Джозеф Карр: Отец Профессионального Футбола

American football executive, owner

Joseph Francis Carr (October 22, 1879 – May 20, 1939) was an American sports executive in football, baseball, and basketball. He is best known as the president of the National Football League from 1921 until 1939. He was also one of the founders and president of the American Basketball League (ABL) from 1925 to 1927. He was also the promotional director for Minor League Baseball's governing body from 1933 to 1939, leading an expansion of the minor leagues from 12 to 40 leagues operating in 279 cities with 4,200 players and attendance totaling 15,500,000. A native and lifelong resident of Columbus, Ohio, Carr worked in his early years as a machinist for the Panhandle Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad and a sports writer for a Columbus newspaper. While working for the Panhandle Division, he founded the Famous Panhandle White Sox baseball team in approximately 1900. He also revived the Columbus Panhandles football team in 1907, manning the team with railroad employees. The Panhandles became one of the inaugural members of the American Professional Football Association (APFA), which was renamed the National Football League (NFL) in 1922. From 1921 until his death in 1939, Carr served as president of the NFL. He oversaw the growth of the league from its origins, principally in small or medium sized cities in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois into a national league with teams in major cities. During his tenure, many of the NFL's premier franchises were established, including the New York Giants, Pittsburgh Steelers, Philadelphia Eagles, Detroit Lions and Washington Redskins. Called the "Father of Professional Football", Carr was one of the 17 inaugural inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963.

Carr was born Joseph Francis Karr on October 23, 1879, at his parents' home in the Irish neighborhood on the East End of Columbus, Ohio. His father, Michael Karr, was a shoemaker who was born in Ireland in 1841 and immigrated to the United States in 1864. and a younger brother, Edward. In the late 1880s, Carr's father became a sewer contractor, and in 1898 his mother died at age 58. At some point prior to the 1900 Census, the family changed its name to "Carr". While working for the newspaper, he continued to also work as a machinist for the railroad.

In 1900, Carr organized a baseball team made up of employees of the railroad's Panhandle Division. The team, known as the Famous Panhandle White Sox, played in the Capital City League and the Saturday Afternoon League in Columbus for several years. He secured players from the railroad shop where he worked. The core of Carr's Panhandles teams were six Nesser brothers who worked at the shop and were excellent athletes. To save on expenses, the players, who were railroad employees, used their passes to ride the train for free and practiced during the lunch hour on the railroad yards. Over the next 13 years, the Panhandles became known as a traveling team, as Carr saved money on travel expenses and stadium rental by playing mostly road games. In 1921, the Fort Wayne Journal called the Panhandles the "most renowned professional football aggregation in the country." Carr also continued his association with professional baseball while running the Panhandles, serving for several years as the secretary/treasurer and later president of the Ohio State League, a minor league baseball circuit. As early as 1917, Carr was one of the leading advocates of a plan to develop a national professional football league. Sources are not in agreement as to what role, if any, he played in the formation of the American Professional Football Association (APFA), which later became the National Football League (NFL). However, once the APFA was formed in 1920, Carr's Panhandles played in the league's inaugural season. The 1920 Panhandles team played only one home game and compiled a 2–7–2 record.

At the annual meeting of the APFA held in Akron, Ohio, on April 30, 1921, Carr was elected as the organization's president. He was re elected president in January 1922, and he held that position for 18 years until his death in 1939. Carr moved the APFA's headquarters to Columbus, drafted a league constitution and by laws, gave teams territorial rights, developed membership criteria for the franchises, and issued standings for the first time, so that the APFA would have a clear champion. Carr also began cleaning up other problems. By 1925, he introduced a standard player's contract, fashioned after the ones being used in pro baseball, so players couldn't jump from one team to another. Carr also declared that players under contract from the previous season could not be approached by another team unless first declared a free agent, thus introducing the reserve clause to professional football.

