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JViese 1900 uniforms typify old-time displays.
The new museum for play-for-pay football
in Canton, Ohio, is loaded
with smiles, sentiment and action
By RICHARD McCANN
Director of tho National
Professional Football Hall of Famo
as told to Chuck Such
whose use on a football team I still can't fathom.
We have championship pennants, too, one from the
Providence (R.I.) Steamrollers of 1928. In those days,
players on championship squads received gold footballs.
Now that's one item I have yet to find to add to the museum.
Speaking financially, you've probably heard how the old
stars played for as little as $5 a game. That's true, but
there was big money to be had, too. Back before the de
flated dollar, Jacksonville, Fla., paid Ernie Nevers $15,000
for signing a contract Two games later the club went
bankrupt, but Nevers had the cash.
College coaches played pro football on Sundays to pick
up extra money. Knute Rockne is associated with Notre
Dame, but graybeards in Massillon, Ohio, will tell you:
"Rockne? oh, you mean the fellow who played with the
old pro Tigers." Of course, the Nesser brothers, great
players for the Columbus (Ohio) Panhandles, will dis
pute this. They played pro games against Rockne six times
in a row, and each time Rockne was on a different team; But
in the Hall of Fame, we have Rockne's helmet, and it's one
he used at Massillon.
WE also have probably the most extensive collection of
old team photos in the world. But not all the star play
ers are shown ; some were camera-shy in those dayB. You see,
on Saturdays they were simon-pure amateurs at some col
lege and aiming for Walter Camp's Ail-American list On
Sundays they were miles away butting heads for bucks.
Guy Chamberlain was a college coach who used to play end
for the Canton Bulldogs to fatten his wallet. Against Can
ton's great rivals, the Massillon Tigers, he found to his
astonishment that the player opposite him was his star
college lineman, a six-days-a-week amateur.
Although we've accumulated enough historical items to
give visitors a completely new show every six months,
we're still looking for relics of the era of Red Grange,
Bronko Nagurski, and Jim Thorpe. I want two Thorpe
items in particular.
One is the shoulder pads Thorpe wore. Many opponents
claimed that Thorpe had sheet-metal or iron ribs fitted
into them; no man, they said, could hit as hard as Thorpe
did with just human muscle. But Jack Cusack, now a Texas
oil millionaire but once Thorpe's mentor, denies this. He
bought Thorpe's equipment and says it was the same as
other players used. Everybody is pretty sure the equip
ment still exists, but nobody knows where.
And the other Thorpe treasure we want is his collec
tion of Olympic medals. The medals were taken away from
him when it was discovered he had once played baseball
for $50. Football is very proud of Thorpe and the role he
played in developing the game, and we'd give those medals
proper honor. Once we received a tip they were in a Wash
ington, Pa., shop where they had once been displayed, and
we wasted no time in trying to track them down. Unfor
tunately, all we found was the placard on which they had
once been mounted.
Somebody else had long since taken the medals. We
wonder where they are today and how we can get them
for Pro Football's Hall of Fame.
first president of major pro league. Thorpe carries ball for Canton against Columbus Panhandles in 1919 game (right).
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