February 6, 2026 • 52 mins
During World War II, football itself was at risk. The Steagles—a hybrid of the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers—were a desperate wartime experiment. With rosters drained by the draft, the NFL turned to mostly players deemed unfit for military service. And it might be the only way the NFL can survive the war.
Special thanks to Matthew Algeo! Check out his book Last Team Standing.
*
Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English
Written by Jake Rossen
Senior Producer is Josh Fisher
Editing and Sound Design by Jonathan Washington
Additional Editing by Mary Dooe
Mixing and Mastering by Josh Fisher
Research and Fact-Checking by Jake Rossen and Austin Thompson
Voice Actors are Josh Fisher and Jonathan Washington
Original Music by Elise McCoy
Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla
Executive Producer is Jason English
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Starting that victory to the invasion of Italy. The tide
has turned. The Axis is on the run.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Spring nineteen forty three, World War II is raging. Every
able bodied man, woman, and child is giving their all
in an effort to stop the Axis powers. Resources are
being directed away from non essential industries, which is why
a man named Alexis Thompson is receiving a call from
(00:34):
back home while at an officer training school in North Carolina.
In addition to his anti aircraft artillery officer training, alex
is also the owner of a football team, a pretty
bad football team, the Philadelphia Eagles.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Lex. Yeah, Lex, we have to play a roster for
next season and it ain't good.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Ain't good as bad?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
How bad? We only got sixteen players, maybe fourteen. They healthy,
some of them have two good eyes. Some of them
it's wartime legs. Anyone have any ideas one, but you
ain't gonna like it.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
With players being drafted into military service, teams are being
depleted of manpower. The Cleveland Rams have so few athletes
they have to cancel their entire season. But the Eagles
can stay in the game if Thompson agrees to a
(01:36):
very unconventional idea they.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Want you to turn.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
Into the Steegles.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
The what.
Speaker 6 (01:50):
The Steegles?
Speaker 2 (01:52):
A hybrid team made up of the Philadelphia Eagles and
the Pittsburgh Steelers, A Frankenstein creation unparalleled in NFL history.
A benefit for the greatest generation. This Pennsylvania squad, made
(02:12):
up almost entirely of athletes deemed unfit for military service,
is the only way both teams can remain solvent, and
it might be the only way the NFL will be
able to survive the war. Welcome to Very Special Episodes
(02:34):
and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Danash Schwartz, and
this is Meet the Steegles.
Speaker 7 (02:47):
Welcome back to very Special Episodes. My name is Jason English.
I'm recording this from a hotel room in San Francisco
because we're out here for the Super Bowl. iHeart has
a long running partnership with the NFL and the NFL
podcast Network, and if you've been with us from the
very beginning, you might remember Dana Zaren and I recorded
(03:08):
an episode from the Super Bowl back in Las Vegas
a couple of years ago. I'm going to be with
Zaren at the iHeart set today Friday. If you happen
to be in the Moscone Center, Stop buy and say hello.
So we had to commit to a Super Bowl episode
topic back in December. At the time, we wanted to
(03:29):
highlight a team that maybe had a good chance to
be here. We even hedged by picking two teams, the
Eagles and the Steelers, and couldn't have been more wrong. Now,
as a New York Giants fan, if this initiated a
reverse jinks, so be it. But it is a great story.
(03:50):
Regardless of whether these teams are still alive, they've won enough.
Dana over to you.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Each year, the Super Bowl is the most watched broadcast
on television. NFL franchises are worth billions, some players tens
of millions. Our educational institutions run on football. It seems
the game has always been a gigantic spectacle that commands
(04:23):
the attention of the entire country.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
It wasn't.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
For decades, football was an afterthought while baseball dominated as
America's national pastime. The grid iron was perceived as slightly lowbrow.
During World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt publicly called
for baseball to continue as a morale booster and distraction,
(04:52):
but football. He didn't have anything to say about that
players often competed as a part time vocation, working full
time jobs to support their families while making as little
as seventy five dollars a game. Matchups were often scheduled
for dormant baseball stadiums instead of dedicated fields, and attendance
(05:15):
could be downright pathetic.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
Just a few years prior.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Roughly fifty people five zero showed up to an Eagles
home game. That team's then owner invited all of them
to the press box for hot dogs.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
If you were ranking popular sports in the US in
the nineteen forties, you're probably looking at baseball, college football, boxing,
maybe professional football somewhere after all that, So, there wasn't
the kind of popularity and enjoys today by any means.
In fact, it was really kind of hanging on by
(05:55):
a thread a few times.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
That's Matthew Alcie. Matthew is a Philadelphia native and journalist.
Back in two thousand and six, he wrote a book,
Last Team Standing, about the historic team up between the
Eagles and Steelers. A merger might sound peculiar, but not
(06:18):
when you consider what was happening at the time.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
The US had essentially entered the Second World War, and
of course when a war begins, there has to be
a draft. There already was a draft, but a lot
of the players in the NFL were called up by
the Army or the Navy and were drafted into the
armed forces, and so that really depleted the rosters of
(06:43):
all the teams at that time, and it really really
put the NFL in a bind.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
In nineteen forty two, about one third of active players
were picking up weapons. Throughout the entire duration of the conflict,
a total of six hundred thirty eight NFL players would
wind up serving That put a serious dent in each
team's lineup, and the league only made it worse by
(07:11):
perpetuating an informal but strict prohibition on black players, who
had been ostracized from the game since nineteen thirty three.
The league would not integrate until nineteen forty six. While
some teams could muddle through, others were in danger of
throwing in the tower.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
I mean they literally didn't have enough people to field
a team.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Each team could have a roster of up to twenty
eight players that made up the eleven required on the field.
The Eagles had between twelve and sixteen, the Steelers just six,
but It wasn't just numbers. The Eagles were out of
linemen and the Steelers had no running backs since the
(07:58):
Steelers were in die straits. It was the Steelers that
made the appeal for the two Pennsylvania squads to merge
to the NFL. Sewing two teams together made logical sense.
With the Cleveland Rams opting out, the association needed an
even number of teams to play out a season. They
(08:21):
had nine. With the merger, they would have eight.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
So the question was which teams do we merge now.
At the time, Chicago had two franchises. The Cardinals were
there and of course the Bears, and so it would
have made the most sense to just merge the two
Chicago franchises into one, but the other owners rejected that
idea because the Bears were so good, all they would
do is skim off the few good players the Cardinals
had and become an even better team. So the alternative
(08:48):
was proposed to merge the two Pennsylvania teams and unite
them as one team.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Keep in mind, both Pennsylvania teams were bad, very bad.
Debuting in the NFL the same year nineteen thirty three,
only the Steelers had managed one winning season, the Eagles
only won two games in nineteen forty two. When the
merger was first floated, one player observed that all that
(09:16):
meant was that there would be twice as many lousy players.
But Eagles owner Alexis Thompson believed he had a little
bit of leverage in the discussion. After all, he had
more players and wasn't as desperate as the Steelers who.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
Were on life support.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
So Thompson agreed, but on a few conditions. One the
team would use the Eagles green and white uniform color scheme,
and two most home games would be played at Philadelphia's
Shibe Park. Expenses would be split down the middle, so
would profits, but given the team's fortunes, that probably wasn't
(09:59):
going to be much of an issue. The Steelers, not
having any other options, had little choice but to agree,
so by summer nineteen forty three, the Steegles were official,
only they weren't called the Steagles. The original plan was
to call them the Eagles, with no city affiliation. It
(10:22):
was yet another concession to the eagles favored position. While
radio announcers in Philadelphia stuck to that name, fans and
sports writers had other ideas.
Speaker 6 (10:35):
The Steglers and the Steagles.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It's interesting.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
I don't think either the Eagles or the Steelers appreciated
this nickname, nor did the NFL. In fact, the NFL
never even trademarked Steagles.
Speaker 6 (10:50):
It did have a good ring to it.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
If the Patriots and Bears merged, you'd have the Pears,
the Miami Dolphins and Indianapolis Colts Thedults. Steagulls by comparison
is just fine. But there's a little bit of a
contradiction here. When you think of pro athletes, you probably
think of people who could all easily enlist.
Speaker 6 (11:14):
So why did the Steagulls or.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Any other team have any available players at all?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Across the nation, medical boards work around the clock examining
America's manpire, eyes checked, ears, tested, hearts listened to, knees bent,
and back's stray. Only the fit are cleared for service,
the rest classified and sent home. In wartime, everybody is measured,
not all are deemed ready for the front.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Well.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
One Seagulls player was simply waiting for the draft board
to call him up. Another was actually in the Army,
but stationed stateside and allowed to play football on weekends
provided it didn't interfere with his army duties. A third
had served in the Merchant Marine. But three players don't
(12:10):
make a football team. Some of the group were fathers
who had gotten deferments, though in nineteen forty three that
particular deferment was on its way out. That meant, according
to Algio's book, the bulk of the regular players, nearly
two thirds were classified as four F or unfit for
(12:32):
the draft. Though not necessarily unfit for football.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
You see bad eyesight, bad knees, ulcers, hearing problems, head injuries,
a lot of head injuries. Osteomyelitis, bone disease, hernias were
common too, So all of these guys were rejected for
military service for one reason or another.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
The Steegles had a unique injury report. A receiver was
blind in one eye partially blind in the other. A
halfback was struggling with stomach ulcers. One player was partially deaf.
