Dixie League (football)
| Dixie League (football) | |
|---|---|
| Sport | American Professional Football |
| Founded | 1936 |
| First Season | 1936 |
| Last Season | 1947 |
| Claim to Fame | highest level pre-World War II minor football league |
| No. of teams | varied from 5 (1936–1937,1940–1947) to 6 (1938–1939) |
| Last champions | Charlotte Clippers |
| Disbanded | 1947 |
The "Dixie League" was a professional American football minor league founded in 1936 originally as the "South Atlantic Football Association", with six charter member teams in the Middle Atlantic states of Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D. C.. Like the American Association (nicknamed the 'A.A.', which was another minor league in pro football that formed in 1936, (not to be confused with another "American Association", an early famous major league baseball group from 1881-1892), its popularity (and attendance) rivaled that of another earlier established "major league" grouping, the National Football League of 1922 (originally the "American Professional Football Conference" formed in 1920, later quickly renamed "American Professional Football Association"). Unlike most professional football minor leagues, the "Dixie League" had a relative stability in membership during the "Great Depression" in the years prior to World War II, maintaining a five or six-team lineup membership of franchises (and adding a team in North Carolina upon the demise of their Washington team franchise in 1941).
Like the competitor 'AA' and the third "American Football League", the "Dixie League" suspended operations after the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan, on the "Day of Infamy" - Sunday, December 7, 1941; unlike the AFL, the football minor league reorganized after the end of the War and resumed competition in the first post-war season year of 1946. The following year, the 'D.L.' collapsed when one of its member teams purchased the assets of a defunct team in the other pro football minor loop, the "American Association" (which then changed its name to the "American Football League" in 1946)… and opted to jump leagues.
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