LOUDONVILLE — With the National Football League draft looming, it seemed only natural to reflect on Loudonville’s influence on the historic organization.
The NFL has a long, and storied history in Ohio; including famous teams and names such as the Canton Bulldogs led by Jim Thorpe and the Akron Professional’s who won the league’s first championship, to Charles Follis who became the first professional black football player with the Shelby Blues and Fritz Pollard as the first black head coach with the Akron Pros.
It continued all the way through to the modern era when Paul Brown’s AAFC upstart team from Cleveland played in its league championship game every year of its first decade in existence (a feat still unrivaled by any other professional team in any major sport). Though largely forgotten today, one early influence in the sport hailed from Loudonville.
Though football had been played professionally for decades, teams were often financially unstable, mired in scandal and corruption, and had been heavily impacted or completely shuttered due to World War I and the Spanish Flu.
In 1920, four teams met in an automobile dealership in Canton, Ohio to discuss forming a new league; those four teams were the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians (not to be confused with the baseball team), and the Dayton Triangles. Those teams formed the American Professional Football Conference.
A month later the league expanded to include the Hammond Pros and Muncie Flyers of Indiana, Rochester Jeffersons from New York, Rock Island Independents, Decatur Staleys, and Racine Cardinals from Illinois.
The name was changed to the American Professional Football Association and Jim Thorpe (still playing for Canton) was elected as the first president, capitalizing on his fame to help establish the new league.
The first APFA game was played on Oct/ 3, 1920 by the Dayton Triangles and the Columbus Panhandles at Triangle Park in Dayton, Ohio. Just as many early teams were owned by local businesses (such as the Acme Packing Company’s “Packers” in Green Bay), the Triangles were owned by Loudonville-native Charles Kettering and his business partner, Edward Deeds.
The two men collectively owned three companies: Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco), Dayton Metal Products Company, and the Domestic Engineering Company (Delco-Light). The three factories formed a triangle, and to promote employee recreation, Kettering purchased the land between the factories, naming it Triangle Park.
The Triangle’s football team first formed in 1916, preceding the APFA, and the roster was comprised of the employees of the three factories and managed by volunteer Carl Storck, who knew Kettering and Deeds from their time at National Cash Register.
At that first matchup, nearly 4,000 fans shelled out $1.75 each to witness history being made (though surely they didn’t realize it at the time). The players were each paid approximately $50, or about $650 after adjusting for inflation in 2021.
The game got off to a slow start, but in the third quarter the Triangle’s Lou Partlow punched across the goal line for the AFPA’s first official touchdown. Partlow was a powerful runner, and a fan favorite, who had practiced blocking by running at full-speed through the forest, dodging, and occasionally running into trees. The distinct running style, and heavy hitting, earned him the nickname of “The Battering Ram.”
Dayton’s Francis Bacon then punched in a second touchdown, and George “Hobby” Kinderdine booted in both extra points to put the Triangles up 14-0 and give Dayton the victory.
The Triangles season began 4-0-2, including a thrilling tie against Thorpe’s Canton Bulldogs (the first team to score three touchdowns against Canton since 1915) before losing twice to the eventual champion Akron Pros, to end the season 5-2-2.
After a few years the team failed to compete with the rest of the league, largely owing to a preference for signing local players rather than recruiting top college athletes like other teams. From 1923 to 1929 they won only 5 of their last 51 games, ending with an 0-6 season that saw them sold off to a New York bootlegger who renamed them the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Though Kettering was a brilliant visionary, it is unlikely even he could see how important that first game would be:
In 1921, the league offices moved from Canton to Columbus and a year later was re-christened as the National Football League. Carl Storck was named Secretary of the league in 1921, and eventually became an owner of the Triangles. In 1939 he was named President of the NFL, and then transitioned to Commissioner (before the two positions were combined as we know them today). He served the league for twenty years, fifteen without pay.
Lou “The Battering Ram” Partlow led a short, but storied career. He was said to have hit Jim Thorpe so hard during a game, that Thorpe flew into the bleachers. Far from mad, Thorpe asked for the name of the man who hit him so that he could congratulate him for being the hardest hit he ever took.
Triangle Park was eventually donated by Kettering to the city of Dayton. In 2019 the NFL announced plans to build a new turf field on the storied site of that first game, which would double as a practice field for the Cincinnati Bengals.
However, the city scrapped the plan when a survey of the park discovered a possible, potentially prehistoric, archaeological site. The NFL plans were altered, later announcing it would be moved to Kettering Field park instead. NFL FLAG games are still played at Triangle Park.
Having been relocated to New York as the Dodgers, the original Triangles team went through a number of relocations, name changes, and even a brief jump to the AAFC. In 1952 they were “sold back” to the NFL as the Dallas Texans, who then folded and were moved to Baltimore and named the Colts. In 1984, the Colts moved to Indianapolis where they remain today.
Though Kettering seemingly had no direct influence or impact on the league, it is unlikely he would have wanted any; much preferring to focus on his own work than recreational activities. Without his factories (and employees), his financing of the first team, and his purchasing of the park that held the first match, who knows what would have happened to the emerging league.
More information on the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum can be found at this link.