In the early 20th century, college football was the dominant version of the sport, and professional teams would sometimes pay college players to play for them, often under assumed names. The practice was considered questionable ethically, resulting in taint being associated with the professional game. In order to remove the taint, and to engender peaceful relations with the college game, Carr made it one of his first goals as league president to impose a strict ban of the use of college football players. Indeed, at the same meeting at which Carr was elected president, the APFA adopted a rule prohibiting teams from using players who had not completed their college course. In January 1922, Carr responded with the severest possible action, kicking the Packers out of the APFA. A few months later, a group headed by future Hall of Famer Curly Lambeau applied for and was granted the Green Bay franchise. The 1925 Chicago Cardinals Milwaukee Badgers scandal followed four years later. In December 1925, four high school students played for the Milwaukee Badgers in a game against the Chicago Cardinals. Carr responded by imposing stiff penalties. The Milwaukee club was fined $500 and given 90 days within which to "dispose of all its club assets at which time the management must retire from the league." The issue arose again when Red Grange, star halfback of the University of Illinois football team, signed with the Chicago Bears. Grange played his final college game on November 21, signed with the Bears the next day, and appeared in his first professional game on November 26. Two weeks later, Ernie Nevers signed a professional football contract for $50,000. To help ease tensions and promote the professional game in the college circles, Carr established a rule prohibiting college players to sign with professional teams until after their class had graduated. These decisions gave the NFL credibility and much needed support from the colleges and universities from across the country.

Carr faced numerous challenges as the league's president. One of the principal challenges was expanding the league to a national scope. In 1920, 11 of the league's 14 teams were located in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, including franchises in small cities such as Akron, Decatur, Rock Island, Canton, Hammond and Muncie. Carr believed that the league needed to model itself after Major League Baseball with teams in the country's largest cities. In 1922, the APFA changed its name to the National Football League, reflecting Carr's goal of building a professional football league that was national in scope. Another challenge was fostering stability in the league's membership. In 1921, the APFA had 21 teams. Through the 1920s, NFL franchises were constantly setting up and then folding. From 1920 through 1932, 19 teams lasted one year and 11 teams lasted two years. During his tenure as league president, Carr sought to recruit financially capable owners to operate teams in the nation's largest cities. He oversaw the establishment of successful teams in the nation's largest cities, including the following:
In January 1922, George Halas was granted a franchise to operate the Chicago Bears at Cubs Park. Halas took over the franchise previously known as the Decatur Staleys, which under Halas' leadership had won the APFA championship and begun paying its home games in Chicago in October 1921. Halas acquired ownership of the club from A. E. Staley and remained the owner of the Bears until his death in 1983. In 1925, and after rejecting applications submitted by numerous candidates seeking to operate a franchise in New York City, Carr recruited Tim Mara to start a club in New York City known as the New York Giants. As a testament to Carr's pursuit of stable ownership, the Rooney family continues to own the Steelers. In 1934, he oversaw the move of the Portsmouth Spartans to Detroit, where they were renamed the Detroit Lions. In 1937, the Cleveland Rams joined the NFL. (The Rams moved to Los Angeles nine years later.) At the same time, many of the teams in smaller cities either moved or were dissolved altogether. One of the casualties was Carr's original team, the Panhandles. They were renamed the Tigers in 1923, and played for four more seasons before dissolving after the 1926 season. By 1937, the National Football League had reduced its membership to ten teams with nine of the ten teams located in major cities that also had Major League Baseball teams. In three years as the league's president, he helped establish clubs in Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Rochester, Cleveland, Fort Wayne and Chicago, and negotiated with the operators of the Philadelphia Arena and Madison Square Garden to install professional basketball teams in those facilities. He remained president of the Senators until early 1931, when the club was sold to the St. Louis Cardinals, and Carr was replaced by future National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Larry MacPhail. In January 1933, Carr was hired as the promotional director for the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, the governing body for Minor League Baseball. He was also given a seat on the organization's executive committee and charged with developing "a program to rehabilitate minor league baseball."

Carr married Josephine Marie Sullivan on June 27, 1911, at St. Dominic's Church in Columbus, Ohio. They had two children, Mary Agnes, (born October 13, 1913) and Joseph Francis Jr. (born October 1, 1915). In February 1939, Carr was unanimously reelected as president of the NFL, this time for a 10 year term. Carr reported at the time that the NFL attendance in 1938 had increased by 14% to 937,167 in 25 league games. Three months after his reelection, on May 20, 1939, Carr suffered a heart attack and was taken to a Columbus hospital where he died several hours later. Carr had a prior heart attack in September 1937, resulting in a hospitalization lasting several weeks. Carr's funeral was held at the Holy Rosary Church in Columbus and was attended by leaders of the NFL. Carr was buried at St. Joseph Cemetery, located approximately 10 miles south of Columbus in Lockbourne, Ohio.