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Ed Bemis
Pierce County Bengals, Auburn
Panthers
Founder, General Manager / League Official
1973 - 1989
Lincoln High school in Tacoma, Washington has put out its
fair share of excellent athletes, and one who starred for
the "Abes" in the mid-1940's was Ed Bemis. A fast and
shifty halfback, a hip injury suffered as a sophomore would
flare up on occassion during his high school career,
eventually ending his 1942 senior season. The abrupt
end to the team captains' season didn't stop him from
rejoining his baseball mates in the spring of 1943 where he
was elected captain, closing his high school career as a
two-sport captain and three-sport letterwinner, basketball
being his other skill set.
Joining the US Navy, Bemis was stationed in Alaska to defend
the Aleutian Islands from Japanese invasion for 17-months.
Returning to Tacoma, he married his high school sweetheart
and joined the Puget Sound University football team starting
as a quarterback in the fall of 1946, and the baseball team
in the spring of 1947. After making the tough choice
to leave football and only play for the baseball team during
the 1948 season, his father suddenly passed away in March,
forcing the 22-year old to leave school altogether and take
care of his young family, going to work for Kelley-Farquhar.
Sports was still in his blood and he continued to star on
the basketball courts and baseball field in the Tacoma City
Leagues, managing the 1953 Tacoma Jaycees baseball team, but
always regretted not being able to continue playing his
first love...football.
The Tacoma Tyees had left for the Continental Football
League and Victoria British Columbia in 1966 after six years
of entertaining the local community under Hall of Famer
Benny Hammond. It was early in 1972 when Bemis and
Puyallup Newspaper man Walt Tupper began talking about
another Tacoma entrant for the Northwest International
Football League. The seven-team league accepted their
application along with two others, expanding the NIFL to
10-teams for the 1973 season. Now the duo needed
players and coaches.
Bemis went back to Puget Sound University and grabbed a
young coach named Roy Bogrand, just 3-years out of college
as a linebacker and halfback for the Loggers, convincing him
to take the head coaching reigns. Scouring the local
flag football fields, Ed had his eye on another former
Lincoln High star so he began his recruiting efforts of the
former Buffalo Bills draft pick by the name of Ron Baines.
Former Renton quarterback Bill Donckers, Sumner tailback
Arnie Blancas, fullback Dan Pritchard, and Pacific Lutheran
wideouts Ira Hammon and Bernard Johnson would make up his
offensive firepower behind another PLU grad in future hall
of fame guard and coach Steve Harshman. The Bengals
roared through the NIFL going 11-0 and winning the
championship before finally being stopped by the NIFL-All
Stars 14-7. It took an entire league to stop the
Bengals. Coach Bogrand was named Tacoma News Tribune
Amateur Co-Coach of the Year, while Bemis and Tupper were
finalists for Administrators of the Year. After a
dust-up over finances, Tupper left the organization and
Bemis worked diligently to bring the team into the black
after falling nearly $6,000 in debt from the 1973 season.
Steve Harshman would become player/coach of the Bengals in
1974 when Bogrand departed, and the team again rolled
through the NIFL until the All-Stars tripped them up in the
finale. Through the 1977 season, the Bengals were
53-3-1 and 5-time NIFL Champions, suffering only one regular
season defeat, the other two versus the All-Star teams.
Harshman was Tacoma News Coach of the Year in 1974 and 1977,
Bemis was 3-time Administrator of the Year 1975-1977.
The Pierce County Bengals were named 1977 Pro Football
Weekly National Champions after defeating the San Jose
Tigers in the Holiday Bowl to finish 12-0 on a 32-game
winning streak. Pro Football Weekly would again crown
the 1979 team National Champions following a 13-0 campaign.
As general manager of the Bengals, Ed was at the field hours
before kickoff to ensure the field was properly lined with
chalk, make sure ticket takers had change, the clock and
scoreboard operators were instructed and an ambulance was on
hand for an emergency. "You gotta be a jock" Ed Bemis
once said to explain his dedication to semi pro football.
He made sure he was able to handle any last minute issues
that tend to arise when putting on a semi pro football game.
His main concern was making sure it was an affordable family
event for Tacoma-area residents. Could a family of
five really have a full night of entertainment and snacks
for $3.00? Ed Bemis made it his mission to make it
happen.
Bemis would be installed as the NIFL Commissioner for the
1979 and 1980 seasons and was immediately dealing with
turmoil as the newly entered Spokane Golden Hawks would
remove their GM two games into the season and fall far short
of the necessary fans promised to host the 1979 league title
game in Joe Albi Stadium. The financial loss to the
league was going to be too great. This prompted Bemis
to change the venue and the 9-2 Hawks would now travel to
Tacoma to face the 12-0 Bengals. The Golden Hawks
would be in financial distress in 1980 and forfeit games
forcing Bemis to make other unpopular decisions (in Spokane)
regarding who would host playoff games. The NIFL had
begun to fracture as Spokane, one of the strongest rivals to
the Bengals, folded up shop midway through the 1980 season
with unpaid debts around town in the thousands.
