It was a little rocky at first
It was the year 1920 and football had been played all across America. While it was pretty successful as a spectator sport and bringing it some serious money, it was not organized in the slightest. Sure, there were teams around America and people paid good money to see them, but there were loads of assorted teams with no specific schedule or even contracted players. Instead, players switched teams all the time based on the lucrative deals they did or didn’t get.
In an effort to sort things out, football legend Jim Thorpe headed a group of men as they were trying to establish some rules. They came up with clear standards for the sport and hoped that other American teams would follow suit and join them.
Seasons and standards
The meeting was proven fruitful and the guys came up with some new guidelines. These are the main ones: First, a schedule would be set in place in a way that would accommodate the different regional and state teams. Each season will have a championship game with a salary cup. Next, all player poaching was banned, and new recruits couldn’t join pro teams while still playing for their college teams.
When the guys were done, they started going by APFC — the American Professional Football Conference. They got five teams to sign on at first, and other teams kept trickling in to form a much larger organization. The process took a few years (and a few names), but this is how we eventually got the NFL.