History of early professional football in California

Prior to 1936, the history of professional football in California was not a hopeful one. While there were two “major league Los Angeles teams” in 1926 (the Buccaneers of the NFL and the Los Angeles Wildcats of the first American Football League), both were actually traveling teams (the Buccaneers were based in Chicago, the Wildcats in Moline, Illinois) that lasted only one season, but several NFL and AFL teams would also play exhibition contests in the West, sometimes with other NFL or AFL teams, but also against some of the local semi-pro teams in the region, in the following year or two.^[3]

The Los Angeles Bulldogs and the formation of the Pacific Coast Professional Football League

The 1930s proved to be a boon for professional football leagues in the United States (the NFL grew in popularity even in light of competition of the second AFL in 1936 and 1937), but it was a “golden age” for minor league football. The year 1936 also marked the first year of the Dixie League of the American South (the DL lasted until the fall of 1947), the American Association (which changed its name to the American Football League in 1946 and lasted until 1950)^[4] ... and a team that formed for the expressed purpose of joining the National Football League, but was passed over in favor of the Cleveland Rams: the Los Angeles Bulldogs.

Owned by the local chapter of the American Legion, managed by Harry Myers, and coached by Gus Henderson, the fledgling Bulldogs played all the games in its inaugural season in Gilmore Stadium, playing local teams like the Salinas Packers^[8] and the Hollywood Stars, but also the Philadelphia Eagles (won, 10–7), Pittsburgh Pirates (won, 21–7), Chicago Cardinals (won, 13–10), Brooklyn Dodgers (tied, 13–13), Chicago Bears (lost, 7–0), and Green Bay Packers (lost, 49–0). In their six games against the NFL, the Bulldogs compiled a 3–2–1 record while having a 6–3–1 season overall.

Myers was confident of receiving an NFL franchise in the 1937 league owners meeting, but after seeing presentations from Houston, Cleveland, and Los Angeles, the owners offered the franchise to Cleveland, then a member of the second American Football League. The Bulldogs were invited to replace the Rams in the fledgling league, and proceeded with the first perfect season in major league professional football: eight wins in AFL games (and the only AFL team with a winning record in the 1937 season), 18 wins including exhibition games, no losses, no ties.^[7] Not even the Miami Dolphins, who lost an exhibition game immediately prior to their "perfect" 1972 season, can make the claim. The Bulldogs' complete dominance of the league exacerbated the financial difficulties of the AFL to the point that the league was forced to fold after the end of the 1937 season.

1940

Charter members of the 1940 edition of the PCPFL include the Bulldogs, the Hollywood Bears (which Paul Schissler had renamed in honor of his alma mater, UCLA),^[7] the Phoenix Panthers, the Oakland Giants, and the San Diego Bombers^[1]

The Bears' and Bulldogs' losses were to each other (two each). Kenny Washington and Woody Strode starred for the Bears after being denied entrance into the NFL due to their race. The Bears also had the leading scorer of the league, former New York Giant Kink Richards. Phoenix and Oakland dropped out at the end of the 1940 season; the San Francisco Bay Packers joined for 1941.

1941

The season was cut short after the attack on Pearl Harbor (the military was fearing another West Coast attack). Kenny Washington led the Bears to a perfect season, having beaten Los Angeles three times to clinch the title. Washington's UCLA teammate Jackie Robinson played briefly for the Bulldogs before moving to Honolulu. Steve Bagarus of San Diego had a 100-yard interception return against the Bears. Kink Richards repeated as the league's high scorer.

1942

Unlike the American Football League of 1940 and the American Association, both of which suspended operations after 1941, the PCPFL decided to continue play during World War II. Military service, nonetheless, wreaked havoc with the teams' rosters. Bears owner/coach Paul Schlisser left for the war as Kenny Washington was injured most of the abbreviated season. The Bulldogs roster was depleted by the war effort. Members of the PCPFL also played games with two military teams, the March Field Flyers and the Santa Ana Flyers in response to increasing public interest. San Diego's Steve Bagarus became a star with his versatility as his team won the league title and held its own against the March Field Flyers. The Santa Ana Flyers were 5-0 against the league and claimed the “extended PCL championship.”^[1]

1943

Growing in influence, the PCPFL underwent several changes before the 1943 season. Temporarily gone were the Hollywood Bears as owner Paul Schlisser was still overseas; the Oakland Giants returned after a two-year absence; the Alameda Mustangs, Richmond Boilermakers, and the Los Angeles Mustangs joined the league.

