David Rosenthal

There's going to be a strict, strict demarcation between the college game and the pro game.

They will not try and get any current college players to come play for a pro team, which would happen under assumed names.

You know, you could imagine these college kids, they want to make money.

So, point one, they're not going to raid the college game.

Point two, they're going to endeavor to play the game at a high ethical and rules-based standard.

Yep, standardize what the game is.

Yes.

And then number three, perhaps the most important, they're going to make Jim Thorpe the president of the league.

These guys are smart.

Now, many of you probably know who Jim Thorpe was, but Jim was at that point in time, the leader of the Canton Bulldogs, one of the teams that was strategically included in this discussion.

And the meeting happened at that Canton auto showroom, probably because of this.

Jim Thorpe was the GOAT.

He was the greatest athlete that had ever lived to that point in time.

The distance between Jim Thorpe as an athlete and any other athlete in the world at that point in time was greater than I think that distance has ever been since.

So, Jim Thorpe was a Native American...

who was part of the Sac and Fox Nation and ended up playing college football at a small school called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which happened to be coached by a guy named Pop Warner.

He and Pop led this small, tiny Carlisle Indian Industrial School to a national championship while he was playing there against all these big Ivy League powerhouses and Ohio State and others.

And the deep, deep irony given what was about to happen with professional sports and the NFL becoming completely white.

The first star player, the whole basis of the league, the first president of the league was a person of color.

In addition to playing professional football, the thing that is just unbelievable about Jim Thorpe, he won two gold medals in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Sweden.