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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/GeorgeHalasLover on 2025-08-09 19:07:16+00:00.
Some of you may remember my spotlights of the Pottsville Maroons and the Chicago Cardinals, but today I will be covering the 3rd franchise involved in the 1925 championship controversy: the Frankford Yellow Jackets.
For everyone not from Philly reading this, Frankford is a neighborhood on the northeast side of Philadelphia. Like most other franchises that joined the NFL in the mid 1920s, the Frankford Yellow Jackets were a strong semi-pro/independent team in the years prior to joining the NFL.
The Yellow Jackets were officially founded in 1899 as Frankford Athletic Association. Besides hosting multiple sports teams, the association was a non-profit and donated proceeds to Frankford Hospital, Frankford Day Nursery, Boy Scouts, and the American Legion among others.
Unfortunately for the club, the original football team was cancelled in 1909, but some players from the 1899 club came together to create Loyola Athletic Club which they played under from 1909-1912 before they reinstated the Frankford Athletic Association name. This growth continued as the 1920s began with them developing the notoriety of being among the top independent football teams in the nation. In fact, they posted a 6-2-1 record against NFL franchises in 1922 and 1923 which led to them being invited to join the NFL for the 1924 season.
Their first season in the NFL was extremely productive as they finished 3rd in league standings with 11-2-1 record and 38 rushing touchdowns, an NFL record that would stand until 2022 when ironically it was the Eagles who broke it. To make things even more impressive, the Yellow Jackets accomplished this in 14 games while it took the Eagles 19 games to beat their record.
One thing that made it difficult for the Yellow Jackets to schedule games were Pennsylvania’s Blue Laws which prohibited some sporting activities including football on the basis of religious observance. This forced the Yellow Jackets to play all of their Sunday games outside of Pennsylvania in order to comply.
The 1925 season saw another improvement for the Yellow Jackets, who signed future Hall of Famer’s Guy Chamberlin who played left end and coached as well as Link Lyman who started at left tackle. Prior to his time on the Yellow Jackets, Chamberlin had coached the Championship winner three consecutive years in a row from 1922-1924 and had previously been on the 1921 Chicago Staleys team who had also won the Championship.
Despite having the most wins of any team that season with 13, the Yellow Jackets finished 6th as they also had 7 losses. The 1920s was an interesting decade because the number of games each team played varied by team to team in a season so win percentage was used to determine league champions.
As I have mentioned previously in my spotlights for the Pottsville Maroons and the Chicago Cardinals, even though the Yellow Jackets were not among the top teams that year they still were an important piece in the debacle that became the 1925 Championship.
The NFL was focused on legitimization for itself as college football was seen as the top tier form of the game for the early part of the 20th century. To combat this, the NFL came up with the genius idea to schedule a game between some former Notre Dame players and the top team in the east in the NFL. Frankford was responsible for coming up with this idea and they were confident that they would be that team who would play in this “all-star” game.
Unfortunately for the Yellow Jackets, the league was taken completely by storm when the Pottsville Maroons joined the league in 1925 and not only finished with a 10-2 record but also beat them in the first match they played against each other. The Maroons knew this would be a huge boost for both the team and the league, so they set up a plan to move the game from their home field, Minersville Park which only had a capacity of 5,000 to the much larger stadium of Shibe Park in Philadelphia.
Once the Yellow Jackets learned of this development which violated their territory, GM Shep Royle complained to the NFL and led commissioner Joeseph Carr to issue a warning to the Maroons that they could face possible suspension if they went through with this game. The Maroons, however, not wanting to lose the money they had put down on renting the stadium or losing the publicity that came with it, went ahead anyways and beat Notre Dame 9-7.
This game was huge for the NFL as the nation began to see the developing talent within the league, but unfortunately for the Maroons, the NFL suspended them and were not named league champions despite having the best win percentage. To make things even more interesting, Chris O’Brien who became the de-facto #1 team following the Maroons suspension, refused to accept the 1925 Championship for the Cardinals on the basis that the Maroons had beaten them fair and square earlier in the season. As the situation currently sits today, both teams claim the title, but the NFL has never officially awarded a champion.
