Original title: “[OC] On this day 100 years ago, the Decatur Staleys beat the Arcola Independents 41–0. Seeking revenge, Arcola hired Dutch Sternaman to build a superteam. The Staleys found out, canceled the rematch, and ended their inaugural season with a 6–1 record.”
/r/NFL title: “100 years ago today, the Decatur Staleys (now Bears) beat the Arcola Independents 41–0. Wanting revenge, Arcola hired Dutch Sternaman to build a superteam, but the Staleys found out and canceled the rematch. Sternaman would be the first free agent signed by George Halas and a Bears co-owner.”
Subreddit: /r/CHIBears and /r/NFL
Post date: November 23, 2019 (/r/CHIBears, /r/NFL)
/r/CHIBears
Welcome to the final part of the 1919 Decatur Staleys Centennial Series!
After over two months of work and storytelling, we have finally reached the end of the Decatur Staleys’ inaugural season! To commemorate this, it’s only fitting to wrap things up with a special “doubleheader” edition: today, we’ll be covering a week-long feud of sort before closing with an epilogue connecting this band of starchmakers to the storied NFL franchise it is today.
The Feud: vs. Arcola Independents
After his team defeated Taylorville to win the Central Illinois Championship, Staley executive Morgan O’Brien got to work in scheduling some more games. One of them was the Rantoul Aviators do-over that we discussed last week. Another was against the Arcola Independents, a game that took some time to figure out date-wise as O’Brien tried to move it up a week earlier than previously scheduled.[1] Once that was out of the way, game on.
So who were the Arcola Independents? Hailing from Douglas County, they entered the Staley game with a 5–1 record and plenty of hype from Decatur newspapers; heck, The Decatur Herald expected them to put up more of a fight than Taylorville. Considering how powerful Taylorville was, this was a bold proclamation, but their reasoning? To quote the paper’s November 19 pre-game coverage: “This team played Illiopolis Sunday and defeated them 37 to 0. Taylorville only defeated Illiopolis 33 to 0 and for this reason the locals are expecting about as good a game as they had with the Christian county squad.”[2]
Media circus aside, Red Brannan still got to work in changing things up for his team because Arcola had a secret weapon: “Bun” Moran, who played with the Staleys against Taylorville two weeks prior and therefore picked up most of their play calls.[2] Moran played right guard for the Staleys but moved to center for Arcola.[3][4] The Independents also recruited some Champaign players including quarterback Harry Honn, who started for the Champaign Eleven in their loss to Decatur.[5]
“With a man on the opposing team having an intimate knowledge of the Staley squad, the Arcolians will have quite an advantage over the locals, and they are taking full advantage of this opportunity by getting in a week of the hardest kind of practise,” The Herald wrote.[2]
These new signings raised eyebrows in the Decatur media as they talked of the Independents “loading up” their roster, which those from the Arcola side denied. The Decatur Daily Review‘s correspondent in Arcola explained these new players were “none other than honest sons of honest farmers, most of whom are out these days hitting the bump-board at a clip of about 100 bushels a day in the cornfield. After getting out the hundred bushels, putting up the team, unloading the corn, milking the cows, feeding the hogs and other chores, they go out to practice. Football they say, is only a sideline with them.”[6]
Despite Arcola’s insistence that their guys were just your average joes, Brannan did not want to take any chances, especially with the concerns surrounding his own roster. Fritz Wasem was still treating his knee injury from Taylorville, forcing ex-Champaign star Bailey into starting action. Bailey was also tasked to play backup halfback if Walt Veach’s own knee injury prevented him from playing against Arcola.[5]
The Herald‘s game day pre-kickoff coverage had the following to say:[7]
Staley’s football warriors are primed and anxious for the whistle to start them off against the heavy Arcola Independents this afternoon on Staley field. The game will be called at 2:45, and from present indications the crowd today will be the largest that has seen the Staley player’s in action on the local gridiron this season. Coach Brannan has worked out a new set of plays, changed the signals and whipped the Staley aggregation into fine shape for today’s battle.
Each team will go into the game today with the expectation of winning. Each team has a well balanced and heavy, experienced line and fast, aggressive backfield men who are expecting to rip holes in the other’s defense. The locals are expecting about as good a game from the Douglas county boys as they had with Taylorville, and will not go into the game belittling the strength of the Arcola team.
