1921 Championship Controversy??

[LJP]

In the 01-Dec-1921 edition of The Decatur Review, Howard Millard's buildup for the game states the following:-

"If the Decatur Staleys are successful in their game with Buffalo Sunday in Chicago the world's professional championship title will belong to the starchworkers for the season. President Carl Stork of the American Professional Football Association has announced that the season will be officialy closed Sunday Dec. 4th and that the championship wil be decided on the basis of games won, lost and tied up to and including the Sunday tilts."

If that were the case then I don't see how Buffalo could possibly consider the impending game as an exhibition.

If games played after 04-Dec-1921 didn't count towards the standings, then should they really be classed as exhibition games instead? e.g. Staleys played Canton on 11-Dec-1921 (postponed from 30-Oct-1921) and the Cardinals in a "City Championship" on 18-Dec-1921.

[JeffreyMiller]

In the 01-Dec-1921 edition of The Decatur Review, Howard Millard's buildup for the game states the following:-

"If the Decatur Staleys are successful in their game with Buffalo Sunday in Chicago the world's professional championship title will belong to the starchworkers for the season. President Carl Stork of the American Professional Football Association has announced that the season will be officialy closed Sunday Dec. 4th and that the championship wil be decided on the basis of games won, lost and tied up to and including the Sunday tilts."

If that were the case then I don't see how Buffalo could possibly consider the impending game as an exhibition.

If games played after 04-Dec-1921 didn't count towards the standings, then should they really be classed as exhibition games instead? e.g. Staleys played Canton on 11-Dec-1921 (postponed from 30-Oct-1921) and the Cardinals in a "City Championship" on 18-Dec-1921.

The article in the Buffalo paper declaring the AAs champs was from a few days before this, so when McNeil agreed to play Decatur on the 4th, he might well have been agreeing under the impression that it would be an exhibition game, and then the league later ruled Dec 4 to be the season's end. Just something to consider.

I don't necessarily think McNeil was being totally honest, since there is no way of knowing what he actually said to Halas or what he knew to be correct. But there is inconsistency among the different newspapers, which doesn't help in trying to clarify the whole damn thing.