The Men Who Made The Game: George Halas
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UKEndZone’s new series takes a look at the men and characters who shaped the National Football League. Andrew Symes and Neil Dutton delve into the lives and careers of the great and the controversial figures who made the game what it is today.
Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it — George Halas
by Neil Dutton
If you look closely at the sleeve of the Chicago Bears uniforms, not only will you notice that on one side the Nike tick faces the wrong way (this is on all NFL team jerseys, for some reason), but you’ll also see the letters GSH emblazoned there. Those are the initials of “Papa Bear”, George Stanley Halas, a man whose association with the team spanned sixty three years. As well as being “Mr Everything” in Chicago, he was a key figure in the growth of the National Football League, making him very surely one of the men who made the game.
Halas was born on February 2nd 1895 in Chicago. He attended the University of Illinois, whose colours were orange and dark blue. This tidbit will be useful later. While at school, he juggled studying civil engineering with playing football, basketball and baseball. He was good enough at baseball to play 12 games as an outfielder for the New York Yankees, although injury ended his professional participation before he could become a regular teammate of a guy named Babe Ruth. Halas served in the U.S. Navy during 1918, and it was as Ensign George Halas that he appeared in, and was named Most Valuable Player of, the 1919 Rose Bowl. He returned a pass for an interception touchdown for the Great Lakes Navy, as they routed the Mare Island Marines 17–0. Halas played both sides of the ball, as was customary back then, appearing as receiver on offense and defensive end.
In 1920, Halas took up employment with the A.E. Staley Company in Decatur, Illinois. In keeping with his chief cook and bottle washer mindset, he was a sales rep for Staley, an outfielder for the company baseball team and player coach of the Decatur Staleys football team. Allowed to choose the teams uniforms, Halas adopted orange and dark blue. In his first year with the team, Halas attended a meeting in Canton, Ohio, as the teams rep, and was part of the decision to found a professional league known as the American Professional Football Association. The league would have a far catchier title when, in 1922, it became the National Football League.
Halas became owner of the Staleys in 1921, and moved the team to Chicago, where they played at the famous Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. In 1922, as a tribute to his landlords, the Chicago Staleys became the Chicago Bears. This name change came to a team celebrating an APFA Championship win, though the spirit in which the crown was captured left a lot to be desired. Halas managed to convince the league that an exhibition game between the Staleys and the Buffalo All-Americans, who had ended their regular season with the best record, should count towards the standings. The league agreed with Halas, and after the 10–7 victory the Staleys arranged two further games. Victory in both would secure the championship, but the Staleys could only win one and tie the other. Halas again showed his powers of persuasion by claiming that as the victory over Buffalo was a rematch, it’s result carried more weight. Thus, on this technicality, the 9–1–1 All-Americans lost the title to the 9–1–2 Staleys. Changes would soon be made to stop teams arranging additional fixtures, and the league announced their own tie breaker regulations. Still, Halas and his team were champions.
He was a good enough player to be named to the 1920s All Pro team, and probably the single highlight of his playing career was his trifecta against the great Jim Thorpe in 1923. He stripped the ball from Thorpe on the Bears two yard line, recovered the fumble himself and 98 yards later was in the endzone. The Bears failed to win another championship before Halas retired as player and coach in 1930, with his number 7 never to be worn by another Bears player. The championship drought ended in 1932, but despite this success the coach, Ralph Jones, was fired before the 1933 season. It was deemed more cost-effective, in a time when the Great Depression still ravaged America, for the owner to act as coach, thus avoiding paying a salary to someone to do the job. The Bears retained the NFL Championship in Halas first year, and reached the 1934 championship game undefeated before losing to the New York Giants. In 1940, propelled by the T-Formation that became in vogue in the 1930s thanks to innovations such as a smaller ball and mastered by the visionary Halas, the Bears destroyed Washington 73–0…in the NFL Championship Game, no less. This remains the heaviest defeat in a single NFL game. With the title once more retained in 1941, the team was dubbed “The Monsters of the Midway” (there is a park in Chicago known as the Midway Plaisance, which was featured prominent in the 1893 World’s Fair) and became immortalised in the song “Bear Down, Chicago Bears”, the first ever NFL fight song.
1942 saw Halas return to his other mistress, the U.S. Navy. During World War Two, he rose in rank to Captain, serving under the great Admiral Nimitz. Once the war ended, he returned to the Bears and won the NFL Championship in his first season back (the title had also been won in 1943 while he was serving, but he still owned the team). He again retired as coach in 1956, but Mr Everything returned once again in 1958. Another championship was captured in 1963, his sixth as a head coach (tied for most in NFL history), but that was the end of Halas the winner. He finally retired for good in 1968, five years after his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. Including the playoffs, in which he boasted a 6–4 record, Halas finished his coaching career with a 324–152–31 record, the second most victories behind Don Shula. His mastery of the T-Formation was but one of his touches of genius. After a season playing semi pro before joining the Staleys, Halas believed in the word “Professional”. The Bears were the first NFL team to practise daily, and Halas was one of the first coaches to embrace film study.
Papa Bear still called the shots in the Windy City, though. In 1970, his 50 year involvement with the NFL was celebrated, just as his 60 years was in 1980. In 1982, he fired head coach Neil Armstrong, but after receiving a letter from the teams defensive players, he decided not to fire the defensive coaches and instead foisted them upon new head coach Mike Ditka, a former Bears player. So it was that Dikta and Buddy Ryan formed one of Pro Footballs least easy alliances on their way to a Super Bowl triumph in 1985. The Bears ninth NFL championship was sadly the first to be captured in the post Halas era, as Mr Everything died after battling pancreatic cancer in 1983.
Not content with making the Bears a power, Halas firmly believed in the growth of pro football. He was one of the loudest voices to propose revenue sharing, realising that the huge sums of money made by the big market Bears could not be matched by smaller market teams. This was a huge help to the Bears bitterest rivals, the Green Bay Packers, who were a small market team and survived on the gate receipts received in the early days of the NFL.
After his early foray into gamesmanship, Halas became addicted to two things…well, three actually. Pro Football, the Chicago Bears, and integrity. The trophy awarded to the NFC Champions is named after the Bears benefactor. It is also a fitting tribute that, after that meeting in 1920, in which the game we know today was first-born, that the road on which the Pro Football Hall of Fame is found is called George Halas Drive. No one goes into Canton without Mr Everything knowing about it.
Neil can be found on Twitter @ndutton13 check out more in the ‘Men Who Made The Game’ series here, and join in the conversation @UKEndZone