Arcola Annihilation
To say the Staleys ultimately had the upper hand would be putting it kindly. Chuck Dressen immediately got to work on the ground and “Sunshine” Sid Gepford through the air to set up the former’s 30-yard touchdown run. When the teams exchanged punts, they also traded shanks as Jake Lanum had a bad punt that went to the Staleys’ 49-yard line, and although Arcola reached their 25, Honn’s drop kick sailed wide.[4]
In the second quarter, the Staleys turned the ball over on downs but regained control after Arcola fumbled. From there, Dressen once again executed his trademark fake split play (diagram of a split play for the curious, from Charles Dudley Daly’s 1921 handbook on football) and end-around to perfection to score a two-yard TD. Lanum added a ten-yard TD shortly before halftime, aided by a bomb from Gepford to Bailey. By halftime, Decatur led 20–0.[4]
To start the second half, Lanum, Gepford, and Pyrzynski worked together to move the offense downfield and score yet again. Down by 27, Arcola tried to fight back in the fourth quarter with a pass-heavy offense, but was picked off twice. On one interception, left end Joe Cooper rumbled for a 25-yard gain to provide his team’s offense with good field position; Decatur delivered with Lanum’s TD run. Shortly before the game’s conclusion, Gepford threw a TD to Bailey to make the final score a 41–0 blowout.[4]
In addition to their full game recap, The Daily Review had a short and sweet summary: “Arcola got what the other side usually gets.”[8][9] Nonetheless, both Decatur newspapers commended the Independents for their effort, noting the game was closer than what the scoreline indicated.[4][8]
From The Daily Review:[8]
The game was really a better one than the score indicates whoever as the visitors showed some exceptionally good playing at times. They displayed some very good line work and tackled hard. Their playing was not quite so strong in open field work. A number of attempts at forward passes by the visitors were failures.
On several occasions they carried the ball to within dangerous distance of the Staley goal. Honn lead in the stellar work for Arcola. For Staleys the plunging of Jake Lanum was a big feature, the right half carrying the ball through the visitors’ line frequently for good gains. Charley Dressen also played as brilliantly as usual, while “Sid” Gepford, former Millikin player, also did a lot of good work at left half.
The Herald also praised Honn and his team:[4]
The game was a much better one than was indicated by the score as the Arcola team did not give up although they were unable to penetrate the Staley defense.
For Arcola Honn stood out as the stellar man but most of the players were in the game at all times and their tackling was hard and accurate most of the time. Richmond and Harris, former Champaign High school stars, protected the wind positions of the Arcola team and played good games although Staleys made many good gains around both ends.
A Rematch Rejected
Arcola’s executives were not happy with the defeat (which probably isn’t a surprise) and demanded a rematch for the following Sunday, this time on their home turf. The Staleys were hesitant and initially declined as some of the Independents used dirty tactics against them, but changed their minds when Arcola assured the offenders would be prohibited from playing.[10]
I mean, Arcola held true to their word in that the dirty players wouldn’t play in the rematch. But neither was everyone else on the roster. Knowing the current team was going to get crushed by the Staleys again, the Independents approached University of Illinois star running back named Edward “Dutch” Sternaman to enlist his own team of ringers to the Arcola cause. With a squad of far more talented players taking on what was basically a scrub team of starch workers, Arcola knew they had the upper hand.[11]
Once Augustus Staley caught wind of their plans, he decided to take a page out of WarGames: “The only winning move is not to play.” Knowing his team would get absolutely destroyed by their newly-stacked opponent, Staley ordered his guys to not make the trip to Arcola.[11] Officially, Staley’s explanation for canceling the game was poor weather, especially with poor weather having hit the city earlier in the week.[12]
“Staley felt that was unfair — his players were just guys from the company,” Staley Museum director Laura Jahr said. “He wasn’t willing to send his players in to be humiliated.”[11]
Epilogue
With the rematch not happening, the Staleys ended their inaugural season 6–1, bouncing from their slow start against Peoria to win six straight in mostly convincing fashion.
Attendance figures varied for the five home games since they were mostly based on estimates from fans. In fact, The Daily Review remarked just “one in twenty-five can estimate the size of the crowd and the mistake is to always overstimate it.” The Rantoul Aviators game reportedly attracted between 1,900 and 2,000 fans, while Stonington was erronously reported as drawing 8,000, which prompted Stonington’s manager to confront the Staleys as he thought Decatur was taking most of the ticket money. Either way, it was safe to say the Taylorville away game had the largest crowd as a whole.[13]
The Staley players received their salary from the gate receipts, getting between $10 and $20 per game. However, with travel expenses and the ticket revenue also being split with players on the opposing teams, The Daily Review speculated the paychecks may have come out to just $6 to $8. That said, one-off players possibly received more.[13]
As the football season came to a close, Staley was eager to expand his athletics program. Alongside those like O’Brien and superintendent George Chamberlain, he formed the Staley Athletic Association to fund and oversee the company’s sports teams; previously, sports were sanctioned by the Staley Fellowship Club, whose role was changed to handling employee sick/death benefits.[14] In addition to football, baseball, and bowling, the association added a new sport for the winter: basketball. Playing at the local YMCA, the team sported some players from the football side like Gepford and “Buster” Woodworth, the latter also serving as team captain and manager.[15] Others like Wasem got to preparing for the baseball season.
