(2 of 3)
The National League was organized 15 years ago by a onetime Columbus, Ohio sportswriter named Joseph Francis Carr, who has been its president ever since. Unlike professional baseball, professional football is not yet governed by complicated laws. There are roughly 1,500 professional and semiprofessional teams in the U. S. But the best amateurs may graduate directly from college into the game's major league. Average span of a National League footballer's career is four years. Price of players sold from one team to another runs as high as $7,500. Average pay check is $125 a game. The National League is made up of onetime college players. So was the ill-fated American League which started last September, disbanded before finishing its schedule. How unimportant "All-America" teams are is proved by professional records. Few All-Americans make good as professionals. Most outstanding professionals—their abilities undetected early enough for ambitious alumni to ease their way at major colleges—were members of teams representing obscure institutions. Ablest ballcarrier in the National League this season has been "Tuffy" Leemans of the New York Giants, in his first year as a professional. He has gained a League-leading total of 830 yards, averaged four yards every time he ran. Last year, when Leemans played at George Washington University, he was not named on any major All-America team. Last summer, he worked as an instructor at Washington, D. C. playgrounds. When newspaper balloting for last September's All-Star college team began, Leemans' pupils organized a campaign that made his vote enormous. Selected for the team, he was outstanding in both All-Star games.
Since the War, the history of professional football has been in a sense the history of the Green Bay Packers. Organized in 1919. the Packers are the oldest team in the National League. Coach of the Packers since 1919 has been Earl Louis ("Curly") Lambeau, a Green Bay boy who played at Notre Dame in Knute Rockne's first year as head coach. He organized the team, got a local packing company to supply uniforms. Since 1921, when they bought a franchise in the National League, the Packers have not only made the little dairy town of Green Bay, Wis. (pop. 45,000) a U. S. sporting institution, by winning the National League championship three times, but they have made themselves the No. 1 institution of Green Bay where, unlike the members of football or baseball teams representing other cities, most of them have settled down to live, follow off-season callings like truck-driving, baseball and the law. In the first 18 years of their history, the Packers have had many narrow escapes. In 1922, when their sponsors owed $1,600 in back salaries, local businessmen formed a corporation to finance the team. The Packers repaid their benefactors by attracting as many as 15,000 spectators to a single Green Bay game. In 1934, the team had financial difficulties again. A spectator fell off the grandstand and was awarded $5,500 damages. The mutual company with which the Packers were insured went into bankruptcy during the trial. The bankruptcy put the Packers' debt up to $10,000. Green Bay citizens then subscribed $13,000 to keep the team going.