But even with these players, the Steegles still needed to
round out their team. That meant recruiting other players or
(13:15):
allowing others to walk on. Merchant Marine Frank Kilroy invited
himself to Stegles training camp and was immediately accepted. Washington
Redskins backup quarterback Roy Zimmerman was brought on. And then
there was Bill Hewitt, a decorated All Pro who was
enticed out of retirement at the ripe old age of
(13:37):
thirty three. Like many players, Hewitt was at a bit
of a disadvantage. He suffered from a perforated ear drum,
which affected his hearing. Hewitt had played until nineteen thirty nine.
In the intervening years, the NFL made wearing helmet mandatory.
Hewitt hated helmets, but in his comeback he was forced
(14:00):
to don one.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
They had so few players they couldn't afford to lose
anybody to a concussion or some kind of head injury.
So Bill Hewitt actually came out of retirement. I think
he was paid five hundred dollars, which was a magnificent
sum for an NFL player at that time. And he
had to wear a helmet, and he detested it, and
he would throw that thing off as soon as he
came to the sidelines.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
These weren't the heavy duty shells of today. Plastic was
needed for the war and there wasn't enough to go
around for football helmets. These were more like padded leather
with no face masks.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
Well, you'd expect.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
That would leave the field littered with moaning or comatose players.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
It didn't turn out that way.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
According to Matthew, the lack of protection may have influenced
how the game was played.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
But they were ridiculously inefficient for the sport.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Now.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Having said that, I would say at the time the
sport was not as I don't know if I want
to say that, it was a dangerous sport to play.
It's always been a dangerous sport to play. But I
think the players appreciated that their heads were not as
protected as they are now, and they played like that.
I think sometimes today players you know, their heads are
(15:16):
like missiles. Sometimes I don't think you saw that in
the NFL. In fact, there was really an awareness of
limiting the physicality of the game.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
On July twenty first, nineteen forty three, the Steegles were ready,
or as ready as they'd ever be, for training camp
at the University of Pennsylvania's River Field. Less a band
of brothers than a band of step brothers. Players ranged
from six foot four to five foot ten, from new
(15:49):
recruits to the worn and weathered. When players started their
first practice at UPenn, there were no locker rooms. Changing
into uniforms meant ducking under bleachers. When they later moved
to Saint Joseph College Field, things hardly improved. The field
was strewn with broken glass and other trash. Hewitt was
(16:13):
seen on the field smoking a cigarette and al Lysert
showed up not knowing the teams had merged. As training
continued that summer and fall, the two teams, which had
no cohesion and no rapport, were suspicious of one another.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
There's all these new faces there that they don't know,
or there's all this new competition for their jobs that
they thought they had already proven themselves capable of holding.
And so at the beginning especially, I got the idea
that there, and the players told me there was definitely
some animosity, especially at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
It would be up to their respective coaches to promote
a sense of unity. Earl Greasie Neil was the coach
of the Eagles and Ult Keesling was the head coach
of the Steelers. Part of the merger agreement was for
the two to act as co coaches.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
Sounds like a good idea, uh.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
Greasy Neil and Walt Keesling couldn't stand each other, and
they had completely different philosophies when it came to football.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Greasy was a tall, lean, excitable man who was actually
well dressed and well groomed, making his childhood nickname sort
of ironic. Keesling was heavy set and obstinate.
Speaker 6 (17:32):
It was an.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Oil and water situation. Greasy Neil was an acquired taste. Once,
when a player hobbled off the field suspecting he had
just broken his leg, Greasy hollered back, well, get back
in there until you're sure. When a steegele halfback named
John Butler messed up a play during a scrimmage, Neil
(17:55):
was overheard to say, they shot men like Lincoln and
let you live. Keesling was hardly any better. He was
curiously anti hydration, kicking over water buckets because he believed
replenishing fluids was for WIMPs. He considered passing a non
(18:15):
manly endeavor, preferring players grab the ball and plow through
the opposition. The two coaches were often seen yelling at
each other on the sidelines, debating the finer points of
the tea formation, or disagreeing on which plays their team
needed to perfect in order to succeed. Once, when Keesling
(18:37):
had enough of Neil. He pulled all of Pittsburgh's players
off the field. This was not a great start, and
it wasn't about to get much better. Remember this was wartime.
Virtually all the players were required to have day jobs.
Many worked six days a week at factories, oil refineries,
(19:00):
or shipyards. Lineman ted Doyle worked at a plant that
he later learned was playing a key role in the war.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Ted Doyle was working for Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, and at
the time they were actually manufacturing components for the nuclear bombs.
Of course, he had no idea what they were doing.
He was just on an assembly line sticking one thing
into another. But years later he found out what the
purpose of all these devices he had.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Been making in nineteen forty three was. So it was
an interesting time for sure.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Doyle and the others spent long days toiling for a
paycheck and then trekking to practice at night. They were exhausted,
spent before they even stepped onto the field.
Speaker 6 (19:45):
At times, it seemed.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Like their shifts doubled as an excuse in case the
team stunk. In an open letter to fans, the steegles
pr director wrote that the players quote pride themselves on
their war jobs. Much as they love the grand old
gridiron game, it must take second place.
Speaker 6 (20:05):
In their affections.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
The war effort comes first.
Speaker 6 (20:09):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
After several weeks of drills, plays and awkward interactions, the
Steagles were ready or not for their season opener at
home on October second, and by home we mean the
Shibe Park baseball stadium they were allowed to use. But
how could this team possibly do battle with the best
(20:33):
the NFL had to offer? And how were they going
to handle the criticism of playing a game when some
critics believed they should be fighting a literal rather than
metaphorical war. One thing was for certain, not every Steel
was going to make it to the end of the
season when this our halftime show. In researching the story
(21:04):
of the Steagles, we couldn't help but make note of
the fact that Philadelphia has had more odd football related
stories connected to it than any other franchise. A lot
of them revolve around Philadelphia's fans. This wartime squad was
just one of many strange tales to emerge from the
(21:25):
City of Brotherly Love. For years, the Eagles held an
annual tradition at the halftime mark of every final home
game of the season, the team would produce a festive
holiday presentation, complete with a personal appearance by Santa Claus.
But on December fifteenth, nineteen sixty eight, Santa was a
(21:47):
no show. The Eagles entertainment manager got lucky he spotted
a man sitting in the crowd dressed as Santa. This
was Frank Olivo, a twenty year old Eagle fanatic who
had gotten into the habit of wearing the suit for
these end of season games. Frank agreed to lead the
(22:07):
parade of cheerleader slash elves and a brass band, waving
to the crowd and dispensing at candy canes and good cheer.
He had to go at it alone, as a sleigh
drawn by some fiberglass reindeer had gotten stuck in the mind.
But the Eagles fans weren't in the spirit. Their team
(22:28):
had played a miserable season with a two and eleven record.
Just before Frank took the field, the Eagles opponents, the
Minnesota Vikings, had just scored a fifty seven yard touchdown
to tie the game.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
To make it.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Worse, the weather was awful, with seats covered in three
inches of wet, frigid snow and slush. How dare Santa
act jolly like everything was okay? In a day that
would live in Eagle's infamy. Some of the fifty four
thousand fans in attendance began to boo. Then they began
(23:08):
to scoop up that snow, form it into projectiles and
launch them at Santa. Suddenly Santa was being pelted with
snowballs from every corner of the stadium. Some eye witnesses
to this Santa assault claimed Frank's suit was dingy, that
(23:32):
he looked disheveled, that his beard was patchy. Others thought
he might have been drinking, which Alivo denied. Why Eagles
fans would find alcohol consumption objectionable is unknown. At one point,
Santo was able to identify one of his assailants, looking
him directly in the eye. Santa shouted, you're not getting
(23:55):
anything for Christmas. It did not help the situation. Santo
was soon escorted off the field before a snowball stuffed
with rocks or worse could find its way to him.
The Eagles would go on to lose to the Vikings
twenty four to seventeen, putting them at two and twelve
for the season, and while this senseless mob violence could
(24:19):
have been brushed under the rug, the scene was apparently
picked up by famous sports commentator Howard Cassell, who aired
it on the news show ABC Weekend Report for a
national audience. Frank Olivo never seemed to harbor much of
a grudge about it, though Eagles management didn't seem that contrite.
Speaker 6 (24:40):
By way of apology, they.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Sent him a pair of Eagles cufflings and asked if
you wouldn't mind doing it again next year.
Speaker 6 (24:48):
Frank wisely declined. Just eleven years.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Later, the Eagles would find themselves with a visitor of
a different kind. Tom Garvey was a Vietnam vet who
accepted an invitation to work at Veterans Stadium, home of
the Eagles in Philadelphia. His two uncles had the concessions
stand contract, which could be quite lucrative when you consider
(25:15):
how many hundreds of thousands of hungry people stream through
each football.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
And baseball season.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
They also had the parking contract, and Tom was put
in charge of corraling parking for those many fans. One day,
Tom discovered the stadium had an unused concession area just
above the visiting team's bullpen that seemed to be off
everyone's radar.
