While.college football developed into a national spectacle during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, professional football was being organized and played on local and regional levels. In Pittsburgh the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club organized professional teams in the early 1890s. In 1892 the Allegheny AA hired Pudge Heffelfinger, a threetime All-American at Yale University, to play against archrival Pittsburgh AC. The Allegheny AA paid him $500 after he scooped up a fumble and ran for a touchdown to win the game. Football teams throughout western Pennsylvania continued to hire former Ivy League Ail-Americans throughout the 1890s and 1900s. In 1902 the Philadelphia Athletics and the Philadelphia Phillies baseball teams organized professional football teams in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, creating what they called the National Football League, which folded after one season.

Professional football also developed in Ohio during the 1900s. In 1903 the...