Hugh Edward Langston was the first
football player in the Northwest to die a football related death.
Langston died after being injured at his home practicing for an
upcoming game for the Seattle Athletic Club on Oct 28, 1893. He was
21.
_______
Two football leagues existed in the 1940's
commonly mistaken for "semi-pro" leagues. The Field House
Football League was in fact a 16-years old maximum and under
135lbs league. The Boys Club Football which included
teams like the Seattle Associated Boys Club, Wallingford, Ballard
and Arbor Heights were for players under the age of 19 and were
not high school letterwinners. They did play teams like the
Seattle Ramblers who were legit men's teams (athletic club teams) or
semi pro teams.
________
West Seattle residents voted former
Yellowjacket
star Thurle Thonton as the Greatest Athlete of the Half-Century on
Dec 14, 1950. A trophy awarded to the best all-around athlete
bore Thornton's name for many years.
Elmo Hudgens Memorial Trophy
(click on pic to enlarge)
What ever happened to:
The West Seattle
Yellowjackets?
The Yellowjackets, one of the
most dominant pre-war amateur teams in the Northwest running from
the 1920's to 1941 became the centerpiece in Seattle's move for
"professional" sports. With the number of teams collapsed due to the
war, businessmen went to work in scooping up players and building
"pro" teams to compete with the surging NFL and later AFL teams in
the east. The first professional version of the Yellowjackets
came in the form of the Seattle Shipbuilders of the 1942 War
Industries League, that team, infused with sponsor money from the
booming Isaacson Iron Company became the Seattle Ironworkers or
Steelers in some circles of 1943.
Courted by the American
Football League (a California-based venture) the team then became
the Seattle Bombers of 1944. This lasted only one year as Al
Davies and Jimmy Mandas battled in court over ownership of the team
which would sit out the 1945 season. By 1946 Davies emerged
victorious and moved the team to Tacoma and the "Indians" were born
as part of the Pacific Coast Professional Football League.
This team again only lasted one year and many of the players found
their way towards a 1947 semi pro team called the Rainier Beach
Ramblers...eventually named the Seattle Ramblers. The Ramblers
would prove a stable home for nearly 15 years until the death of
team originator Dick Barnes and the next incarnation of
"professional" football spearheaded by Lafa Lane in 1964 who was in
search of a pro franchise for Seattle. This team would
begin as the Edmonds Warriors and eventually become the Seattle
Rangers of the 1966-69 Continental Football League. After the
collapse of the Continental League prior to the 1970 season, no pro
football league would make a legitimate play at competing against
the NFL and semi pro went into its darkest days. Those players
still hanging on would catch on with teams like the Seattle
Cavaliers in the early 70's and the Pierce County Bengals in the
late 70's and early 80's, then the Auburn Panthers of the mid-80's.
But by now the demographics of the teams was nothing like the
original West Seattle Yellowjackets. No longer was the top
team in the region populated with recent stars from the University
of Washington, now they were populated with a few junior college
athletes and a majority of high school players who skipped going to
college.
Over a span of some 60+ years
the minor league football scene went from a purely amateur sport as
mandated by membership in the West Seattle Athletic club with
throngs of fanatical supporters traveling by the thousands to
support their team, to repeated incarnations of "Professional" teams
doted with local collegiate stars still available during the war
years. But the professional would give way again to the
amateur when leagues collapsed under the weight of rising
transportation costs and dwindling gate proceeds as the NFL and AFL
signed the best collegians and left the semi pros to pick through
the scraps.
The lure of a pay day has never
left the game as every few years the amateurs are courted by someone
with professional dreams only to have them dashed back to the real
world of amateur football leaving it a little worse off than it was
before each time.
Seattle finally got it's pro
team in 1976 thus ending any need to talk about a pro franchise, but
nonetheless, no fewer than five "pro" leagues have tried to form in
the Northwest since '76 and all have failed leaving the communities
that had their hopes dashed as the stadium lights went out, angry,
frustrated and indifferent to the minor league teams that today dot
the landscape of the Northwest. Those promises of profit
sharing, stock shares of community teams, and local non-profits
having their operating funds swelled with donations from the teams
and leagues never materialized and the blueprint would be tossed
away only to be be picked up a decade later, dusted off and a new
spin put on it and the process repeated once more.
Minor league football was
community-based football in it's heydays where a city like Issaquah
could gush with pride for their local team because they knew the
team personally and could trust it would be there when they woke up
Sunday morning. The players weren't filled with unrealistic or
grandiose dreams of being professionals, they were playing a game
they loved, with teammates they enjoyed the game with.
The amateur game is a delicate symbiotic relationship between a
community and the reality of what minor league football is.
When that balance is achieved, teams last for decades with thousands
watching and remembering the fun under the lights. When it's
not, teams flame out quickly, sportswriters pen stories reminding
the community of the last horrible group to try to make a buck off
of the naive townspeople and college players scoff at playing
"sandlot" football.
Does minor league football in
the Northwest have that ability to reach symbiotic stability once
more? Or will it continue to be watched merely by girlfriends
and family members while the community-at-large goes about it's
business uninterested in what's happening under the bright lights on
a warm summer Saturday night?
TEAMS & LEAGUES OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
This
section is currently under research and subject to
change as more facts are uncovered.
US Marines sent home to recover
from injuries, malaria and other illnesses started
teams at Naval Reserve bases like Klamath Falls,
Oregon and Pocatello, Idaho.
