David Rosenthal

The market size was not unconstrained for these teams.

The market size was quite constrained.

They were filling a niche and a demand for football in these towns, but they weren't going to make that much money.

It just became completely non-viable economically for small town teams to survive, except for Green Bay, and they all end up moving to the big city where they're very much playing second fiddle to the baseball teams.

The other important thing, though, to say about...

the NFL during this time before World War II is that in the beginning, there was Jim Thorpe, who was the first president of the league.

He's a figurehead.

He's only president for a year.

And then they bring on a real administrator.

Obviously, he was Native American.

He wasn't a white person.

There were several Black players in the league at that point in time, and it was not a big deal.

In fact, the first NFL champions in that first season, the Akron Pros, the star player and the head coach was a man named Fritz Pollard, who was Black.

Unfortunately, in the mid-30s, supposedly after George Preston Marshall comes into the league as owner of the Boston Braves that became the Boston Redskins and then moved to Washington, D.C., at his behest, they adopt the same policy as Major League Baseball and completely kick blacks out of the league.

And it wouldn't be until after World War II.

And for the Redskins, not until 1961.

So, all this would continue, kind of, status quo...

The league barely is creeping along until after World War II, when both America and the NFL would change forever and pretty radically.

So after the war, when all the troops come home and there's the GI Bill, there's this new...

middle class in America that didn't go to these elite private school Ivy League institutions or even the Ohio States of the world or the Carlisle Indian colleges and they're coming home from the war they don't have college educations they may be now getting them through the GI Bill but