Controversy ensued when Los Angeles Mustangs owner Bill Freelove raided the roster of Jerry Corcoran's crosstown Bulldogs. When all was said and done, virtually all the members of the 1942 Bulldogs became members of the 1943 Mustangs. While the controversy was raging, Hollywood got a “leave of absence” from the league until the return of Schlisser from World War II. The former Bears (including former player-coach Kink Richards) became Bulldogs for the 1943 season. Ramifications from Freelove's actions ensued over the next few years.^[1]

Richmond leaves the PCPFL at the end of the season.

1944

The Alameda Mustangs moved to San Jose and became the San Jose Mustangs; the Hollywood Wolves entered the league for 1944; and the membership of the Los Angeles Mustangs was revoked by the team owners to protest owner Bill Freelove's raiding of Jerry Corcoran's Los Angeles Bulldogs roster. Freelove responded by forming a new league, the American Football League (with Jerry Giesler as president). In 1944, an unprecedented five Los Angeles area teams were competing in either of the rival leagues.^[1]

1944 PCPFL Standings

Both leagues had undefeated champions (the PCPFL Bombers had won their third consecutive title).

On December 21, 1944, PCPFL league president J. Rufus Klawans announced a merger between the two leagues. Immediately afterward, the AFL champion Hollywood Rangers and PCPFL champion San Diego Bombers scheduled two games, one at each team's home, to decide the “unified” Pacific Coast championship. Hollywood swept San Diego, winning 42-7 and 21-10, for the bragging rights.^[1]

1945

The merger resulted in a “new 1945 PCL” looking remarkably similar to the previous year's edition. The Seattle and Portland AFL teams did not participate in the new league; the AFL champion Hollywood Rangers refused to merge with the Hollywood Bears, which returned after a two-season absence (the Rangers became an independent team in 1945 instead... and then folded after six games). Bill Freelove's Los Angeles Mustangs were refused admittance into the merged league and met the same fate as the Rangers when they tried to play as an independent team in 1945. When the dust of the merger settled, the new PCPFL team lineup was the same as it was in 1944, except with the AFL San Francisco Clippers replacing the Packers and the returning Hollywood Bears replacing the short-lived Wolves of the same locale.

With the end of World War II, more changes were afoot in the newly merged PCPFL. Kenny Washington and Paul Schlisser returned to the Bears, who ended San Diego's string of league championships. Tailback Dean McAdams, hero of the Rangers' championship campaign of 1944, was scoring touchdowns for the Bulldogs in 1945. San Diego had Bosh Pritchard, who would later be rushing for the Philadelphia Eagles, and the Bulldogs had a new quarterback who would later make a name for himself in San Francisco: Frankie Albert. The NFL's color line was still about a year from being erased; Oakland's Mel Reid, banned by the NFL because of his race, was the PCPFL's most valuable player in 1945.^[1]

1946

There were seismic changes in the world of professional football in 1946. The Hollywood Bears and the Los Angeles Bulldogs, who previously had Los Angeles to themselves, now faced competition from the NFL, with the Los Angeles Rams having relocated from Cleveland, and the All-America Football Conference, with the Los Angeles Dons. While the Rams and the Dons were drawing crowds of 40,000 or more to their home games at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Bulldogs and the Bears (in Gilmore Stadium) were having difficulty getting 1000 paying fans to their much smaller venue.^[2]

Another major change came with the rebreaking of the NFL's 12-year-old color barrier, as the Rams signed two of the PCPFL's top stars, Woody Strode and Kenny Washington (both from the Hollywood Bears), which began a slow erosion of the PCPFL's most important talent base, namely black players that the NFL had previously refused to allow into their league.^[11]

In the meantime, the PCPFL expanded to a record nine teams and had divisional play for the only time in its history: the two Division Champions would play a single game for the league Championship. New teams include the Tacoma Indians, Sacramento Nuggets, and the Hawaiian Warriors. The San Jose Mustangs were sold and relocated to Utah, becoming the Salt Lake Seagulls.^[12]

The Hawaiians played all their games at home, and generally in two-game sets to minimize travel expenses for the mainland opponents. With their own officiating crew, the Warriors had a perceived advantage as they consistently played in front of crowds of over 15,000 people.^[2][13]

The PCPFL, the Dixie League, and the American Association (which changed its name to the American Football League for the 1946 season) entered into a working arrangement with the NFL, agreeing to being, in essence, a farm league to the “big boys” and not allowing any participants in “any outlaw league” (specifically the AAFC) to be a member of any PCPFL team.^[13] The compact was formalized March 24, 1946, with the announcement of the formation of the Association of Professional Football Leagues.

