Pro Football: Its Ups and Downs
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| Author | Dr. Harry March |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | J.B. Lyon Company |
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Publication date
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1934 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 160 |
| OCLC | 4849231 |
| 796/.33 | |
| LC Class | GV951 .M3 35000781 |
Pro Football: Its Ups and Downs, published in 1934, is a novel by Dr. Harry March that was the first ever attempt to write a history of professional American football. March had served in several executive offices with the New York Giants of the National Football League in the late 1920s and was a founder of the second American Football League. The book, while popular and entertaining with some important information and interesting anecdotes, is often viewed as inaccurate by modern sports historians. Jack Cusack, manager of the Canton Bulldogs from 1912 to 1917, summed up the book's flaws by stating; "In my library is a book... entitled Pro Football: Its "Ups and Downs" and in my opinion it is something of a historical novel."
While in living in Canton, Ohio in the early 1900s, March played in or watched hundreds of football games featuring the best professionals of the day such as Christy Mathewson, Fielding Yost, Walter Okeson, Knute Rockne and Pudge Heffelfinger. These experiences would inspire and help him to write the book. However, March had been only peripherally involved with pro football prior to the formation of the NFL and his role with the New York Giants and second AFL. He also only provided a small amount of genuine research into what he wrote about. Instead March relied for his memory and unsubstantiated rumours regarding the details of events that were several decades old. This resulted in March making many factual errors. These inaccuracies were further compounded when later authors and experts wrote about pro football history for the next three decades and borrowed liberally from March's book, apparently never bothering to check his information for accuracy.
In the 1980s, Bob Carroll, executive director of Pro Football Researchers Association and Beau Riffenburgh, the senior writer for the National Football League's publishing branch, NFL Properties, put together a study. It was the first-ever 17-year history of the NFL's direct predecessor, the "Ohio League" and also the first work to correct many commonly held misconceptions about the early events in pro football and to discount myths that were created by March.
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