Gridiron Evolution: NFL

On September 17, 1920, a group of men gathered in the Jordan and Hupmobile auto showroom in Canton, Ohio. There were not enough chairs, so some of them sat on the running boards and fenders of the cars. By the end of the evening, they had founded what would become the most powerful sports league in America. They called it the American Professional Football Association, they set the franchise fee at one hundred dollars, but no team ever paid it, and they elected as their first president the most famous athlete in the country: Jim Thorpe, the Olympic champion and star of the hometown Canton Bulldogs. Two years later, in 1922, the organization adopted the name it carries to this day— the National Football League. Professional football did not begin in that showroom.