Northern Division

Southern Division

The season ended in controversy as the Northern Division title was determined by a game in which the San Francisco Clippers apparently defeated the Los Angeles Bulldogs by a score of 24-19 and claimed the top spot in the division. When Clippers owner Frank Ciraolo entered his team's locker room to participate in the victory celebration, he noticed that John Woudenberg, tackle for the San Francisco 49ers, was wearing a uniform that was assigned to the Clippers' Courtney Thorell. After the “discrepancy” was reported to league officials, the game was declared a 1-0 forfeit to the Bulldogs. As a result, the Northern Division champions were the Tacoma Indians.^[1][2][13]

The Bulldogs, with 11 players with NFL experience, defeated Tacoma in the league championship game, 38-7, on January 19, 1947.^[2][13] It was the last game of the Indians' existence.

Although the Salt Lake Seagulls had three games cancelled in 1946, they would return for another season; but not so the Oakland Giants. The Hollywood Bears took another "leave of absence."^[15]

1947

Back Buddy Abreu was the league's leading rusher and scorer as his Hawaiian Warriors won a narrow “race” with the defending champion Bulldogs (led by quarterback Mel Reid) by beating the team from L.A. 7-6. Sacramento and Salt Lake dropped out of the league after canceling their home-and-home series that was scheduled to finish the PCPFL season.^[2][14]

But having only three active members was not the only issue threatening the continuation of the existence of the league.^[2] An investigation led by league president J. Rufus Klawans revealed that members of the Hawaiian Warriors were placing bets on games in which they were participating. Four (Abreu, Ray Scussell, Floyd “Scrap Iron” Rhea, and Jack Keenan) were permanently banned from the league; another ten team members were “suspended indefinitely.”^[2][14]

1948 and the demise of the PCPFL

As the PCPFL continued unraveling, the Hollywood Bears return to the fold after a second “leave of absence.” The revitalized Bears were under the watchful eye of former Bulldogs owner Jerry Corcoran as they re-entered the league as a traveling team. The Bulldogs, who used to sell out games at 18,000-seat Gilmore Stadium, had to move to Long Beach after two years of failing to attract 1000 fans to their home games.

The Warriors were the class of the league, averaging 30 points of offense per game despite losing over half of the 1947 squad, and had claimed at least a tie for the league title with a 5-1 record: the Bulldogs had two games left to play (one with the Bears, one with the Clippers) at Long Beach's Veterans Memorial Stadium.

The games were not played, as the legendary Los Angeles Bulldogs - who were the Long Beach Bulldogs in 1948 - dropped out of the PCPFL and folded after drawing only 850 fans to the only PCPFL game in Long Beach; the remaining three teams and the league shortly after decided to fold.^[2]

Pacific Football Conference (1957–1958)

The Pacific Football Conference was the largest attempt to established a professional football league in West Coast since the PCPFL. The teams were mainly located in California with one lone team in Arizona for the 1958 season. The league attracted strong local talent, including future American Football League stars like Tom Flores^[16] and Lionel Taylor.^[17]

North Pacific Football League (1963–1966)

A similar name low-level minor league with teams in the Pacific Northwest region. For the 1965 and 1966 seasons the league had a separate conference in California called Northern California League.

California Football League (1974–1982)

The new California Football League was a low-level minor league that began as a semi-pro league in 1974 as a six-team circuit, renamed the Western Football League for the 1976 season, but change back to CFL after one season, when the league expended to eight teams, split into two divisions and became pro.^[17]

The Twin City Cougars (1979-1982 champions), San Jose Tigers (1977 and 1978 champions) and Orange County Rhinos were the three strongest teams during the league lifetime.

The formation of the United States Football League sapped the league from most of its talent and led to the cancellation of the CFL before the 1983 season.