However, as his company shifted gears to other sports, Staley wanted more for his football team, knowing its potential to be something big. To continue its growth, he turned to one man who he knew could develop the fledgling program: Dutch Sternaman. After all, he was a hell of a player at Illinois and created that Arcola superteam.[16]
Well, Sternaman declined since he wanted to finish getting his mechanical engineering degree. Instead, Staley turned to the next best option, also from the Illini: a hotshot end and former baseball player named George Stanley Halas. Halas had recently ended his Major League Baseball career after failing to stick with the New York Yankees, while his football career post-Illinois was a bit of a mixed bag. When Chamberlain reached out to him in March 1920, he was working in the railroad business at Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CBQ) Railroad.[16][17]
Halas was willing to join A.E. Staley on three terms: he could recruit college graduates and his old teammates, he could offer them full-time jobs at the company, and two of the eight workday hours would be set aside for practice. Chamberlain was more than happy to agree and the two had a deal.[18]
In joining the starch company, Halas became captain of the baseball team, player/head coach/manager of the football team, and Chairman of the Staley Athletic Association.[18] Joined by Lanum, he then went out to pick up players, and Sternaman would become the very first free agent signing in Staleys/Bears history.[19] Sternaman also worked alongside Halas as the Staleys/Bears’ co-owner during the 1920s and early 1930s.[18][20]
“I was elated,” Halas wrote in his autobiography. “I saw the offer as an exciting opportunity but did not suspect the tremendous future Mr. Staley was opening for me.”[18]
As they say: the rest is history.
And so, our story comes to an end. A story that began with humble beginnings with an idealistic starch factory owner, one who brought his employees together to play the great game of football. Who would’ve thought this motley crew would lay the foundation for this very team we know and love today?
100 years later, said team we know and love… sadly hasn’t been having the success we all hoped. But at the very least, I hope those who followed along on this journey had fun with this series; I certainly had fun bringing it to everyone.
Bear Down.
References
[1] WILL NOT PLAY TAYLORVILLE from The Decatur Herald, November 14, 1919
[2] ARCOLA COMES SUNDAY WITH HEAVY SQUAD from The Decatur Herald, November 19, 1919
[3] STALEY’S WIN FROM TAYLORVILLE 21 TO 7 from The Decatur Herald, November 12, 1919
[4] ARCOLA TEAM FALLS TO STALEYS BY SCORE 41-0 from The Decatur Herald, November 24, 1919
[5] LOADING UP FOR STALEYS from The Decatur Herald, November 21, 1919
[6] ARCOLA TEAM NOT LOADED FOR GAME from The Decatur Daily Review, November 22, 1919
[7] STALEYS MEET ARCOLA TODAY from The Decatur Herald, November 23, 1919
[8] STALEYS TROUNCE ARCOLA, 41 TO 0 from The Decatur Daily Review, November 24, 1919
[9] Comments from The Decatur Daily Review, November 25, 1919
[10] STALEYS TO PLAY ARCOLA SUNDAY from The Decatur Daily Review, November 26, 1919
[11] 🏈 The Chicago Bears NFL franchise began in Decatur as the Staleys 🌽 by Justin Conn, Herald Review
[12] STALEY-ARCOLA GAME CANCELLED from The Decatur Herald, November 30, 1919
[13] SPORTS AT STALEYS PAY THEIR WAY from The Decatur Daily Herald, November 28, 1919
[14] Staley Fellowship Journal: December 1919
[15] STAR PLAYERS TRY OUT FOR STALEY QUINTET from The Decatur Herald, November 19, 1919
[16] History of the Decatur Staleys / Chicago Bears, Staley Museum
[17] George Stanley Halas, Staley Museum
[18] The Man Who Built the National Football League: Joe F. Carr by Chris Willis
[19] Staley Fellowship Journal: July 1920
[20] Edward Carl “Dutch” Sternaman, Staley Museum
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