In the autumn of 1920, in a small automobile showroom in Canton, Ohio, a group of football men met to solve a problem that had haunted their sport for years. Professional football at the time was a scattered affair, a chaotic mosaic of barnstorming teams, hastily arranged matchups, and inconsistent rules. Spectators were few, contracts were often broken, and many games carried more violence than strategy. These men wanted to bring structure, reputation, and perhaps even permanence to the sport they loved. They founded a league. It was called the American Professional Football Association, and though no one present could have known it, it would one day become the National Football League.
To symbolize the new league’s legitimacy and to offer a reward for excellence in its inaugural season, a gesture was made that now echoes faintly through history. A representative from the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, a manufacturer better known for billiard tables and gym equipment than for anything to do with football, stepped forward with an offering. The company’s tire division had donated a trophy, a silver loving cup, that would be awarded to the team judged to be the champion of the league’s first season. This was not a trophy earned through a playoff bracket or mathematical calculations. It would be awarded through a vote of the league’s team representatives, and a democratic decision would be made at the end of the season.
The rules governing the cup were simple. The winning team would hold the trophy for a year, and if any franchise managed to win the league championship three times, the cup would become theirs to keep. It was a tradition borrowed from older sports like boxing and horse racing, where trophies often passed from champion to champion unless earned outright through repeated success. It was a hopeful gesture, creating an enduring symbol meant to connect past, present, and future. It was also, as it turned out, the beginning of a mystery.
The 1920 season unfolded with all the unpredictability and drama one might expect from a brand new league built on uncertain foundations. Teams came and went during the season. Rules were revised on the fly. Scheduling was flexible to the point of chaos. The Akron Pros, led by coach Elgie Tobin and powered by a fierce defense, steadily built a record that would eventually read eight wins, zero losses, and three ties. Their star player was Fritz Pollard, a trailblazing halfback whose presence on the field defied the racial barriers of the time. Pollard’s speed and determination helped carry Akron through a season where points were scarce and physicality was abundant.
Despite their undefeated record, Akron’s claim to the championship was not without dispute. The Buffalo All-Americans and the Decatur Staleys, who had drawn games with Akron, also believed they had a legitimate claim to the title. The team representatives gathered to vote at a meeting held in April 1921. What should have been a routine decision quickly grew complicated. The league’s president and vice president were both absent, and Art Ranney, co-owner of the Akron Pros, instead chaired the meeting. When the final vote awarded the championship to Akron, suspicions of bias were inevitable. Though there is no direct evidence of impropriety, the circumstances left a lingering discomfort. It did not help that the rules for determining a champion were so vaguely defined that almost any interpretation could be justified.
The Akron players were honored with individual keepsakes. Each was given a gold fob with the words “World Champions 1920” and their initials. The trophy, the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Cup itself, was presumably presented to the team as well. But from that moment on, it vanished from the public eye. It was never mentioned again in official meeting notes. It was not photographed, celebrated, or even casually referenced in the growing archives of the league. Its disappearance went unnoticed at first, because professional football was still a minor sport in the early 1920s. There were no grand ceremonies, TV broadcasts, or reporters clamoring for access. The entire league operated in a space of obscurity, and so the loss of its first championship trophy did not register as significant at the time.
Years passed, and the league evolved. It gained teams and fans. It adopted new rules and moved games to larger stadiums. It survived the Great Depression and the Second World War, and eventually became the most popular sports league in the United States. Along the way, the story of the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Cup became a historical footnote, buried under decades of expansion, television deals, and Super Bowl parades. Only much later, as historians and archivists began to assemble the official record of the league’s early days, did anyone begin to ask the obvious question. What happened to the cup?
Today, the trophy’s existence is confirmed only by a brief mention in the minutes of the 1920 founding meeting and a blurry photograph that once appeared in a pair of newspapers. The Pro Football Hall of Fame does not record the cup’s design, location, or eventual fate. Theories abound. Some believe it may have remained with a member of the Akron team or management and ended up forgotten in an attic, stored in a box among other mementos from a long-past career. Others speculate that the cup could have been lost during a move or even melted down during World War II as part of the metal collection efforts that swept the country. There is no clear evidence supporting any of these theories. The cup disappeared.
Its absence is a curiosity and a reminder of how fragile beginnings can be. The NFL, now a multibillion-dollar institution with teams worth billions and players known worldwide, began with a meeting of twelve men in a car dealership. The first trophy ever awarded to a professional football champion is missing, and that loss underscores the improvised nature of the league’s origin. No one at the time imagined that people would still care about that trophy a century later. They were not building a legacy. They were trying to survive the following season.
The mystery of the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Cup has now taken on a life of its own. For some, it has become the Holy Grail of lost sports artifacts, a missing piece of the NFL’s mythic past. For others, it is simply a fascinating relic, a symbol of a time when football was still a local, uncertain, and profoundly human affair. If the cup is ever found, it will no doubt be placed in a museum, polished and preserved behind glass. But even if it remains lost forever, its story continues to echo, a whisper from the earliest days of America’s game, when men with muddy cleats and rough leather helmets played not for fame or fortune, but for the chance to be remembered.
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