Watertown Red & Black

The Watertown Red & Black is a semi-professional American football team based in Watertown, New York. Founded in 1896, the team is the oldest semi-pro football team in the United States. Because of this, the team has the most wins (565), losses (268), ties (43) and games played (876) of any semi-professional team; their overall win percentage is .670.

The team currently plays in the Empire Football League and has won the league's title twice, in 1980 and 2009. The team plays at the Alex Duffy Fairgrounds in Watertown.

The Red & Black have their own showcase in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as being the oldest semi-pro team in the nation. It is the very first showcase.

It was in 1902 that Watertown Athletic Association became known as the Red & Black Professional Football Team.

Though it declined participation in the first World Series of Pro Football, it loaned its entire backfield to the Syracuse Athletic Club for that team's entry into the tournament, the first ever attempted national professional football championship. (The enhanced Syracuse team, which included Pop Warner, won the tournament in an upset.)

During the 1903 season, the Red & Black defeated a team from Cortland, New York by a score of 142-0, the second-highest in football history (behind only a 148–0 win by the Massillon Tigers over a team from Marion, Ohio a year later). Watertown participated in the 1903 World Series of Pro Football, finishing second to the Franklin Athletic Club, to whom the Red & Black lost, 12-0.

The Red & Black team, mostly located too far from pro football's core in Ohio and western Pennsylvania to play an extensive schedule against other fully professional teams, then dropped back to the semi-professional level in 1904 and has played with semi-pro status ever since. This allowed the scheduling of teams located within what was then a reasonable travel distance of Watertown. Several teams during the decades of the 1900s, 1910s and 1920s brought the semi-professional championships of New York State home to Watertown. Alex Duffy wore the colors for 17 seasons, the last 15 as captain during the 1910s and 1920s.

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