by Walter Elliott
A portrait of the Orange Athletic Club featured in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1894.
By Walter Elliott
ORANGE / NEWARK – The National Football League’s 101st season, including the renamed “Washington Football Team,” is to kickoff 8 p.m. Sept. 10 – which leaves some football fans and historians asking themselves these “What if” questions:
“What if Washington’s franchise stayed in Boston and not started using ‘R——s’ as its name?”
“What if the franchise got successful in Cleveland instead?”
“What if the Orange/Newark Tornadoes had not turned in their franchise to the NFL to begin with?”
Yes, the Tornadoes professional football team was an NFL franchise while it played in Orange’s now-Bell Stadium in 1929 and in Newark’s original Schools Stadium and the Vailsburg Velodrome infield in 1930.
This pro squad had played as the Orange A.C. Golden Tornadoes 1919-28 on three home gridirons: Orange’s then-Knights of Columbus Stadium and the Grove Street Grounds/Oval Park and “East Orange Stadium” (now Paul Robeson Stadium) in East Orange.
The Golden Tornadoes had a tradition of what boxers would call “punching above their weight,” a practice going back to their 1887 founding as the Orange Athletic Club semi-pro team. That scheduling helped the O. A. C. squad to win the 1893 American Football Union championship with an 8-2 record.
They played against Seton Hall and Rutgers colleges and various other pro ball teams – including at least two NFL teams in the late 1920s. The Golden Tornadoes held the 1926 NFL champion Frankford (Pa.) Yellow Jackets to a 12-0 score and the reigning 1927 New York Giants to 7-0 in September 1928.
Although the Golden Tornadoes were blanked by NFL titlists, their effort got the attention of the league’s administrators at their Columbus, Ohio, headquarters.
The NFL, which started with 14 teams among four Great Lakes states, offered franchises to businessmen who wanted to start a team or to existing teams who wanted to move up. NFL’s leaders, by 1928, were looking to expand into the Northeast and beyond.
When Orange meat wholesaler and OAC president Edwin “Piggy” Simandl called about buying a franchise in early 1929, the NFL offered one that the owner of the Duluth (Minn.) Eskimos had sold back to them after the 1927 season. The contemporary cost of an NFL franchise was $100.
Formed for NFL play in 1923, the Duluth Kelleys became the Eskimos in 1926 when the Kelley Department Store dropped its title sponsorship. The Eskimos became one of the NFL’s four traveling teams until its franchise was returned.
The Eskimos, 1921 Cincinnati Celts, 1922-23 Oorang (Ohio) Indians and 1923 Cleveland Indians were the rare teams in 1920s NFL whose names and logos referred to racial or ethnic groups. Most others were names after various animals, colors and/or their home cities’ legends or patrons.
The Oorang Indians were a traveling team made up of indigenous players and were coached by the legendary Jim Thorpe.
African American players were gone before Simandl bought Duluth’s franchise. NFL team owners had entered a gentleman’s agreement, similar to the one that prevailed in Major League Baseball, which barred black players 1927-46.
Simandl, the Orange Tornadoes and Head Coach Jack Depler had an encouraging 1929 season. They had a 3-4-4 win-loss-tie season, placing them fourth to NFL champions Green Bay Packers.
Depler and New York bootlegger Bill Dwyer, however, bought the Dayton Triangles and brought them to Brooklyn in the 1929-30 off season. Depler quit the Tornadoes and took most of the players with him to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The now-Newark Tornadoes, in retrospect, were struggling throughout 1930.
This version of the team started out at Schools Stadium but finished at the Vailsburg Velodrome. They went through three coaches. Simandl himself became a fill-in player and called several plays.
The Newark Tornadoes, at 1-10-1, finished 11th – and last – to Green Bay. Simandl, who kept the professional Orange/Newark Tornadoes name and ran the now-minor league team into 1969, sold the franchise back to the NFL.
The NFL, after offering the retread franchise in vain, used it to own and operate the 1931 Cleveland Indians. The league played in the new 83,000-seat Cleveland Municipal Lakefront Stadium – as a tenant to the MLB Indians.
Those NFL 1931 Indians finished eighth to Green Bay, 2-8-0. The league also folded the team after drawing an average 5,000 fans.
The NFL put up the Duluth/Orange/Newark/Cleveland franchise for sale in the 1931/32 off season – and found buyers in a group of businessmen headed by Washington, D.C. laundromats owner George Preston Marshall.
Marshall and his partners used the franchise to start the Boston Braves for the 1932 season. The Braves name was chosen because they were tenants in the MLB Braves Field.
The 1932 Boston Braves, on one hand, played to a 4-4-2 record and was ranked fourth to the Chicago Bears. The team lost $43,000 in Great Depression era money, on the other hand, prompting Marshall’s partners to sell their shares to him.
Marshall, now in complete control, moved the Braves across town to the MLB moved to Red Sox’s Fenway Park – and changed its name to the R——s.
Although the team won the 1936 Eastern Division, Marshall cited the lack of fan support for his signing a 30-year lease with D.C. Stadium and moving it to Washington in 1937.
Marshall, who died in 1969, was once called “One of the league’s innovators – and its leading racist.”
His football team was the last to integrate, doing so in 1962 under federal threat of canceling the lease with the municipal stadium. He originally ordered his charitable foundation not to fund organizations that support integration – a clause overturned in court.
The team became the lightning rod in the decades-long call to have sports teams remove names, logos and mascots that are ethnically or racially demeaning. Montclair State University and New York’s St. John’s University, for example, respectively replaced “Indians” and “Redmen” with “Red Hawks” and “Red Storm” in the 1990s.
Marshall and successive owners, until this Black Lives Matter season, have resisted removing “R——s” before switching to the interim “Washington Football Team” this summer. The removal was made after FedEx threatened to withdraw its $15 million title sponsorship of FedEx Field.
Marshall’s stadium statue and ring of honor nameplate have been removed. His name and references have been removed from the WFT’s media guide and other published material.