The 1926 season the Yellow Jackets got their revenge on the league and posted an NFL best 14-1-2 record to capture the 1926 NFL Championship. The record of 14 wins in a season stood all the way until 1984 when the San Francisco 49ers put up a 15-1 record. In a case of dramatic irony, the Yellow Jackets played their final game of the season against the now re-instated Pottsville Maroons who battled it out to a scoreless tie. This marked the high point in the franchise’s history, especially with all the controversy and disappointment of the previous season.
The 1927 season began slow downward trend for the Yellow Jackets who lost Guy Chamberlin as player-coach of the team. This was only intensified further when their head coach, Charley Moran left to officiate the world series, and they were forced to create a mid-season coaching change which led them to a below average 6-9-3 campaign.
The team rebounded in 1928 and 1929 finishing with records of 11-3-2 and 10-4-5 which were good enough for 2nd and 3rd place in their respective seasons.
The 1930 season was a difficult one for the Yellow Jackets as the Great Depression forced many franchises to fold as well as put others onto the rocks like the Yellow Jackets. In an attempt to build a new roster, their team featured mostly rookies out of college and were only able to put up a dismal 4-13-1 campaign. Their fate was practically sealed in 1931 when their home field, Frankford Stadium burned down prior to the season.
While the cause of the fire remains unknown even to this day, I like to think that a former player on the 1925 Maroons roster burned it down as a way to get revenge for their deserved championship. This forced the team to use two different stadiums as home fields and actually had to become a travelling team for the final half of the season due to low funds. They finished with a putrid 1-6-1 record which forced them to suspend operations and eventually the Frankford Athletic Association gave the franchise back to the league.
In 1933 the NFL awarded the Philadelphia franchise (and the assets of the Yellow Jackets) to the new Philadelphia Eagles. While neither the NFL nor the Eagles recognize the Eagles as a continuation of the Yellow Jackets, I like to think that they were, similar to what I said about the Commanders basically being a continuation of the Pottsville Maroons even though there was a gap year. The first uniforms that the Eagles wore were very similar to that of the Yellow Jackets, but it is clear that they both took inspiration from Philadelphia’s flag. The only player to play for both franchises was Art Koeninger, playing for the Yellow Jackets in 1931 and the Eagles in 1933. You could also fairly state that the Eagles-Commanders rivalry started way back in 1925 in a matchup between the Frankford Yellow Jackets and the Pottsville Maroons.
As mentioned previously, Guy Chamberlin was an absolute legend for the Yellow Jackets and was a big reason why they were able to win their Championship in 1926. During his 8 seasons in the NFL, he won 5 championships with 3 different franchises and won a championship for every franchise he played for except for the Chicago Cardinals.
Playing college ball at the university of Nebraska, Chamberlin was part of the 1914 and 1915 undefeated seasons which included a 1st team All-American naming in 1915. Following graduating in 1916, he went back to work on his family’s farm before serving in an artillery unit in WWI as a Second Lieutenant and then playing for Jim Thorpe’s undefeated 1919 Canton Bulldogs.
When the NFL was created in 1920, he joined the Decatur/Chicago Staleys, getting his first 1st team All-Pro nod and helping the Bears win their first Championship in the process. George Halas said about Chamberlin, “Chamberlin was the best 2-way end I’ve ever seen. He was a tremendous tackler on defense and a triple-threat performer on offense.” He left the Bears to return to the Canton Bulldogs in 1922 where he contributed as a multi-faceted player, coach, captain, and part owner.
Chamberlin helped lead the Bulldogs to three straight NFL championship victories from 1921-1924, (the Bulldogs moved to Cleveland for a season) in addition two back-to-back undefeated seasons posting 10-0-2 and 11-0-1 (ties were counted towards win percentage at this time) as well as leading the Bulldogs in scoring in 1922 with 7 touchdowns and being named a 1st team All-Pro again in 1924. During his ti…
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