The Birth of the Playing Professional
On Nov. 12, 1892, Heffelfinger received $500 in cash for playing in a football game. There may have been others before him, but a document unearthed by the Pro Football Hall of Fame nearly 80 years later provided the first irrefutable evidence of a person being paid to play. Heffelfinger posthumously earned the status as the country’s first professional football player.
At 6 feet 3 inches tall and 200 pounds, William “Pudge” Heffelfinger “was especially big for that era and towered over his opponents,” according to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (Pro Football Hall of Fame)
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At the time, all football players were supposed to be amateurs — many of them playing for teams created by the athletic clubs that sprang up across the country after the Civil War. With the competition between clubs becoming more intense, many tried to circumvent the restriction by finding jobs for their stars, awarding players expensive trophies or watches that they could pawn, or doubling their expense money. But none of them paid cash, at least not openly.
A Nov. 12, 1892, contest between Pittsburgh-area rivals the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club changed everything. As the game approached, both teams were determined to beef up their squads. Heffelfinger — a low-salaried railroad office employee in Omaha, Neb. — became one of their targets.
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The clubs had good reason to bid for his services. As a football All-American at Yale from 1888 to 1891, Heffelfinger was considered one of the sport’s best linemen. According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, “his size allowed him to wreak havoc on opposing lines, where it was said he would typically take out two to three players at a time.” He helped lead Yale to two undefeated and two one-loss seasons (including one incredible undefeated campaign in which it outscored its opponents 698-0).
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Heffelfinger’s post-college status, however, was typical for football’s rag-tag days. He went to work at the railroad, but continued playing for independent teams. In the weeks before the Allegheny-Pittsburgh contest, he took a leave of absence from the job to take part in a six-game tour of the East with the Chicago Athletic Association, which used the expense-money method to attract players.
The Pittsburgh Athletic Club scouted one of those games and, according to a Pittsburgh Press story at the time, offered Heffelfinger $250 to play for them on Nov. 12. Allegheny offered him $500. The star played for Allegheny and earned his keep by forcing a fumble, scooping it up and racing for a touchdown — the game’s only score.
Allegheny did not admit to paying Heffelfinger at the time, but the Hall of Fame discovered a club expense sheet that shows the $500 transaction. It calls the document “pro football’s birth certificate.”
Allegheny shelled out $250 for a different player in a Nov. 19 game, and for the 1893 season, it signed three players to contracts that promised them $50 per game. The pay-to-play model had arrived.
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