Speaker 6 (25:43):
One newly drafted.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Player wound up storing some of his furniture in the area,
not wanting to move it into an apartment until he
knew for certain he'd be staying with the team.
Speaker 6 (25:54):
Turns out he didn't.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
He told Tom to keep the furniture or toss it,
whatever he preferred. Then the Pope visited Philadelphia, and, in
Garvey's telling, this posed a logistical nightmare for veterans stadium parking.
This led to the last minute recruitment of various bar buddies,
(26:16):
and since he was concerned about his bar buddies showing
up on time the next morning, he used the leftover
furniture to fashion a sleepover in the offices. One of
his friends noted that if they had cleaned up and
rearranged the furniture, it would be a pretty awesome apartment,
which Garvey created inside the football stadium. At roughly sixty
(26:41):
feet long by thirty feet wide, it was bigger than
some of the places in Philly, and it was practically
impossible to stumble into By accident. Tom stacked a bunch
of empty cardboard boxes near the entrance, so anyone who
opened the door would simply assume for storage and move on.
(27:03):
Because he was a valued employee, no one ever really
questioned why it seemed like he was.
Speaker 6 (27:08):
There at all hours of the day.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
The commute to work was easy. Tom simply rolled out
of bed. If he needed the bathroom, he could use
the one in his office, a shower that was in
the locker room. At night, when the stadium was empty,
he roller skated around in a circle or just took
in the view of the city skyline. Solitary time, he
(27:33):
said later, had helped alleviate some of the post traumatic
stress left over from the war. Sometimes he could hear
the stomp of the crowd's feet as they anticipated a kickoff.
Tom lived inside the stadium, rent free and totally undetected
from nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty one the Eagle's
(27:58):
version of The Phantom of the Opera. When his uncles
lost the Veterans Stadium contract, Garvey lost his job, His
apartment didn't come to light until twenty twenty, when Tom
began reminiscing about it on Facebook. His entries were later
(28:18):
collected and expanded into a self published book titled The
Secret apartment. And while you might think this sounds like
a highly dubious tale, it turns out there were people,
including former Eagles players, who corroborated Tom's story of the
unauthorized living quarters. He invited people into his pad several times,
(28:44):
trusting they wouldn't snitch. No one ever did. Our remaining
Eagle's misadventure begins in nineteen ninety seven, when the team
was enduring a tough home loss to the San Francisco
forty nine Ers. Suddenly, an irate fan from New Jersey
(29:05):
drew a flare gun he had carried into the stadium.
He shot it into the seats on the opposite side.
While no one was injured, it was the last straw
for Eagles management. There were so many fights, altercations, and
other disruptions that the team decided to see that justice
(29:26):
was served quickly. The team and city officials agreed to
take the exceptional step of installing a courtroom inside Veterans Stadium.
They approached Judge Seamus McCaffrey, a no nonsense jurist, veteran
and former homicide detective who once wrestled an aggressive defendant
(29:49):
to the ground by the neck. He also helped pioneer
the so called nuisance court problem, where crimes related to
quality of life could be heard quickly think noise, ordinance issues,
or public drunkenness. Perhaps the city felt McCaffrey's past history
with the heavily inebriated would be relevant. Just one week
(30:14):
after the Flare Gun incident, Judge McCaffrey began presiding over
Eagle's Court. That first session saw a parade of brawlers, drunks,
and other malcontents get arraigned swiftly, sometimes while not completely
over the effects of their over indulging. Some criticized the
(30:37):
practicality of asking a drunk to enter a plea at all,
but Judge McCaffrey insisted they had been given time to
sober up. The cases ran the spectrum from fistfights to
being a public menace. A fan once snuck onto the
field and sat down next to quarterback Donovan McNabb, as
(31:01):
though he belonged there, he didn't. One man brought before
the court was accused of launching an empty bottle at arrival,
accompanied by his young son. He insisted the kid had
done it. Another was so eager to take a souvenir
from the stadium that he ripped a toilet seat from
(31:22):
a bathroom he ran around the concourse with it draped
over his head. Law enforcement even went so far as
to have undercover cops dress as the opposing team's fans,
hoping to entice the over zealous Eagle supporters into doing
something that could get them arrested. If they were found guilty,
(31:45):
the consequences could be drastic. In addition to a fine
of up to three hundred and fifty dollars, the offender's
season tickets could be revoked, a drastic step that led
at least one defendant who begin crying in court. Eagles
Justice lasted just one season on site before moving to
(32:09):
a nearby police station in nineteen ninety eight, though Judge
McCaffrey presided over at least one session. In two thousand
and three, When the Eagles moved to their new Lincoln Stadium,
high tech camera surveillance made the idea of a court
system largely a thing.
Speaker 7 (32:28):
Of the past.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
McCaffrey also cited a lack of police being willing to
arrest rather than just eject troublemakers. The arena does, however,
still have its own jail cells, just in case someone
gets careless with the flare gun or decides they've had
enough of Santa. On October second, nineteen forty three, the
(32:58):
Steagles made their regular season debut. While there was definitely
curiosity over this new team, it didn't result in a
lot of people in the stands. Just over eleven thousand
attendees filed into Shibe Park in Philadelphia.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
Despite being a home game.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
The Steelers players had to travel three hundred miles by
train from Pittsburgh. Their opponents the Brooklyn Dodgers, who shared
the same name as their athletic peers in baseball. For
the Steegles, this would be a test of how well
they had managed to fuse together in preseason practice. What
(33:42):
happened was nothing short of astonishing. The Steegles defense held
the Dodgers at bay, preventing them from scoring even a
single touchdown.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
Steagles quarterback Roy.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Zimmerman doubled as kicker, nailing a field goal and two
extra points, with halfbacks John Butler and Ernie Steele contributing
a touchdown each. This motley crew of players won their
debut seventeen to nothing.
Speaker 6 (34:14):
You could call it.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Defying expectations, though there really weren't any expectations at all.
Their second game against the New York Giants was a
much tougher hill to climb. The Giants quickly went up
fourteen to nothing in the first quarter, with the Steegles
unable to mount any effective offense. In fact, they set
(34:38):
a league record for fumbles with ten. But it's possible
that wasn't all their fault. Here's Matthew Algio again.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
And so I think a lot of the effect of
wartime shortages were felt in that, but they were also
felt in equipment. I mean, the players talked about how
all the equipment was worn out over e used. Even
the balls themselves would become so smooth and slippery they
were hard to hold. That was one of the excuses
they gave for all the fumbles.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Jack Hinkle had a stellar appearance, rushing for thirty seven
yards on one play. In fact, that sprint should have
given him the rushing lead for the entire league that season. Unfortunately,
for Hinkel, his record setting gain was never properly recorded
by the statistician, thanks in part to Hinkle. However, the
(35:33):
Steegles came roaring back in the second half to win
twenty eight to fourteen, what had started as curiosity was
quickly turning into real fan supports for the team. The
Steegles had come at an interesting time in football, when
games were often the only form of entertainment on a Sunday.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
So football was uniquely positioned to become a popular pastime
during the war. Most of the stadiums were located on
trolley line so people could get to them easily without
expending any gas rations, and the games were on Sunday,
so anybody could attend them.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
That was most people's day off.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
And so the combination of the steagles early success, combined
with the accessibility of the product.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Really I think it brought out a lot of fans.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Part of the reason behind the Steagles performance was camaraderie.
Greasy Neil insisted the bulk of the team live in
a dorm like setting the Hotel Philadelphian. After practice, the
men would sleep two to three per room, having little
choice but to interact and find they had more in
(36:50):
common than they thought. Leaving bottles of beer to chill
on the windowsill, they spoke of their families, their jobs,
and the game they all loved to play enough to
play for a relative pittance.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
Come Thanksgiving, they dined together.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Greezy Neil was really an interesting character, really a kind
of groundbreaking in some of his techniques in football. He
really believed in developing camaraderie between the team, which is
one of the reasons he insisted they all lived together,
that they all traveled together.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Neil and Keasling had also found some common ground, though
fans weren't necessarily fond of the excitable Neil. Once the
coach got so worked up over a play that he
collapsed on the sidelines. As he was hauled away by medics,
the Philadelphia crowd cheered.
Speaker 6 (37:39):
Santa never had a chance. There was no question the.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Steegles and the NFL as a whole, was contributing to
wartime morale. During their first exhibition game, the team had
peddled war bombs to attendees. Many people believed sports were
a welcome and needed distraction to the tragedy and stress
of the conflict, but the game wasn't without its critics.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
I asked the players about that.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
I think there were eight Steegles that I interviewed who
were still alive at the time, and all of them
said that they did get some abuse from fans for playing.
Why aren't you in the military. Why aren't you in
the army? Why aren't you serving? Why aren't you overseas?
Why aren't you fighting?
