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.....there was....Tonawanda Kardex:
The NFL Team That Only Survived Long Enough to Lose 1 Game
Of the 100 million-plus viewers who tuned in to this past weekend’s Super Bowl, very few likely know the history of the NFL’s short-lived team: the Tonawanda Kardex.
That mouthful of a name came from Tonawanda, the upstate New York town the team called home—just north of Buffalo, on the banks of the Niagara River—and American Kardex, a local office furniture company that sponsored them.
“The Kardex came from the All-Tonawanda team,” says Ken Crippen, former executive director of the Professional Football Researchers Association. Like many teams back then, Crippen says, the Kardex began as a city team made up of Tonawanda’s best players, culled from local amateur or semi-pro athletic groups and former college stars (the college game was vastly more popular, and would remain so for several decades)................
The next year, the team joined the NFL (then called the American Professional Football Association), probably hoping to repeat its success and have the opportunity to play bigger teams in bigger cities with bigger paying crowds. The Buffalo News noted that the team would play all of its games on the road—”touring to the big cities, where the dough lies.”
On November 6, 1921, before an audience of about 2,700 in Rochester, New York’s Bay Street Park, the Tonawanda Kardex made their big NFL debut. Their opponent was the Rochester Jeffersons, a team they’d defeated twice the year before.
It did not go well for the Kardex.
“JEFFERSONS TROUNCE TONAWANDA, 45 TO 0,” ...............
That was the Kardex’s first game. It was also their last. They either couldn’t find another opponent that season or, after the beating they took from the Jeffersons, didn’t want to.
“They really couldn’t compete,” Crippen says. “They got spanked pretty bad.”
The Kardex folded with an all-time NFL record of 0-1. With that, they became the shortest-lived team in NFL history.
The NFL Team That Only Survived Long Enough to Lose 1 Game
Of the 100 million-plus viewers who tuned in to this past weekend’s Super Bowl, very few likely know the history of the NFL’s short-lived team: the Tonawanda Kardex.
That mouthful of a name came from Tonawanda, the upstate New York town the team called home—just north of Buffalo, on the banks of the Niagara River—and American Kardex, a local office furniture company that sponsored them.
“The Kardex came from the All-Tonawanda team,” says Ken Crippen, former executive director of the Professional Football Researchers Association. Like many teams back then, Crippen says, the Kardex began as a city team made up of Tonawanda’s best players, culled from local amateur or semi-pro athletic groups and former college stars (the college game was vastly more popular, and would remain so for several decades)................
The next year, the team joined the NFL (then called the American Professional Football Association), probably hoping to repeat its success and have the opportunity to play bigger teams in bigger cities with bigger paying crowds. The Buffalo News noted that the team would play all of its games on the road—”touring to the big cities, where the dough lies.”
On November 6, 1921, before an audience of about 2,700 in Rochester, New York’s Bay Street Park, the Tonawanda Kardex made their big NFL debut. Their opponent was the Rochester Jeffersons, a team they’d defeated twice the year before.
It did not go well for the Kardex.
“JEFFERSONS TROUNCE TONAWANDA, 45 TO 0,” ...............
That was the Kardex’s first game. It was also their last. They either couldn’t find another opponent that season or, after the beating they took from the Jeffersons, didn’t want to.
“They really couldn’t compete,” Crippen says. “They got spanked pretty bad.”
The Kardex folded with an all-time NFL record of 0-1. With that, they became the shortest-lived team in NFL history.