NEWS VOICES
Welcome to News Voices, a weekly feature where members of the WVIA News team will talk with each other — and sometimes sources — about key things we've learned in recent stories we have been working on.
The audio for today's conversation was edited by Kat Bolus.
Today Roger DuPuis sits down with Borys Krawczeniuk to discuss his recent story about upcoming celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the Pottsville Maroons' championship season.
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ROGER: Hi. I'm Roger DuPuis, and this is news voices. I'm here today with WVIA News reporter, Borys Krawczeniuk. Hello, Borys.
BORYS: Hi, there.
ROGER: Hi. So we're going to talk about football today, and a team here in the Coal Region that did something a century ago no other professional team in the region has ever done. So why don't you tell me about that.
BORYS: They are the Pottsville Maroons, and in their first season in the National Football League, in 1925, they won the National Football League Championship. That is kind of incredible, considering that the National Football League plays in big cities, and this small town won an NFL championship. I think around then they had about 20,000 people ... And that was December 6, 1925.
ROGER: Gotcha. Who did they beat in that championship?
BORYS: They beat the Chicago Cardinals. And at the time, there was no official championship, but everybody was looking at that game as the championship, because the Maroons had a nine and two record — nine wins, two losses — and Chicago had a nine win, one loss and one tie record. So the winner was considered the champion, and newspapers called it that way. The NFL looked at it that way, even though they didn't officially have a championship game then.
ROGER: And so the Cardinals still exist today, correct?
BORYS: They do. They moved to St. Louis eventually, and then eventually again, to Arizona, where they play now.
ROGER: But the Maroons do not exist.
BORYS: They do not. They went out of business five years later.
ROGER: And that championship in 1925 unfortunately ended in in some humiliation for the team. Tell us about that.
BORYS: The Maroons, months earlier, had signed up to do a game against the team from ... the University of Notre Dame, in Philadelphia, and the the team for the game included the so called Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, and they were famous football players for Notre Dame back in the early '20s. And it became a dispute over whether or not the Maroons could play on the territory of another team. At the time there were no Philadelphia Eagles, but there was a team in the Philadelphia area called the Frankford Yellow Jackets. Well, so the NFL ruled that the Maroons never got permission from either the league or the Frankford Yellow Jackets to play a game in Philadelphia. So six days after beating Chicago for the championship, they played this University of Notre Dame team — beat them nine to seven — and that kind of solidifies pro football as a real thing, because back then, colleges were considered superior to the pro game, which was a lot more disorganized, but the league looked at it unfavorably. They said that (the Maroons) had impinged on the territory of the Frankford Yellow Jackets and stripped them of the title and suspended them from the league for a while, although they reinstated them before the next season began.
ROGER: And unfortunately, that is something that has been really a painful memory for a lot of folks in Pottsville and the region.
BORYS: Yes, there have been several attempts to convince the NFL to reverse that decision and make the Maroons the 1925 NFL champions. They've all failed. But I wouldn't say the drive goes on to restore the to restore the championship. I mean, they, I'm sure they'd like it, but they are celebrating the 100th year, because in Pottsville they consider the Maroons the 1925 NFL champions.
ROGER: And so they're going to be some special events this year. Aren't there?
BORYS: Right. And the big one is August 16. They're having a dinner that's supposed to include a former Philadelphia Eagle as a speaker. And they're going to celebrate as if they won it because they did, they won it on the field.
ROGER: Absolutely. And Borys, was there anything interesting that you learned or heard in the process of reporting the story?
BORYS: Yeah, there's a lot. I mean, this team was basically recruited from the college ranks, a couple of professional players and a local guy from Edwardsville, named Tony Latone, who some people think should be in the Football Hall of Fame. And at some point, we'll do a story on Tony Latone too, I think, because that's an interesting story,
ROGER: Borys, thank you for being with me today.
BORYS: Thanks a lot. Had a good time. Thanks.