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Some fans understood others had sons dodging gunfire and were
angry when they saw pro athletes strolling along the streets
or throwing a ball. Legendary boxer and naval commander Gene
Tunney added fuel to the fire when he insisted that quote,
if a man is physically fit to play football, then
(38:52):
he is physically fit for the biggest game of all.
Tunny believed if football couldn't field enough men, then play
should be suspended.
Speaker 6 (39:01):
For the duration of the war.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
It was an understandable sentiment, but one that lacked comprehension
of physical requirements for military enrollment. Take Bill Hewitt, the
Steagle's newly unretired star. His perforated ear drum meant he
would be more susceptible to the kind of chemical weapons
(39:25):
used in wartime. Exposure could result in his permanent hearing
loss or worse. Or consider other players who had partial blindness.
Their compromised senses could put themselves and their fellow soldiers
in danger. While the risk of worsening physical injury was
present in football, it likely wasn't going to be life threatening,
(39:49):
but the criticism continued. Players received hate mail and threats
from what some might call the aggressively patriotic. By mid season,
Bill Hewitt had had enough. He abruptly quit the Steagles.
While he was definitely over the hill by football standards
(40:10):
of the era, it's possible the harassment more on him.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
It is ambiguous. I'm not sure how Hewitt felt personally
about it. He had a perforated ear drum, so there
was no doubt he was ineligible for service. I think
Hewitt's problem was he was out of shape and he
was a shadow of his former self, and I think
he was unable to continue that way. I think as
(40:35):
soon as he realized that he couldn't play up to
the standard that he had played at before.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
By this point, the Steagules were struggling. After arousing two
and zero start, they dropped two games, including a rematch
with the Giants in New York and a loss to
the Chicago Bears.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
The Bears had another advantage. They were an older team,
and so that meant there were a lot of fathers
on the team. And in nineteen forty three, fathers were
except from the draft, and so they were pretty much
a powerhouse in nineteen forty three, and so I don't
think a lot of people were surprised that the Steagles
were defeated by the Bears.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Across both games, the team gave up a staggering ninety points.
The effort stirred Greasy Neil, who dropped one of his
patented pep talks, saying, you can't win ball games in
this league by playing high school football. At one point,
Greasy even intimated some players could be canned, but it
(41:40):
was a pretty hollow threat. They didn't have a single
player to spare. The steagles losing streak was broken in
their first home game in Pittsburgh, where they trounced the
Cardinals thirty four to thirteen. Then came the oddest contest
of their season, a meeting with the undefeated Washington Redskins
(42:01):
in Philadelphia. By now the Steegles flock was growing. There
were now almost twenty nine thousand fans in attendance, nearly
tripling the number from their first game. The two teams
traded touchdowns until the closing moments, when Steegel Ray Graves
(42:22):
leapt into the air to intercept a pass just twelve
yards from the goal line, perhaps motivated by the losses.
The play was so rough that they ripped not one
but two jerseys off the body of Redskins quarterback Sammy Baugh.
The game ended, but there was no winner. It was
(42:45):
a fourteen to fourteen tie at the time, and in
terms of rankings, that meant it was as if the
game had never been played at all. There was no
regular season overtime, a policy that wouldn't change until ninety
team seventy four, and even if there were, there was
no logistical way to extend the gameplay.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
You also have to remember there were so many limits
on resources during the war that the idea of playing
over time was untenable because it would require more electricity
or require more resources. It would keep people away from
home longer. If the game went into the night, there
might be blackout restrictions.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
The Steegles won two of their next three games, including
a win in a Redskins rematch, bringing them to unlikely territory.
For their final game of the regular season, they were
pitted against the Green Bay Packers. It was a match
that with a bit of luck could have put them
(43:46):
in contention for the championship game. It was a place
unfamiliar to fans in Pennsylvania of either team being on
the winning side, and.
Speaker 4 (43:57):
So it was really until the last game of the
season they captured the fans' attention. I mean, every game
they played was meaningful that year, and that had never
happened in Philadelphia before.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
With the Eagles.
Speaker 6 (44:12):
It was a tall order.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Packers had a perfect sixteen to zho record against both
teams combined, and though the Steagles had ailments before the
season started, they were collecting more of them. Players had stitches,
broken fingers, head injuries, but this being the nineteen forties
(44:35):
and wartime, the plan was the same, get on the
field until you can't. The crowd at Shibe Park was
a sellout at just over thirty four thousand, cheering on
the Seagulls as quarterbacks Roy Zimmerman and Ali Sherman led
(44:55):
the way.
Speaker 6 (44:57):
But it was the.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Packers who excelled with tight and Don Houston almost single
handedly ruining the Steagles night. He scored two touchdowns and
kicked a field goal as the Packers won thirty eight
to twenty eight. The Steagles fell short of first place,
trudging off their home field in defeat with a total
(45:22):
five four and one record for the season.
Speaker 6 (45:26):
But was it really a defeat.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
I think people were very disappointed when the Steagles lost
that last game to the Packers, and it denied them
a chance to go on into a playoff to play
in the championship game. But I don't think a lot
of people were surprised, and I think a lot of
people were happy, pleased, pleasantly surprised that the Steagles finished
with a winning record.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
From game one to game ten, the team had tripled
their attendance numbers. Against all odds, they had managed to
overcome a football version of a shotgun wedding, finishing just
one game behind the first place Giants and Redskins. Individually,
(46:08):
the teams had been perennial losers. Together, they had nearly
gone the distance. More importantly, they had kept two teams
active during a challenging time for players and franchises. Some
of the innovations born out of necessity, like having coaches
(46:28):
take on offensive and defensive responsibilities, became standard. Matthew Algio
believes the Steegules did more than that, though he says
there's a case to be made for the Steagules keeping
the NFL alive during one of its most vulnerable periods.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
Ultimately, it was decided that yes, they would continue playing,
but they could only do it if they made this
change by combining two teams, the Steelers of the Eagles,
and so by combining the Steelers and the Eagles, by
creating the Steagles, that allowed the NFL to continue as
an eighteen league in nineteen forty three, and again they
(47:08):
were an eighteen league in nineteen forty four. If the
owners had opposed that, If the owners had said, no,
we won't let two teams combine, who knows.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
But it's entirely plausible.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
It's entirely possible that the NFL would have suspended operations
in nineteen forty three.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Would that have killed the league?
Speaker 4 (47:26):
It would have made it a lot harder for the
league to compete with the All American Football Conference, which
was an alternative, a competing pro league that was founded,
I believe in nineteen forty eight, a couple years after
the war.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Without the merger, who knows what would have become of
the league. Maybe we'd all be watching the All America
Football Conference Bowl.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
But I think it's entirely possible that if those two
teams had not merged, if the league had suspended operations,
the NFL as it exists today would look very, very different.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
The Steagles dissolved after the nineteen forty five three season.
Though there was still a player shortage, it wasn't as
severe for the Eagles as before. The union seemed to
fire their engines up within the decade. The team took
the NFL championship twice, in nineteen forty eight and nineteen
(48:18):
forty nine. Pittsburgh, however, still needed assistance. In nineteen forty four,
they paired with the Chicago Cardinals, but they didn't have
nearly the same result. That hybrid team went allowsy and ten,
leading some sportswriters to dub them the Carpets, why because
(48:40):
everyone else in the NFL could walk all over them.
In two thousand and three, the Steelers honored their steagal
history by inviting six surviving members of the team to
a home game. The last Steagle passed in twenty sixteen.
All of the Steagles who took to the field that
(49:01):
season deserve.
Speaker 6 (49:02):
Applause for their parts in the war effort. Willing but
unable to serve.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
They supported the country in the way they could by
playing the game of football.
Speaker 6 (49:17):
So why do the.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Eagles have such a rich history. No other team in
the NFL can boast of beaming cheerleader Elves with snowballs,
stitch themselves to a neighboring squad, and divert drunks with
stolen toilet seeds to a fully functional stadium courtroom. What
makes them arguably the most colorful, chaotic franchise in the league.
Speaker 4 (49:42):
I don't know if there's something in the water or not.
I think it's a combination of the intensity of the
fans and just the colorful characters that the Eagles have
had on the team over the years. I guess maybe
because of the fan base, you get these great anecdotes.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
But you also have to remember this.
Speaker 4 (50:02):
The Eagles were so bad for the longest time. I mean,
they were founded in thirty three, couldn't even play games
on Sunday at the time, didn't have a winning season
until they merged with the Steelers and became the Steegles.
You get those teams in the late forties, that's when
you really begin to see the fan base come alive
(50:25):
for the Eagles.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
In a way, maybe it was the Steegles that ushered
in a new era of fanatic For the first time,
Philadelphia football fans had something to cheer for. An upstart,
ragtag team that defied the odds, a bunch of players
that were reflections of fans in the stands, hard working,
(50:49):
blue collar people who persevered fighting through money problems, health problems,
and fatigue, who learned to work together out of necessity.
If football was and is a metaphor for conflict, it's
also a metaphor for life. If the Steegles could do it,
maybe you could too.
