David Rosenthal

And he says that, quote, pro football robs the great American game of many of its greatest character building qualities.

The ideals of generous service, loyalty, sacrifice, and wholehearted devotion to a cause are all taken away.

Now, of course, he's partisan because he's a college football coach, but this really was still the prevailing sentiment.

Yep.

The other problems the NFL face are most of these teams are based in kind of small towns.

Yeah.

There was no TV.

There was no internet.

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.