When Steve Harshman stepped down as head coach in 1980,
Bemis worked with Tacoma school administration to allow Ron
Baines, a long-time player/assistant coach and coordinator
for the Bengals, to pull double duty as head coach of
Stadium High and the Bengals. But 1981 also brought a
realignment with former league rivals Burien and Spokane
shutting down, while others started a league that did not
involve Pierce County. The Bengals would slog through
an off-and-on independent schedule finishing 5-1, the lone
loss coming at the hands of the Twin City Cougars in
California. The Bemis-led Bengals would end the 1981
season having complied an 86-8-1 record over nine seasons,
including 7 league titles and two Pro Football Weekly
National Championships. The Bengals franchise called
it quits as players scattered to the King County Vikings,
Seattle Cavaliers, or hung up their cleats for good.
They had a masterful run.
The "Ben-Gals" made an appearance in 1982, really named the
Puyallup Pumas, organized by Melanie Montague. This
was a charity event for Children's Orthopedic Hospital in
Seattle pitting two teams of women together with Bemis
sponsoring the Pumas and pulling the Bengals uniforms and
gear out of storage for the ladies to hit the field in.
The Pumas, coached by 21-year old Tierre Murray, won against
the Tacoma Rebels 65-0.
It would be three years before the Auburn Panthers were
formed with the return of Bemis-pupils Steve Harshman as
head coach and Ron Baines as player/coach. The
Panthers would break the Bengals record 32-game win streak
with their own 57-game streak from 1984-1987 winning 4
Northwest Football Alliance Championships and the 1986
American Minor League Football National Championship
defeating the Chicago Cowboys 34-0 winning a then-record
16-games in a season. The following season, many
Panthers were selected to play as substitutes during the
1987 NFL Players strike. When the Auburn franchise was
folded following the '87 season along with the NFA, Bemis
returned the team to Sumner and rekindled the Pierce County
Bengals name for the 1988 season in the newly minted
Northwest Football League.
The renewed Bengals franchise would finish 6-2-1 losing to
the Eastside Express in a 13-10 regular season match up, and
in the championship game 14-0. Following the season,
Bemis sold his remaining interests in the team to longtime
friend, coach and player Ron Baines who took the mantle of
Owner, GM and Coach of the Bengals. Baines would
remain in that position until Covid-19 brought a halt to
operations in 2020.
Bemis would continue to be a fan and attend games into the
1990's and co-founded the "Old Jox Lunch Club". The
Club of former athletes, mostly from the 1940's, would
gather four times per year at Mama Stortini's Ristorante in
University Place to eat Italian food and relive sports
stories. Bemis, Bob Sater and Dick Swanson created the
club after a funeral in 1995 tired of only seeing each other
at such somber events. At some of the luncheons, Bemis
would be seated across from the likes of Bob Ferguson, a
former player with Ed's '73-'74 Bengals who went on to work
in the front office of the Buffalo Bills, Denver Broncos,
Arizona Cardinals and Seattle Seahawks, or Bob Ryan, a
former Bills scout who worked under Ferguson. The
defensive unit of the Bengals under then-linebacker Bob
Ferguson was affectionately known as "Fergy's F-Troops", a
reference to the 1960's television show F-Troop.
Married to his high school sweetheart for nearly 59 years,
Ed Bemis passed away in 2004 still enjoying his passion for
sports as an "old jock".
Minor League Honors
1973 Northwest International League Champions
1973 Tacoma News Amateur Administrator of the Year
(Finalist)
1974 Northwest International League Champions
1974 Tacoma News Amateur Administrator of the Year
(Finalist)
1975 Northwest International League Champions
1975 Tacoma News Amateur Administrator of the Year
1976 Northwest International League Champions
1976 Tacoma News Amateur Administrator of the Year
1977 Northwest International League Champions
1977 Pro Football Weekly Magazine National Champions
1977 Tacoma News Amateur Administrator of the Year
1979 Northwest International League Champions
1979 Pro Football Weekly Magazine National Champions
1980 Pacific Northwest Football League Champions
1984 Northwest Football Alliance Champions
1985 Northwest Football Alliance Champions
1985 Minor Professional West Coast Champions
1986 Northwest Football Alliance Champions
1986 American Minor League Football Association National
Champions
1987 Northwest Football Alliance Champions
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