Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

For a more idiosyncratic choice, I enjoyed "The Town That Hated Pro Football," which appeared sometime in the 1980s. It's about the Rochester Jeffersons and their owner, Leo Lyons.

Bob Gill wrote:For a more idiosyncratic choice, I enjoyed "The Town That Hated Pro Football," which appeared sometime in the 1980s. It's about the Rochester Jeffersons and their owner, Leo Lyons.

http://profootballresearchers.com/archi ... 11-075.pdf

How to get from Dayton to Indianapolis (http://profootballresearchers.com/archi ... 05-621.pdf) by Bob Carroll

Hah. This was the exact article that led me to the PFRA. I was searching for if there was any actual connection from the Triangles to the Colts and stumbled upon that article.

Bob Gill wrote:For a more idiosyncratic choice, I enjoyed "The Town That Hated Pro Football," which appeared sometime in the 1980s. It's about the Rochester Jeffersons and their owner, Leo Lyons.

I mentioned this once on the old forum before, but Leo Lyons lived next door to my parents. He had a nice home and invited me and my dad over to watch the 1965 NFL Championship game between Green Bay and Cleveland (He was rooting for Green Bay. Leo would always be for the old line teams like the Bears, Packers, etc.).

Leo was a nice man and a good neighbor.

Rochester just wasn't big enough to support a pro football team at that time, or any major sports team. We lost the NBA Rochester Royals during the 1950's. Maybe we could now with the county population being bigger.

Besides, there were often teams in Buffalo, Cleveland, and maybe even Syracuse, and of course, New York. Green Bay had the Milwaukee people helping to support them.

Several years ago, Mark Ford wrote a Coffin Corner article about the first NFL Europe that was slated to begin in the mid-1970s but was derailed, partially because of the terrible world economy. I found it to be a really interesting article because I had never heard of this plan before.

http://profootballresearchers.com/archi ... 6-1101.pdf

Bob Gill authored my favorite:

http://www.profootballresearchers.org/a ... 03-566.pdf

It saddens me that Don Jonas seems to be the forgotten Blue Bomber legend because he was not only a terrific player but an even better person. Our fair city was truly blessed to have Jonas and Bobby Hull here to represent our pro sports teams in the 70s. You couldn't find two better public relations ambassadors.