Professional Football Researchers Association Forum
PFRA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the history of professional football. Formed in 1979, PFRA members include many of the game's foremost historians and writers.
I was doing a write-up on the '22 season over the weekend and one of my pieces of supporting "art work" was a program from the 2nd Canton/Akron game. I did a double take when I noticed the Left Guard was listed as "Neale, W. & J." because Greasy Neale, who coached at Washington & Jefferson College that season, never played in the APFA/NFL (Notice good ol' Dutch Speck from my last thread was Canton's starting Center and they list him as "Canton U." rather than "sandlot" like Al Nesser - almost as good as when I saw a program listing Tony Latone as School of Hard Knocks). Anyway, in a different article, I disagree with Wikipedia and some other sources by saying that Neale stopped playing pro football after helping Dayton to the '18 title until 1930 when he helped out his own short-handed Ironton Tanks by inserting himself into the lineup for one game (He says this himself in an SI article).
Could this have been an inside joke where the program’s author threw names of former Bulldog greats into the opposition’s lineup to see if anyone was paying attention!? Maybe Neale was in the stands this day? Anyone have a theory?
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Awesome! Thanks Tod - that makes sense. That one letter makes a big difference! PFR had lots of players named "Neal", but just one "Neale" combined with the W. & J. coincidence, I guess I jumped to conclusions
