The Frankford Yellow Jackets won the NFL championship in 1926. | Photo courtesy of Print and Picture Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia
Long before the Philadelphia Eagles won the 2018 Super Bowl, and even before their pre-Super Bowl championships in 1948, 1949, and 1960, the city laid claim to another NFL title with the Frankford Yellow Jackets.
The team was founded in 1899 as the Frankford Athletic Association. They first played at a new athletic field at Oxford Avenue and Leiper Street called Wister’s Park, which was near the newly-built Frankford High School. The team later moved on to Brown’s Field on Oxford Avenue between Oakland and Pratt Streets. In 1923, their home was Frankford Stadium at Frankford Avenue and Devereaux Street, also known as Yellow Jacket Field, until its demolition in 1931 following a fire. They played sandlot games or against college teams before joining the nascent National Football League (NFL) in 1924,
Over 15,000 men bought $50 bonds to fund the franchise. Once expenses were covered, any excess income was given to Frankford-area charities at the end of each season.
When the NFL began, it allowed only 18 players on a team, so most played both offense and defense. Today’s teams are allowed up to 53 players, filling positions on offense, defense, and special teams which include punters, punt receivers, and field goal kickers, as well as having a large and equally specialized coaching staff. In the early days, it was common for the coach to be a current player as well, as in the case of Guy Chamberlin, who played end and coached the Yellow Jackets in its second and third seasons between 1925 and 1926.
Frankford Yellow Jackets football program from 1926. | Image: Public Domain
A number of other things were different in those early NFL days. The teams did not all play the same number of games in a season, and, rather than play a championship game at its end, the title was awarded to the team with the highest winning percentage by dividing its number of wins by the sum of its wins and losses, excluding ties. Also, it wasn’t until the league’s 10 season in 1929 that football regulations regarding length, circumference, and inflation pressure were established.
The Yellow Jackets were the only NFL team that had to play its home games on Saturdays because of Philadelphia’s Blue Laws that prohibited sports events on Sunday. This created a grueling schedule of playing a home game on Saturday, then boarding a train to travel to another city to play a scheduled game on Sunday.
The Yellow Jackets were an instigator in a controversy surrounding the 1925 championship, which has been debated off and on for decades. The Pottsville Maroons appeared to clinch the title over the Chicago Cardinals (now Arizona) in a late season matchup. A few days later, the Maroons went on to beat the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in an exhibition game at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Schuylkill County team was sanctioned for infringing upon the Yellow Jackets’ territory, suspended from the league, and stripped of their title, which passed on to the Cardinals. Oddly, the Chicago team generated their own scandal by recruiting four high school students to play for one of their opponents, the Milwaukee Badgers, ensuring an easy win to take the title away from the Maroons. The 58-0 game was supposed to be removed from the Cardinals’ record, but it stands to this day.
The Yellow Jackets played in the NFL for eight seasons, from 1924 to 1931. They won the championship in 1926, with coach Chamberlin at the head, in a tied shutout game against the Maroons in front of 7,000 fans on a chilly December day at Frankford Stadium.
Frankford Yellow Jackets player Henry “Two Bits” Homan in 1926 during the team’s championship season. | Photo courtesy of the Frankford Historical Society
That season, the league had grown to 22 teams, including several from cities we no longer associate with professional football, like Providence, Rhode Island (the Steamrollers), Duluth, Minnesota (the Eskimos), or Hammond, Louisiana (the Pros). Professional football at that time was not the money-making juggernaut it is today. Of those 22 teams in the 1926 NFL season, it proved to be the last for 12 of the teams. In fact, for four teams–the Brooklyn Lions, the Hartford Blues, the Los Angeles Buccaneers, and the Louisville Colonels–it was their first and last season.
Even as the NFL expanded, league teams, including the Yellow Jackets, continued to compete against college teams, which were more popular at the time. In October, 1929, The New York Times reported “Charley Rogers, star halfback for Pennsylvania in 1925 and 1926, and now playing with the Frankford Yellow Jackets, ran 50 yards for a touchdown against the Red and Blue varsity today on Franklin Field.”
At this time, some teams were growing stronger and more lucrative, but others still struggled. The year after the Yellow Jackets’ championship, the NFL decided to purge itself of weaker teams. Its membership dropped to just a dozen franchises. Over the next few years, new franchises joined the NFL, while others went out of business.
In Frankford, the Great Depression caused a decline in gate receipts, and the team went into receivership. For the 1931 season, the Yellow Jackets rented the Philadelphia Ball Park at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue for home games, hoping the city would back the team. It wasn’t enough, and they folded mid-season with a 1-6-1 record.
The Philadelphia Fire Department’s trucks in Frankford sport Yellow Jackets’ inspired logos. | Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia Fire Department
Philadelphia’s lack of a pro football team did not last long. In 1933, a new NFL franchise was awarded to a syndicate headed by Bert Bell and former Yellow Jackets player Lud Wray. Both men had played at the University of Pennsylvania–Bell as quarterback and Wray as center–and they subsequently coached there as well. The new team was christened the Philadelphia Eagles. Wray became its first head coach.
Today, the Yellow Jackets are remembered in the Pro Football Hall of Fame by the inclusion of two of its players, Guy Chamberlin and tackle William “Link” Lyman, who played in the 1925 season. As part of their 75th anniversary celebration, the Eagles paid tribute to the Yellow Jackets by wearing a uniform in Frankford’s powder blue and yellow colors.
A small tribute to the Yellow Jackets remains in the neighborhood. Engine 14 and Ladder 15 at the Philadelphia Fire Department’s station at 1652 Foulkrod Street each bear the team’s logo.