By the skin of their teeth?

[RyanChristiansen]

There's an old idiom, "by the skin of (one's) teeth," that is used to say that someone just barely succeeded in something. I've been noticing how many franchises failed in the early decades of the APFA/NFL, and it makes me wonder, were most owners operating by the skin of their teeth? I'm also curious to know the common financial practices in those early days. I have questions, such as...

Did home teams provide guarantees to visiting teams, like they do even today at the college level?
Did those guarantees cover travel expenses?
Did they share gate receipts, or did the home team get to keep those receipts?
What percentage of a team's expenses was devoted to payroll?
Were star players paid significantly more?
Which teams had owners with deep pockets who operated at a loss? (Or did all successful owners have deep pockets?)

I've seen speculative answers to some of these questions in my reading over the years, but I don't recall anything definitive. What answers to these types of questions have you run across?

[BD Sullivan]

I think in the first few decades, the NFL had a 15 percent cut for visiting teams.

[RyanChristiansen]

"From its beginning, the NFL had the most liberal (60-40) sharing of gate receipts" is mentioned on page 143 of Making the Majors: The Transformation of Team Sports in America, Eric Leifer (Harvard University Press). Given this is an academic press, the information sound reliable, but it's still vague to say, "From its beginning." I haven't been able to find confirmation that was the general arrangement in the 1920s. I also found the same 60-40 split mentioned in a court document from 1982, but that was in reference to the status quo in 1982.