1920: Who really WAS the best?

[74_75_78_79_]

The Akron Pros, who actually made the recent NFLN's Top 100 of all-time list, were awarded league champions with their 8-0-3 record giving up a season grand total of 7 points (all seven surrendered to the Cleveland Tigers in a Week #8 tie)! However both the Decatur Staleys and the Buffalo All-Americans (both next year's big controversy) had respective records of 10-1-2 and 9-1-1. Both didn't play against each other in '20, but the Pros played against each of them on the road in the final two weeks - first at Buffalo, and then in the finale at Chicago - each contest resulting in a scoreless tie.

Of course every team should have played the same amount of games but, then again, this was pro football in its infancy. I think about what Reaser once said about wins counting first, and then ties; something I came to immediately agree with. If you're going strictly by winning or not winning, Akron won 8 out of their 11 games (.727), Decatur 10 out of 13 (.769), and Buffalo 9 for 11 (.818). No denying at all the 7 points total (0.6 pts per game) given up by the Pros! But Dec & Buf not shabby at all with a respective 21 (1.6ppg) & 32 (2.9ppg). And then as for points scored...the All-Americans got the significant lead over the two with 258 total scored in their 11 games (23.4ppg), the Pros only at 151 total but at 13.7ppg, and Staleys at 164 but the lesser ppg of the trio at 12.6.

Who do you all think was really the best? Was it Akron after all? If you were in-charge at the time, how would you decide this? All three look even to me. It wouldn't even be fair IMO to give one of them a 'bye' awaiting for #2 and #3 to play in a semifinal. I guess I'd go with a round-robin, everyone playing each other twice and then taking it from there.

[JeffreyMiller]

I believe if the APFA used the same system in use today in which ties counted as a 1/2 win and a 1/2 loss, the AAs and the Pros would have the same winning pct (.864), but the AAs outscored them by a mile overall. I admit to being a bit of a homer, but I think if they had played again, the outcome might have been different in Buffalo's favor. They had a stronger roster top to bottom. Now, having said that, I think the league got it right for the very reasons it was called the way it was. The Pros were undefeated, and therefore deserved the title.

Now, 1921 is a whole other story ...

[TanksAndSpartans]

I think Akron was the best. They didn't win those games at the end, but they didn't duck anyone either. From what I recall, Phil Dietrich who wrote the book on early pro football in Akron (Down Payments) made the point that one of their best players, Bob Nash couldn't join them for their last two games. His contract had expired and he couldn't get out of working his day job. I believe Dietrich even went so far as to say that the blocking for some of the plays just didn't work correctly after the shuffling of the line required by Nash's absence.

[Mark L. Ford]

The Akron Pros, who actually made the recent NFLN's Top 100 of all-time list, were awarded league champions with their 8-0-3 record giving up a season grand total of 7 points (all seven surrendered to the Cleveland Tigers in a Week #8 tie)! However both the Decatur Staleys and the Buffalo All-Americans (both next year's big controversy) had respective records of 10-1-2 and 9-1-1. Both didn't play against each other in '20, but the Pros played against each of them on the road in the final two weeks - first at Buffalo, and then in the finale at Chicago - each contest resulting in a scoreless tie.

Of course every team should have played the same amount of games but, then again, this was pro football in its infancy. I think about what Reaser once said about wins counting first, and then ties; something I came to immediately agree with. If you're going strictly by winning or not winning, Akron won 8 out of their 11 games (.727), Decatur 10 out of 13 (.769), and Buffalo 9 for 11 (.818). No denying at all the 7 points total (0.6 pts per game) given up by the Staleys! But Dec & Buf not shabby at all with a respective 21 (1.6ppg) & 32 (2.9ppg). And then as for points scored...the All-Americans got the significant lead over the two with 258 total scored in their 11 games (23.4ppg), the Pros only at 151 total but at 13.7ppg, and Staleys at 164 but the lesser ppg of the trio at 12.6.

Who do you all think was really the best? Was it Akron after all? If you were in-charge at the time, how would you decide this? All three look even to me. It wouldn't even be fair IMO to give one of them a 'bye' awaiting for #2 and #3 to play in a semifinal. I guess I'd go with a round-robin, everyone playing each other twice and then taking it from there.