Speaker 5 (51:17):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and
Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode
was written by Jake Rosson, editing and sound design by
Jonathan Washington, mixing and mastering by Josh Fisher. Additional editing
(51:40):
by Mary Doo, Research and fact checking by Jake Rosson
and Austin Thompson. Original music by Alis McCoy, Show logo
by Lucy Quintonia. Our executive producer is Jason English. We'll
be back here on Wednesday with an Olympics episode. For now,
(52:01):
enjoy the Super Bowl, enjoy the opening ceremonies, and we'll
see you back here next week. Very Special Episodes is
a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Starting that victory to the invasion of Italy. The tide
has turned. The Axis is on the run.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Spring nineteen forty three, World War II is raging. Every
able bodied man, woman, and child is giving their all
in an effort to stop the Axis powers. Resources are
being directed away from non essential industries, which is why
a man named Alexis Thompson is receiving a call from
(00:34):
back home while at an officer training school in North Carolina.
In addition to his anti aircraft artillery officer training, alex
is also the owner of a football team, a pretty
bad football team, the Philadelphia Eagles.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Lex. Yeah, Lex, we have to play a roster for
next season and it ain't good.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Ain't good as bad?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
How bad? We only got sixteen players, maybe fourteen. They healthy,
some of them have two good eyes. Some of them
it's wartime legs. Anyone have any ideas one, but you
ain't gonna like it.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
With players being drafted into military service, teams are being
depleted of manpower. The Cleveland Rams have so few athletes
they have to cancel their entire season. But the Eagles
can stay in the game if Thompson agrees to a
(01:36):
very unconventional idea they.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Want you to turn.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
Into the Steegles.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
The what.
Speaker 6 (01:50):
The Steegles?
Speaker 2 (01:52):
A hybrid team made up of the Philadelphia Eagles and
the Pittsburgh Steelers, A Frankenstein creation unparalleled in NFL history.
A benefit for the greatest generation. This Pennsylvania squad, made
(02:12):
up almost entirely of athletes deemed unfit for military service,
is the only way both teams can remain solvent, and
it might be the only way the NFL will be
able to survive the war. Welcome to Very Special Episodes
(02:34):
and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Danash Schwartz, and
this is Meet the Steegles.
Speaker 7 (02:47):
Welcome back to very Special Episodes. My name is Jason English.
I'm recording this from a hotel room in San Francisco
because we're out here for the Super Bowl. iHeart has
a long running partnership with the NFL and the NFL
podcast Network, and if you've been with us from the
very beginning, you might remember Dana Zaren and I recorded
(03:08):
an episode from the Super Bowl back in Las Vegas
a couple of years ago. I'm going to be with
Zaren at the iHeart set today Friday. If you happen
to be in the Moscone Center, Stop buy and say hello.
So we had to commit to a Super Bowl episode
topic back in December. At the time, we wanted to
(03:29):
highlight a team that maybe had a good chance to
be here. We even hedged by picking two teams, the
Eagles and the Steelers, and couldn't have been more wrong. Now,
as a New York Giants fan, if this initiated a
reverse jinks, so be it. But it is a great story.
(03:50):
Regardless of whether these teams are still alive, they've won enough.
Dana over to you.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Each year, the Super Bowl is the most watched broadcast
on television. NFL franchises are worth billions, some players tens
of millions. Our educational institutions run on football. It seems
the game has always been a gigantic spectacle that commands
(04:23):
the attention of the entire country.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
It wasn't.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
For decades, football was an afterthought while baseball dominated as
America's national pastime. The grid iron was perceived as slightly lowbrow.
During World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt publicly called
for baseball to continue as a morale booster and distraction,
(04:52):
but football. He didn't have anything to say about that
players often competed as a part time vocation, working full
time jobs to support their families while making as little
as seventy five dollars a game. Matchups were often scheduled
for dormant baseball stadiums instead of dedicated fields, and attendance
(05:15):
could be downright pathetic.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
Just a few years prior.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Roughly fifty people five zero showed up to an Eagles
home game. That team's then owner invited all of them
to the press box for hot dogs.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
If you were ranking popular sports in the US in
the nineteen forties, you're probably looking at baseball, college football, boxing,
maybe professional football somewhere after all that, So, there wasn't
the kind of popularity and enjoys today by any means.
In fact, it was really kind of hanging on by
(05:55):
a thread a few times.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
That's Matthew Alcie. Matthew is a Philadelphia native and journalist.
Back in two thousand and six, he wrote a book,
Last Team Standing, about the historic team up between the
Eagles and Steelers. A merger might sound peculiar, but not
(06:18):
when you consider what was happening at the time.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
The US had essentially entered the Second World War, and
of course when a war begins, there has to be
a draft. There already was a draft, but a lot
of the players in the NFL were called up by
the Army or the Navy and were drafted into the
armed forces, and so that really depleted the rosters of
(06:43):
all the teams at that time, and it really really
put the NFL in a bind.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
In nineteen forty two, about one third of active players
were picking up weapons. Throughout the entire duration of the conflict,
a total of six hundred thirty eight NFL players would
wind up serving That put a serious dent in each
team's lineup, and the league only made it worse by
(07:11):
perpetuating an informal but strict prohibition on black players, who
had been ostracized from the game since nineteen thirty three.
The league would not integrate until nineteen forty six. While
some teams could muddle through, others were in danger of
throwing in the tower.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
I mean they literally didn't have enough people to field
a team.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Each team could have a roster of up to twenty
eight players that made up the eleven required on the field.
The Eagles had between twelve and sixteen, the Steelers just six,
but It wasn't just numbers. The Eagles were out of
linemen and the Steelers had no running backs since the
(07:58):
Steelers were in die straits. It was the Steelers that
made the appeal for the two Pennsylvania squads to merge
to the NFL. Sewing two teams together made logical sense.
With the Cleveland Rams opting out, the association needed an
even number of teams to play out a season. They
(08:21):
had nine. With the merger, they would have eight.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
So the question was which teams do we merge now.
At the time, Chicago had two franchises. The Cardinals were
there and of course the Bears, and so it would
have made the most sense to just merge the two
Chicago franchises into one, but the other owners rejected that
idea because the Bears were so good, all they would
do is skim off the few good players the Cardinals
had and become an even better team. So the alternative
(08:48):
was proposed to merge the two Pennsylvania teams and unite
them as one team.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Keep in mind, both Pennsylvania teams were bad, very bad.
Debuting in the NFL the same year nineteen thirty three,
only the Steelers had managed one winning season, the Eagles
only won two games in nineteen forty two. When the
merger was first floated, one player observed that all that
(09:16):
meant was that there would be twice as many lousy players.
But Eagles owner Alexis Thompson believed he had a little
bit of leverage in the discussion. After all, he had
more players and wasn't as desperate as the Steelers who.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
Were on life support.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
So Thompson agreed, but on a few conditions. One the
team would use the Eagles green and white uniform color scheme,
and two most home games would be played at Philadelphia's
Shibe Park. Expenses would be split down the middle, so
would profits, but given the team's fortunes, that probably wasn't
(09:59):
going to be much of an issue. The Steelers, not
having any other options, had little choice but to agree,
so by summer nineteen forty three, the Steegles were official,
only they weren't called the Steagles. The original plan was
to call them the Eagles, with no city affiliation. It
(10:22):
was yet another concession to the eagles favored position. While
radio announcers in Philadelphia stuck to that name, fans and
sports writers had other ideas.
Speaker 6 (10:35):
The Steglers and the Steagles.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It's interesting.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
I don't think either the Eagles or the Steelers appreciated
this nickname, nor did the NFL. In fact, the NFL
never even trademarked Steagles.
Speaker 6 (10:50):
It did have a good ring to it.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
If the Patriots and Bears merged, you'd have the Pears,
the Miami Dolphins and Indianapolis Colts Thedults. Steagulls by comparison
is just fine. But there's a little bit of a
contradiction here. When you think of pro athletes, you probably
think of people who could all easily enlist.
Speaker 6 (11:14):
So why did the Steagulls or.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Any other team have any available players at all?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Across the nation, medical boards work around the clock examining
America's manpire, eyes checked, ears, tested, hearts listened to, knees bent,
and back's stray. Only the fit are cleared for service,
the rest classified and sent home. In wartime, everybody is measured,
not all are deemed ready for the front.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Well.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
One Seagulls player was simply waiting for the draft board
to call him up. Another was actually in the Army,
but stationed stateside and allowed to play football on weekends
provided it didn't interfere with his army duties. A third
had served in the Merchant Marine. But three players don't
(12:10):
make a football team. Some of the group were fathers
who had gotten deferments, though in nineteen forty three that
particular deferment was on its way out. That meant, according
to Algio's book, the bulk of the regular players, nearly
two thirds were classified as four F or unfit for
(12:32):
the draft. Though not necessarily unfit for football.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
You see bad eyesight, bad knees, ulcers, hearing problems, head injuries,
a lot of head injuries. Osteomyelitis, bone disease, hernias were
common too, So all of these guys were rejected for
military service for one reason or another.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
The Steegles had a unique injury report. A receiver was
blind in one eye partially blind in the other. A
halfback was struggling with stomach ulcers. One player was partially deaf.
