Sports' Forgotten Heroes

The Chicago Bears are an NFL original. Well, sort of. During their first year of play, 1920 the inaugural year of the NFL (known as the American Professional Football Association before adopting the name – National Football League), the Bears were actually known as the Decatur Staley’s. And, much to the surprise of most football fans, even those in Chicago, George Halas was not the founder of the Staley’s. While Papa Bear controlled the Staley’s in 1920, the Staley’s were actually the brainchild of A.E. Staley who owned a starch company in Decatur, Illinois and created the team to help boost company morale. What a team it was! In 1919, their only year of play, the Staley’s lost their first game, 3-0, and then went on an incredible streak in which they won their final 6 games and outscored their opponents over that time 294-10. But, Staley said he was losing too much money on the team and wound up selling it to Halas. But, while they were a company team playing in an industrial league, they certainly made a na