One aspect of those 1920 standings is that they included non-league games along with the games between league members. As far as points scored, the All-Americans 258 included 51-0 over "All Buffalo" and 38-0 over Toledo-- the All-Ams scored 74 points in 6 games against league opponents, about 9 pts a game. Akron, on the other hand, outscored its foes 95 to 7, and Decatur was 65 to 14.

If you limited it to NFL vs. NFL (APFA v APFA), and used the ties-don't-count percentage, the records are

Akron 6-0-3 1.000
Decatur 5-1-2 .833
Buffalo 4-1-1 .800
ChiCards 4-2-1 .667
Rock I. 4-2-1 .667
Dayton 4-2-2 .667
Canton 4-3-1 .571
Detroit 1-3-0 .250
Cleveland 1-4-1 .200
Columbus 0-5-0 .000
Hammond 0-3-0 .000
Muncie 0-1-0 .000
Rochester 0-1-0 .000

I'd give the nod to Akron easily, because neither Buffalo nor Decatur were able to manage better than a scoreless tie against the Pros.

[Bob Gill]

For what it's worth, I think the way Mark just did it is the proper way to list the 1920 standings. The idea of including all games goes back to Bob Carroll, and although I think he might have been right that the league "considered" all games in deciding the championship, I don't see the point of including all those games against the Peoria Tractors in the actual standings.

And I agree that Akron deserved the championship. For my money, it's a fairly easy call.

[TanksAndSpartans]

Yep, I have an older version of Neft's (+ coauthors) encyclopedia and the standings match with what Mark posted. He has the Cardinals at 3-2-1 though. Their stated reasoning was: "...no official standings were kept. The standings on page 15 were collected from newspaper accounts of every game between APFA teams; football fans never saw any such standings in the morning paper. ..." It was also noted "Four other teams...were considered a part of the 1920 league season - the Buffalo All-Americans, Chicago Tigers, Columbus Panhandles and Detroit Heralds."

Although Decatur and Buffalo are discussed here, I've always found the Canton/Akron games the most interesting. Canton had been the dominant team in pro football leading up to the formation of the league, so Akron getting past them twice was a big deal to me despite Canton's record. Massillon poured enough money since '15 into trying to knock off Canton and failing, that their backers may have been tapped out by '20 (I'm not sure on the financial history, but that's what I recall). Copely and Nash, both former Tigers, finally had their revenge making plays in both Akron wins over Canton.

[74_75_78_79_]

Looks like you're all selling me enough on the Pros being best after all. But the All-Americans with that offensive output did look like a bit of a distant precursor to the '90 Bills as the '51 Rams may look to their 48-year-later version. Being that the NFL was in sheer infancy at the time, just how much worse were those other non-league teams at the time? Any worse than the Memphis Tigers were to the 12-0-1 Packers nine years later? Yes, southern humidity in that post-season exhibition that the Tigers were apparently more used to along with Packers' season already over and fully accomplished, but still.

[Bob Gill]

Looks like you're all selling me enough on the Pros being best after all. But the All-Americans with that offensive output did look like a bit of a distant precursor to the '90 Bills as the '51 Rams may look to their 48-year-later version. Being that the NFL was in sheer infancy at the time, just how much worse were those other non-league teams at the time? Any worse than the Memphis Tigers were to the 12-0-1 Packers nine years later? Yes, southern humidity in that post-season exhibition that the Tigers were apparently more used to along with Packers' season already over and fully accomplished, but still.

In the 1920s there were always a handful of non-league teams that were as good as mid-level NFL teams -- and in a couple of cases, as good as the contending teams. But more of them were below NFL level, and the gap between the best and worst non-league teams was much larger than the gap between the best and worst NFL teams. So on average, the non-league teams were a good bit weaker than those in the NFL.

Buffalo's opponents in 1920 provide a good example. In their six games against NFL teams, the All-Americans scored 74 points, and 43 of those came in a single game against the Columbus Panhandles, one of the league's worst teams. Anyway, that's 12.3 points per game. In five games against non-league teams, the scored 184 points, averaging a whopping 36.8 per game. That's pretty clear, isn't it? And it's fairly typical of the 1920s -- and even the '30s, though the gap between the NFL and the independents was generally increasing each year.