But even with these players, the Steegles still needed to
round out their team. That meant recruiting other players or
(13:15):
allowing others to walk on. Merchant Marine Frank Kilroy invited
himself to Stegles training camp and was immediately accepted. Washington
Redskins backup quarterback Roy Zimmerman was brought on. And then
there was Bill Hewitt, a decorated All Pro who was
enticed out of retirement at the ripe old age of
(13:37):
thirty three. Like many players, Hewitt was at a bit
of a disadvantage. He suffered from a perforated ear drum,
which affected his hearing. Hewitt had played until nineteen thirty nine.
In the intervening years, the NFL made wearing helmet mandatory.
Hewitt hated helmets, but in his comeback he was forced
(14:00):
to don one.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
They had so few players they couldn't afford to lose
anybody to a concussion or some kind of head injury.
So Bill Hewitt actually came out of retirement. I think
he was paid five hundred dollars, which was a magnificent
sum for an NFL player at that time. And he
had to wear a helmet, and he detested it, and
he would throw that thing off as soon as he
came to the sidelines.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
These weren't the heavy duty shells of today. Plastic was
needed for the war and there wasn't enough to go
around for football helmets. These were more like padded leather
with no face masks.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
Well, you'd expect.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
That would leave the field littered with moaning or comatose players.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
It didn't turn out that way.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
According to Matthew, the lack of protection may have influenced
how the game was played.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
But they were ridiculously inefficient for the sport.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Now.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Having said that, I would say at the time the
sport was not as I don't know if I want
to say that, it was a dangerous sport to play.
It's always been a dangerous sport to play. But I
think the players appreciated that their heads were not as
protected as they are now, and they played like that.
I think sometimes today players you know, their heads are
(15:16):
like missiles. Sometimes I don't think you saw that in
the NFL. In fact, there was really an awareness of
limiting the physicality of the game.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
On July twenty first, nineteen forty three, the Steegles were ready,
or as ready as they'd ever be, for training camp
at the University of Pennsylvania's River Field. Less a band
of brothers than a band of step brothers. Players ranged
from six foot four to five foot ten, from new
(15:49):
recruits to the worn and weathered. When players started their
first practice at UPenn, there were no locker rooms. Changing
into uniforms meant ducking under bleachers. When they later moved
to Saint Joseph College Field, things hardly improved. The field
was strewn with broken glass and other trash. Hewitt was
(16:13):
seen on the field smoking a cigarette and al Lysert
showed up not knowing the teams had merged. As training
continued that summer and fall, the two teams, which had
no cohesion and no rapport, were suspicious of one another.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
There's all these new faces there that they don't know,
or there's all this new competition for their jobs that
they thought they had already proven themselves capable of holding.
And so at the beginning especially, I got the idea
that there, and the players told me there was definitely
some animosity, especially at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
It would be up to their respective coaches to promote
a sense of unity. Earl Greasie Neil was the coach
of the Eagles and Ult Keesling was the head coach
of the Steelers. Part of the merger agreement was for
the two to act as co coaches.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
Sounds like a good idea, uh.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
Greasy Neil and Walt Keesling couldn't stand each other, and
they had completely different philosophies when it came to football.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Greasy was a tall, lean, excitable man who was actually
well dressed and well groomed, making his childhood nickname sort
of ironic. Keesling was heavy set and obstinate.
Speaker 6 (17:32):
It was an.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Oil and water situation. Greasy Neil was an acquired taste. Once,
when a player hobbled off the field suspecting he had
just broken his leg, Greasy hollered back, well, get back
in there until you're sure. When a steegele halfback named
John Butler messed up a play during a scrimmage, Neil
(17:55):
was overheard to say, they shot men like Lincoln and
let you live. Keesling was hardly any better. He was
curiously anti hydration, kicking over water buckets because he believed
replenishing fluids was for WIMPs. He considered passing a non
(18:15):
manly endeavor, preferring players grab the ball and plow through
the opposition. The two coaches were often seen yelling at
each other on the sidelines, debating the finer points of
the tea formation, or disagreeing on which plays their team
needed to perfect in order to succeed. Once, when Keesling
(18:37):
had enough of Neil. He pulled all of Pittsburgh's players
off the field. This was not a great start, and
it wasn't about to get much better. Remember this was wartime.
Virtually all the players were required to have day jobs.
Many worked six days a week at factories, oil refineries,
(19:00):
or shipyards. Lineman ted Doyle worked at a plant that
he later learned was playing a key role in the war.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Ted Doyle was working for Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, and at
the time they were actually manufacturing components for the nuclear bombs.
Of course, he had no idea what they were doing.
He was just on an assembly line sticking one thing
into another. But years later he found out what the
purpose of all these devices he had.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Been making in nineteen forty three was. So it was
an interesting time for sure.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Doyle and the others spent long days toiling for a
paycheck and then trekking to practice at night. They were exhausted,
spent before they even stepped onto the field.
Speaker 6 (19:45):
At times, it seemed.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Like their shifts doubled as an excuse in case the
team stunk. In an open letter to fans, the steegles
pr director wrote that the players quote pride themselves on
their war jobs. Much as they love the grand old
gridiron game, it must take second place.
Speaker 6 (20:05):
In their affections.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
The war effort comes first.
Speaker 6 (20:09):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
After several weeks of drills, plays and awkward interactions, the
Steagles were ready or not for their season opener at
home on October second, and by home we mean the
Shibe Park baseball stadium they were allowed to use. But
how could this team possibly do battle with the best
(20:33):
the NFL had to offer? And how were they going
to handle the criticism of playing a game when some
critics believed they should be fighting a literal rather than
metaphorical war. One thing was for certain, not every Steel
was going to make it to the end of the
season when this our halftime show. In researching the story
(21:04):
of the Steagles, we couldn't help but make note of
the fact that Philadelphia has had more odd football related
stories connected to it than any other franchise. A lot
of them revolve around Philadelphia's fans. This wartime squad was
just one of many strange tales to emerge from the
(21:25):
City of Brotherly Love. For years, the Eagles held an
annual tradition at the halftime mark of every final home
game of the season, the team would produce a festive
holiday presentation, complete with a personal appearance by Santa Claus.
But on December fifteenth, nineteen sixty eight, Santa was a
(21:47):
no show. The Eagles entertainment manager got lucky he spotted
a man sitting in the crowd dressed as Santa. This
was Frank Olivo, a twenty year old Eagle fanatic who
had gotten into the habit of wearing the suit for
these end of season games. Frank agreed to lead the
(22:07):
parade of cheerleader slash elves and a brass band, waving
to the crowd and dispensing at candy canes and good cheer.
He had to go at it alone, as a sleigh
drawn by some fiberglass reindeer had gotten stuck in the mind.
But the Eagles fans weren't in the spirit. Their team
(22:28):
had played a miserable season with a two and eleven record.
Just before Frank took the field, the Eagles opponents, the
Minnesota Vikings, had just scored a fifty seven yard touchdown
to tie the game.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
To make it.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Worse, the weather was awful, with seats covered in three
inches of wet, frigid snow and slush. How dare Santa
act jolly like everything was okay? In a day that
would live in Eagle's infamy. Some of the fifty four
thousand fans in attendance began to boo. Then they began
(23:08):
to scoop up that snow, form it into projectiles and
launch them at Santa. Suddenly Santa was being pelted with
snowballs from every corner of the stadium. Some eye witnesses
to this Santa assault claimed Frank's suit was dingy, that
(23:32):
he looked disheveled, that his beard was patchy. Others thought
he might have been drinking, which Alivo denied. Why Eagles
fans would find alcohol consumption objectionable is unknown. At one point,
Santo was able to identify one of his assailants, looking
him directly in the eye. Santa shouted, you're not getting
(23:55):
anything for Christmas. It did not help the situation. Santo
was soon escorted off the field before a snowball stuffed
with rocks or worse could find its way to him.
The Eagles would go on to lose to the Vikings
twenty four to seventeen, putting them at two and twelve
for the season, and while this senseless mob violence could
(24:19):
have been brushed under the rug, the scene was apparently
picked up by famous sports commentator Howard Cassell, who aired
it on the news show ABC Weekend Report for a
national audience. Frank Olivo never seemed to harbor much of
a grudge about it, though Eagles management didn't seem that contrite.
Speaker 6 (24:40):
By way of apology, they.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Sent him a pair of Eagles cufflings and asked if
you wouldn't mind doing it again next year.
Speaker 6 (24:48):
Frank wisely declined. Just eleven years.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Later, the Eagles would find themselves with a visitor of
a different kind. Tom Garvey was a Vietnam vet who
accepted an invitation to work at Veterans Stadium, home of
the Eagles in Philadelphia. His two uncles had the concessions
stand contract, which could be quite lucrative when you consider
(25:15):
how many hundreds of thousands of hungry people stream through
each football.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
And baseball season.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
They also had the parking contract, and Tom was put
in charge of corraling parking for those many fans. One day,
Tom discovered the stadium had an unused concession area just
above the visiting team's bullpen that seemed to be off
everyone's radar.
Speaker 6 (25:43):
One newly drafted.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Player wound up storing some of his furniture in the area,
not wanting to move it into an apartment until he
knew for certain he'd be staying with the team.
