make use of 'all-time' footballers. The day of stars getting in several hours before a game and running through signals in a hotel corridor is past. With but few exceptions, all of the clubs in the pro wheel engaged in daily practices to build up machine-like play." With no revenue streams from merchandise or radio and without television, all team revenue flowed through the gate — and the gate still didn’t cover most expenses. Even teams in the biggest cities such as the
Bears and the
Cardinals of Chicago — struggled to make ends meet. For small-market teams, the situation was worse. In Wisconsin, losses incurred by the teams in
Green Bay and
Racine forced the selling $5 stock or soliciting $10 donations (respectively) in a frantic effort to maintain solvency for the forthcoming
1924 season. In Ohio, teams in
Akron,
Columbus, and
Toledo piled up losses in the first half of the 1923 campaign and ominous game cancellations in the back end.
Jim Thorpe's Oorang Indians, with their all-Native American roster, would provide a short-lived novelty as a touring circus at the gate but would deliver a painfully poor product on the field. They found themselves on Thanksgiving day playing an exhibition game in the rain with the Athletic Club of
Marion, Ohio at a county fairgrounds in front of a crowd of 100 people, some of whom remained shuttered in their cars parked along the sidelines. No team save the Chicago Bears was profitable and many franchises were doomed, yet the National Football League managed to survive.
League meeting The NFL's annual scheduling meeting — always the most important conclave of team owners and representatives — was held in Chicago on January 20 and 21, 1923. There were representatives of 17 teams in attendance, as well as petitioners for new franchises from Cleveland, St. Louis, Davenport, St. Paul, and Duluth. The gathering re-elected
Joe F. Carr of Columbus as league president and named John A. Dunn of Minneapolis vice-president, with Carl Storck of Dayton tapped as secretary-treasurer. While league rules assigned territorial rights prohibiting two franchises within a five mile radius, Rock Island was not expected to oppose establishment of a rival on the other side of the
Mississippi, League owners also decided to assign official team colors for each franchise to avoid on-field confusion caused by similarity of uniform schemes. ==Teams==