According to the Canton Evening Repository, the purpose of meetings was to “improve the level of professional football in every manner possible, eliminate bidding for players between rival teams, and achieve collaboration in the formulation of schedules.”

It was renamed the American Professional Football Association (APFA) a month later, September 17, 1920. The American Professional Football Conference (APFC) was formed as a consequence of this meeting. The loosely-affiliated teams met for the first time at the Jordan and Hupmobile showroom in Canton, Ohio. The year was 1920, and football required structure to remain a viable addition to the American sports scene. As a result, play-for-pay was formed, as was the emergence of the professional athlete. William “Pudge” Heffelfinger of the Allegheny Athletic Association in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was the first paid participant, earning $500 for his participation in a game November 12, 1892. It wasn’t until Walter Camp, a great rugby player from Yale, came along in the 1880s that the early rules for what we know today as American football were established. The regulations were developed as a cross between soccer and rugby.

The first formal football game as we know it took place in 1869 between Princeton and Rutgers, and the NFL has a long and illustrious history.

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