NFL saved by the Bell
Eagles owner invented the draft
In 1933 it took well over a day to traverse the 1,666.7 miles of railroad track from Minneapolis to Philadelphia. For Bert Bell the trip seemed a lot longer.
Then the owner of the lowly Philadelphia Eagles, Bell had gone west in search of what his team desperately needed: a decent football player named Stanley Kostka. As was too often the case in those days, he didn’t get his man.
Bell’s loss turned out to be a bit of good fortune for the National Football League for as Bell rode empty-handed back to Philadelphia he began to hatch an idea that would save his league and arguably all American professional sports leagues. On that long ride, the NFL draft was born.
Bell had met with Kostka several times in Minneapolis, where Kostka was a star fullback and linebacker at the University of Minnesota. Each time Bell offered him a contract, Kostka said he’d think about it. Every time he did, he asked for more money.
Eventually Bell figured out the Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise was bidding against him and his financially strapped Eagles simply could never outbid them, so he boarded the train home with a new realization. He concluded if the weak were not provided a framework to compete with the strong not only would the weak falter, but so would the league. As with most things involving pro football’s future, Bert Bell was a visionary.
He made a formal proposal to create the first college draft, a case he presented to the other eight owners on May 19, 1935, telling them according to his biographer, Robert Lyons, that, “I’ve always had a theory that pro football is like a chain. The league is no stronger than its weakest link and I’ve been a weak link for so long that I should know. Every year, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Four teams control the championship (Bears, Giants, Redskins and Packers) ... Because they are successful, they keep attracting the best college players in the open market, which makes them more successful.”
What Bell proposed was a nine-round draft with teams selecting college players in inverse order of the standings. Forever more in the NFL, as in the gospel of Matthew, the last shall be first and the first shall be last.
Initially, Chicago owner George Halas and Giants owner Tim Mara refused. They had prospered under wide-open bidding but Bell convinced Mara and Halas franchises would continue to go bankrupt and fold and eventually so would the few remaining strong teams if there was not competitive balance.
On Feb. 8-9, 1936, the first college draft was held at the Ritz in Philadelphia, a grand hotel owned by Bell’s father. Bell’s son, Upton, theorized yesterday, “If my father had not been poor as an owner after he was cut off (financially) by his father because of this ridiculous game he loved, he would have been like the other four successful owners, he would have said, ‘I’m fine’ and there would have been no draft and no 238,000 people in Philadelphia tonight screaming.”
Bell was referring to the record crowd at last night’s opening round of the 80th draft on the iconic steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum made famous in the film “Rocky.”
This past week the NFL closed down a portion of the Ben Franklin Parkway, a central Philadelphia roadway and put up a false foam façade in front of the Art Museum. The league built a series of temporary buildings surrounding the museum filled with activities and media, creating a frenzy that was a far cry from Bell’s idea in 1936.
Over those two days, 81 players were selected by the nine teams. Only 32 agreed to sign, most spurning the scuffling existence of a pro football player for more lucrative pursuits in business or college coaching.
One of those players was Bell’s first pick, Heisman Trophy-winner Jay Berwanger, whose rights he traded to Halas’ Bears for a tackle named Art Buss when he realized he couldn’t afford Berwanger’s demand of $1,000 per game. Bell was unable to sign any of his nine draftees so that draft did him no good.
What it did do, though, was save a failing football league, one where 30 years later Upton Bell would draft well enough to twice turn the Baltimore Colts into a Super Bowl team before a two-year stint building the great Patriots teams of the mid-1970s with the draft.
While Bert Bell understood better than his peers that such a draft would transform pro football, he never could have imagined the circus it is today.
“There was not one word in the newspapers about it,” Upton Bell said. “It was like Jesus being born and only the shepherds showed up. Not one story. Nobody cared. This week the biggest event, crowd-wise, in NFL history is being held and it’s his draft. My father would have liked that.”
He would have liked to sign those nine new players, instead Bert Bell got something more. He got to save the NFL from itself.