FOR USE AS DESIRED
NFL-30               6/20/02
 

NFL RE-NAMED 80 YEARS AGO THIS MONDAY
 

It wasn’t always the “National Football League.”
 

Eighty years ago this Monday (June 24), owners of the 18-team American Professional Football Association voted to change the name of their two-year-old league to the “National Football League.”
 

The idea for the change and the new name itself came, as did so many other important ideas in the early days of pro football, from GEORGE HALAS, the Pro Football Hall of Fame owner of the Chicago Bears.
 

Although news reports of the day were sketchy on reasons for the name change, it was presumably to promote the new league’s “national scope” – despite the fact it was centered in the east and mid-west – and to use a less-cumbersome name. 
 

Also passed at the league meeting at Cleveland’s Hollenden Hotel on June 24-25, 1922 were the following amendments, as described by The Associated Press:
 

·        “Each club must post a forfeit of $1,000 that it will observe the rules.”
 

·        “Engagement of a player still at college will entail a fine of $500.  A second offense will bring expulsion.”
 

·        “Discovery that a man is playing under a false name will bring permanent expulsion.”
 

·        “Game officials will be appointed by the league president.”
 

·        “The season will open on the first Sunday in October and close on the Sunday following Thanksgiving.”
 

·        “Teams from Marion, Ohio, and Green Bay, Milwaukee and Racine, Wisconsin were admitted to membership.”