Founding Ironically the roots of the league lay with
baseball, not football. It began as a part of the baseball wars between the
National League and the new
American League that began in 1901. In Philadelphia the AL's Athletics lured several of the NL's Phillies from their contracts, only to lose them through court action. When Phillies owner
John Rogers decided to start a football team, the Athletics followed suit. A's owner
Ben Shibe fielded a team made up of several baseball players as well as some local football talent. He appointed his baseball manager
Connie Mack as the team's
general manager and named former
University of Pennsylvania football player
Charles "Blondy" Wallace as the team's coach. Each Philadelphia team was named after their respective baseball clubs and became the Athletics and
Philadelphia Phillies. However, both Rogers and Shibe knew that to lay claim (to what they hoped would be) the "World Championship"; they had to play a team from Pittsburgh, which was the focal point of football at the time. They called on pro football promoter
Dave Berry, and a Pittsburgh team was soon formed around a
championship team from Homestead. This team was named the Stars, after the number of football players on the team who were considered football stars during the era. The team was owned and operated by Berry, the former manager of the
Latrobe Athletic Association. However many historians believe that due to Berry's limited wealth and the amount of talent on team, that Pittsburgh Pirates owner
Barney Dreyfuss and/or Pirates president
William Chase Temple (who briefly owned other pro football teams in Pittsburgh only to see them fail in short fashion) may have secretly financed the team, a statement both vehemently denied. Several players did attempt to sue Temple after the season claiming that Temple owed them money for playing for the Stars, but the outcome of those suits was never published. These three teams are all that made up the 1902 NFL. Because of the animosity that existed between Philadelphia's Shibe and Rogers, Dave Berry was picked to the league's president. Attempts were initially made to expand the league outside of Pennsylvania into other major cities like
Chicago and New York City. Investors in neither city were interested in joining the league at the time. The exact rules the NFL used for forward passing are no longer known; the strategy, if it was used, was only done so sparingly, and the
Professional Football Researchers Association made no mention of it in its summary of the league's history. The league played all of its games on Saturdays, since there were no Sunday sports events according to Pennsylvania
blue laws in 1902. The Pittsburgh team played all of its home games at the
North Shore Coliseum (then the home of the
Western Unisversity of Pennsylvania football team), while the two Philadelphia teams used their own respective baseball stadiums,
Columbia Park and the
Baker Bowl, for home games. Each team played two games against each of other two teams. When they were not playing each other, the teams played various teams from colleges and athletic clubs from Pennsylvania and southern
New York state. On
Thanksgiving Day 1902, Berry billed a game between the Stars and the Athletics as being for the championship of the National Football League. The Athletics had split on the season with the Phillies, as had Pittsburgh. Although a Philadelphia victory on Thanksgiving would give the A's the championship hands down, a win by the Stars could tie the league race tighter. Mack readied his A's for the big game by playing an exhibition tour through northern Pennsylvania and southern New York. In
Elmira, New York the Athletics joined in the first night game in pro football history. The league quietly folded, and the war between the baseball leagues was resolved the next spring. While the NFL thrived in Philadelphia, it never took hold in Pittsburgh, where professional football had already had its moment in the spotlight come and go over the previous decade. Public relations errors by Berry resulted in a lukewarm reaction to the franchise, particularly his decision to host the Stars' practices in
Greenbsurg to help the Stars players avoid Pittsburgh's polluted air of the era, which deprived Pittsburgh residents of the ability to watch the Stars' practices for free; as a result, the Stars' championship went largely ignored in Pittsburgh. Many Pittsburghers followed their local athletic clubs and colleges more than the Stars. In fact the
Washington and Jefferson Presidents football team had a much greater following than the Stars.
Professional ice hockey would become the sport of the moment in the early to mid-1900s (decade) as the
Western Pennsylvania Hockey League began hiring professional players. The league had been slightly ahead of its time; it would not be until 1920 that the idea for a true "National Football League" would come to be accepted.
Controversy With the win, A's players decided to call the Stars game an exhibition, and declared themselves the champs. However, the team had agreed to that season-ending championship game against Pittsburgh the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and they had lost it. This was recognized by all parties at the time as the championship game. Each team carried a record of 2–2 for league play. Pittsburgh had by far the better point ratio, scoring 39 points to their opponents' 22. Both the Athletics and the Phillies gave up more points than they scored in their league games. Finally Dave Berry used his power as league president and named his Stars the 1902 champions. ==Final standings==