Speaker 6 (25:54):
Turns out he didn't.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
He told Tom to keep the furniture or toss it,
whatever he preferred. Then the Pope visited Philadelphia, and, in
Garvey's telling, this posed a logistical nightmare for veterans stadium parking.
This led to the last minute recruitment of various bar buddies,
(26:16):
and since he was concerned about his bar buddies showing
up on time the next morning, he used the leftover
furniture to fashion a sleepover in the offices. One of
his friends noted that if they had cleaned up and
rearranged the furniture, it would be a pretty awesome apartment,
which Garvey created inside the football stadium. At roughly sixty
(26:41):
feet long by thirty feet wide, it was bigger than
some of the places in Philly, and it was practically
impossible to stumble into By accident. Tom stacked a bunch
of empty cardboard boxes near the entrance, so anyone who
opened the door would simply assume for storage and move on.
(27:03):
Because he was a valued employee, no one ever really
questioned why it seemed like he was.
Speaker 6 (27:08):
There at all hours of the day.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
The commute to work was easy. Tom simply rolled out
of bed. If he needed the bathroom, he could use
the one in his office, a shower that was in
the locker room. At night, when the stadium was empty,
he roller skated around in a circle or just took
in the view of the city skyline. Solitary time, he
(27:33):
said later, had helped alleviate some of the post traumatic
stress left over from the war. Sometimes he could hear
the stomp of the crowd's feet as they anticipated a kickoff.
Tom lived inside the stadium, rent free and totally undetected
from nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty one the Eagle's
(27:58):
version of The Phantom of the Opera. When his uncles
lost the Veterans Stadium contract, Garvey lost his job, His
apartment didn't come to light until twenty twenty, when Tom
began reminiscing about it on Facebook. His entries were later
(28:18):
collected and expanded into a self published book titled The
Secret apartment. And while you might think this sounds like
a highly dubious tale, it turns out there were people,
including former Eagles players, who corroborated Tom's story of the
unauthorized living quarters. He invited people into his pad several times,
(28:44):
trusting they wouldn't snitch. No one ever did. Our remaining
Eagle's misadventure begins in nineteen ninety seven, when the team
was enduring a tough home loss to the San Francisco
forty nine Ers. Suddenly, an irate fan from New Jersey
(29:05):
drew a flare gun he had carried into the stadium.
He shot it into the seats on the opposite side.
While no one was injured, it was the last straw
for Eagles management. There were so many fights, altercations, and
other disruptions that the team decided to see that justice
(29:26):
was served quickly. The team and city officials agreed to
take the exceptional step of installing a courtroom inside Veterans Stadium.
They approached Judge Seamus McCaffrey, a no nonsense jurist, veteran
and former homicide detective who once wrestled an aggressive defendant
(29:49):
to the ground by the neck. He also helped pioneer
the so called nuisance court problem, where crimes related to
quality of life could be heard quickly think noise, ordinance issues,
or public drunkenness. Perhaps the city felt McCaffrey's past history
with the heavily inebriated would be relevant. Just one week
(30:14):
after the Flare Gun incident, Judge McCaffrey began presiding over
Eagle's Court. That first session saw a parade of brawlers, drunks,
and other malcontents get arraigned swiftly, sometimes while not completely
over the effects of their over indulging. Some criticized the
(30:37):
practicality of asking a drunk to enter a plea at all,
but Judge McCaffrey insisted they had been given time to
sober up. The cases ran the spectrum from fistfights to
being a public menace. A fan once snuck onto the
field and sat down next to quarterback Donovan McNabb, as
(31:01):
though he belonged there, he didn't. One man brought before
the court was accused of launching an empty bottle at arrival,
accompanied by his young son. He insisted the kid had
done it. Another was so eager to take a souvenir
from the stadium that he ripped a toilet seat from
(31:22):
a bathroom he ran around the concourse with it draped
over his head. Law enforcement even went so far as
to have undercover cops dress as the opposing team's fans,
hoping to entice the over zealous Eagle supporters into doing
something that could get them arrested. If they were found guilty,
(31:45):
the consequences could be drastic. In addition to a fine
of up to three hundred and fifty dollars, the offender's
season tickets could be revoked, a drastic step that led
at least one defendant who begin crying in court. Eagles
Justice lasted just one season on site before moving to
(32:09):
a nearby police station in nineteen ninety eight, though Judge
McCaffrey presided over at least one session. In two thousand
and three, When the Eagles moved to their new Lincoln Stadium,
high tech camera surveillance made the idea of a court
system largely a thing.
Speaker 7 (32:28):
Of the past.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
McCaffrey also cited a lack of police being willing to
arrest rather than just eject troublemakers. The arena does, however,
still have its own jail cells, just in case someone
gets careless with the flare gun or decides they've had
enough of Santa. On October second, nineteen forty three, the
(32:58):
Steagles made their regular season debut. While there was definitely
curiosity over this new team, it didn't result in a
lot of people in the stands. Just over eleven thousand
attendees filed into Shibe Park in Philadelphia.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
Despite being a home game.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
The Steelers players had to travel three hundred miles by
train from Pittsburgh. Their opponents the Brooklyn Dodgers, who shared
the same name as their athletic peers in baseball. For
the Steegles, this would be a test of how well
they had managed to fuse together in preseason practice. What
(33:42):
happened was nothing short of astonishing. The Steegles defense held
the Dodgers at bay, preventing them from scoring even a
single touchdown.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
Steagles quarterback Roy.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Zimmerman doubled as kicker, nailing a field goal and two
extra points, with halfbacks John Butler and Ernie Steele contributing
a touchdown each. This motley crew of players won their
debut seventeen to nothing.
Speaker 6 (34:14):
You could call it.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Defying expectations, though there really weren't any expectations at all.
Their second game against the New York Giants was a
much tougher hill to climb. The Giants quickly went up
fourteen to nothing in the first quarter, with the Steegles
unable to mount any effective offense. In fact, they set
(34:38):
a league record for fumbles with ten. But it's possible
that wasn't all their fault. Here's Matthew Algio again.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
And so I think a lot of the effect of
wartime shortages were felt in that, but they were also
felt in equipment. I mean, the players talked about how
all the equipment was worn out over e used. Even
the balls themselves would become so smooth and slippery they
were hard to hold. That was one of the excuses
they gave for all the fumbles.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Jack Hinkle had a stellar appearance, rushing for thirty seven
yards on one play. In fact, that sprint should have
given him the rushing lead for the entire league that season. Unfortunately,
for Hinkel, his record setting gain was never properly recorded
by the statistician, thanks in part to Hinkle. However, the
(35:33):
Steegles came roaring back in the second half to win
twenty eight to fourteen, what had started as curiosity was
quickly turning into real fan supports for the team. The
Steegles had come at an interesting time in football, when
games were often the only form of entertainment on a Sunday.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
So football was uniquely positioned to become a popular pastime
during the war. Most of the stadiums were located on
trolley line so people could get to them easily without
expending any gas rations, and the games were on Sunday,
so anybody could attend them.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
That was most people's day off.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
And so the combination of the steagles early success, combined
with the accessibility of the product.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Really I think it brought out a lot of fans.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Part of the reason behind the Steagles performance was camaraderie.
Greasy Neil insisted the bulk of the team live in
a dorm like setting the Hotel Philadelphian. After practice, the
men would sleep two to three per room, having little
choice but to interact and find they had more in
(36:50):
common than they thought. Leaving bottles of beer to chill
on the windowsill, they spoke of their families, their jobs,
and the game they all loved to play enough to
play for a relative pittance.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
Come Thanksgiving, they dined together.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Greezy Neil was really an interesting character, really a kind
of groundbreaking in some of his techniques in football. He
really believed in developing camaraderie between the team, which is
one of the reasons he insisted they all lived together,
that they all traveled together.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Neil and Keasling had also found some common ground, though
fans weren't necessarily fond of the excitable Neil. Once the
coach got so worked up over a play that he
collapsed on the sidelines. As he was hauled away by medics,
the Philadelphia crowd cheered.
Speaker 6 (37:39):
Santa never had a chance. There was no question the.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Steegles and the NFL as a whole, was contributing to
wartime morale. During their first exhibition game, the team had
peddled war bombs to attendees. Many people believed sports were
a welcome and needed distraction to the tragedy and stress
of the conflict, but the game wasn't without its critics.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
I asked the players about that.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
I think there were eight Steegles that I interviewed who
were still alive at the time, and all of them
said that they did get some abuse from fans for playing.
Why aren't you in the military. Why aren't you in
the army? Why aren't you serving? Why aren't you overseas?
Why aren't you fighting?
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Some fans understood others had sons dodging gunfire and were
angry when they saw pro athletes strolling along the streets
or throwing a ball. Legendary boxer and naval commander Gene
Tunney added fuel to the fire when he insisted that quote,
if a man is physically fit to play football, then
(38:52):
he is physically fit for the biggest game of all.
Tunny believed if football couldn't field enough men, then play
should be suspended.
Speaker 6 (39:01):
For the duration of the war.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
It was an understandable sentiment, but one that lacked comprehension
of physical requirements for military enrollment. Take Bill Hewitt, the
Steagle's newly unretired star. His perforated ear drum meant he
would be more susceptible to the kind of chemical weapons
(39:25):
used in wartime. Exposure could result in his permanent hearing
loss or worse. Or consider other players who had partial blindness.
Their compromised senses could put themselves and their fellow soldiers
in danger. While the risk of worsening physical injury was
present in football, it likely wasn't going to be life threatening,
(39:49):
but the criticism continued. Players received hate mail and threats
from what some might call the aggressively patriotic. By mid season,
Bill Hewitt had had enough. He abruptly quit the Steagles.
While he was definitely over the hill by football standards
(40:10):
of the era, it's possible the harassment more on him.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
It is ambiguous. I'm not sure how Hewitt felt personally
about it. He had a perforated ear drum, so there
was no doubt he was ineligible for service. I think
Hewitt's problem was he was out of shape and he
was a shadow of his former self, and I think
he was unable to continue that way. I think as
(40:35):
soon as he realized that he couldn't play up to
the standard that he had played at before.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
By this point, the Steagules were struggling. After arousing two
and zero start, they dropped two games, including a rematch
with the Giants in New York and a loss to
the Chicago Bears.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
The Bears had another advantage. They were an older team,
and so that meant there were a lot of fathers
on the team. And in nineteen forty three, fathers were
except from the draft, and so they were pretty much
a powerhouse in nineteen forty three, and so I don't
think a lot of people were surprised that the Steagles
were defeated by the Bears.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Across both games, the team gave up a staggering ninety points.
The effort stirred Greasy Neil, who dropped one of his
patented pep talks, saying, you can't win ball games in
this league by playing high school football. At one point,
Greasy even intimated some players could be canned, but it
(41:40):
was a pretty hollow threat. They didn't have a single
player to spare. The steagles losing streak was broken in
their first home game in Pittsburgh, where they trounced the
Cardinals thirty four to thirteen. Then came the oddest contest
of their season, a meeting with the undefeated Washington Redskins
(42:01):
in Philadelphia. By now the Steegles flock was growing. There
were now almost twenty nine thousand fans in attendance, nearly
tripling the number from their first game. The two teams
traded touchdowns until the closing moments, when Steegel Ray Graves
(42:22):
leapt into the air to intercept a pass just twelve
yards from the goal line, perhaps motivated by the losses.
The play was so rough that they ripped not one
but two jerseys off the body of Redskins quarterback Sammy Baugh.
The game ended, but there was no winner. It was
(42:45):
a fourteen to fourteen tie at the time, and in
terms of rankings, that meant it was as if the
game had never been played at all. There was no
regular season overtime, a policy that wouldn't change until ninety
team seventy four, and even if there were, there was
no logistical way to extend the gameplay.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
You also have to remember there were so many limits
on resources during the war that the idea of playing
over time was untenable because it would require more electricity
or require more resources. It would keep people away from
home longer. If the game went into the night, there
might be blackout restrictions.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
The Steegles won two of their next three games, including
a win in a Redskins rematch, bringing them to unlikely territory.
For their final game of the regular season, they were
pitted against the Green Bay Packers. It was a match
that with a bit of luck could have put them
(43:46):
in contention for the championship game. It was a place
unfamiliar to fans in Pennsylvania of either team being on
the winning side, and.
Speaker 4 (43:57):
So it was really until the last game of the
season they captured the fans' attention. I mean, every game
they played was meaningful that year, and that had never
happened in Philadelphia before.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
With the Eagles.
Speaker 6 (44:12):
It was a tall order.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Packers had a perfect sixteen to zho record against both
teams combined, and though the Steagles had ailments before the
season started, they were collecting more of them. Players had stitches,
broken fingers, head injuries, but this being the nineteen forties
(44:35):
and wartime, the plan was the same, get on the
field until you can't. The crowd at Shibe Park was
a sellout at just over thirty four thousand, cheering on
the Seagulls as quarterbacks Roy Zimmerman and Ali Sherman led
(44:55):
the way.
Speaker 6 (44:57):
But it was the.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Packers who excelled with tight and Don Houston almost single
handedly ruining the Steagles night. He scored two touchdowns and
kicked a field goal as the Packers won thirty eight
to twenty eight. The Steagles fell short of first place,
trudging off their home field in defeat with a total
(45:22):
five four and one record for the season.
Speaker 6 (45:26):
But was it really a defeat.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
I think people were very disappointed when the Steagles lost
that last game to the Packers, and it denied them
a chance to go on into a playoff to play
in the championship game. But I don't think a lot
of people were surprised, and I think a lot of
people were happy, pleased, pleasantly surprised that the Steagles finished
with a winning record.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
From game one to game ten, the team had tripled
their attendance numbers. Against all odds, they had managed to
overcome a football version of a shotgun wedding, finishing just
one game behind the first place Giants and Redskins. Individually,
(46:08):
the teams had been perennial losers. Together, they had nearly
gone the distance. More importantly, they had kept two teams
active during a challenging time for players and franchises. Some
of the innovations born out of necessity, like having coaches
(46:28):
take on offensive and defensive responsibilities, became standard. Matthew Algio
believes the Steegules did more than that, though he says
there's a case to be made for the Steagules keeping
the NFL alive during one of its most vulnerable periods.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
Ultimately, it was decided that yes, they would continue playing,
but they could only do it if they made this
change by combining two teams, the Steelers of the Eagles,
and so by combining the Steelers and the Eagles, by
creating the Steagles, that allowed the NFL to continue as
an eighteen league in nineteen forty three, and again they
(47:08):
were an eighteen league in nineteen forty four. If the
owners had opposed that, If the owners had said, no,
we won't let two teams combine, who knows.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
But it's entirely plausible.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
It's entirely possible that the NFL would have suspended operations
in nineteen forty three.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Would that have killed the league?
Speaker 4 (47:26):
It would have made it a lot harder for the
league to compete with the All American Football Conference, which
was an alternative, a competing pro league that was founded,
I believe in nineteen forty eight, a couple years after
the war.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Without the merger, who knows what would have become of
the league. Maybe we'd all be watching the All America
Football Conference Bowl.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
But I think it's entirely possible that if those two
teams had not merged, if the league had suspended operations,
the NFL as it exists today would look very, very different.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
The Steagles dissolved after the nineteen forty five three season.
Though there was still a player shortage, it wasn't as
severe for the Eagles as before. The union seemed to
fire their engines up within the decade. The team took
the NFL championship twice, in nineteen forty eight and nineteen
(48:18):
forty nine. Pittsburgh, however, still needed assistance. In nineteen forty four,
they paired with the Chicago Cardinals, but they didn't have
nearly the same result. That hybrid team went allowsy and ten,
leading some sportswriters to dub them the Carpets, why because
(48:40):
everyone else in the NFL could walk all over them.
In two thousand and three, the Steelers honored their steagal
history by inviting six surviving members of the team to
a home game. The last Steagle passed in twenty sixteen.
All of the Steagles who took to the field that
(49:01):
season deserve.
Speaker 6 (49:02):
Applause for their parts in the war effort. Willing but
unable to serve.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
They supported the country in the way they could by
playing the game of football.
Speaker 6 (49:17):
So why do the.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Eagles have such a rich history. No other team in
the NFL can boast of beaming cheerleader Elves with snowballs,
stitch themselves to a neighboring squad, and divert drunks with
stolen toilet seeds to a fully functional stadium courtroom. What
makes them arguably the most colorful, chaotic franchise in the league.
Speaker 4 (49:42):
I don't know if there's something in the water or not.
I think it's a combination of the intensity of the
fans and just the colorful characters that the Eagles have
had on the team over the years. I guess maybe
because of the fan base, you get these great anecdotes.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
But you also have to remember this.
Speaker 4 (50:02):
The Eagles were so bad for the longest time. I mean,
they were founded in thirty three, couldn't even play games
on Sunday at the time, didn't have a winning season
until they merged with the Steelers and became the Steegles.
You get those teams in the late forties, that's when
you really begin to see the fan base come alive
(50:25):
for the Eagles.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
In a way, maybe it was the Steegles that ushered
in a new era of fanatic For the first time,
Philadelphia football fans had something to cheer for. An upstart,
ragtag team that defied the odds, a bunch of players
that were reflections of fans in the stands, hard working,
(50:49):
blue collar people who persevered fighting through money problems, health problems,
and fatigue, who learned to work together out of necessity.
If football was and is a metaphor for conflict, it's
also a metaphor for life. If the Steegles could do it,
maybe you could too.
Speaker 5 (51:17):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and
Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode
was written by Jake Rosson, editing and sound design by
Jonathan Washington, mixing and mastering by Josh Fisher. Additional editing
(51:40):
by Mary Doo, Research and fact checking by Jake Rosson
and Austin Thompson. Original music by Alis McCoy, Show logo
by Lucy Quintonia. Our executive producer is Jason English. We'll
be back here on Wednesday with an Olympics episode. For now,
(52:01):
enjoy the Super Bowl, enjoy the opening ceremonies, and we'll
see you back here next week. Very Special Episodes is
a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.