After playing his final collegiate game in front of 85,000 spectators (20,000 more were allegedly turned away at the gate), Grange announced his decision to his coach and the media, snuck out of the building via a fire escape, and boarded a train to Chicago.
Pyle negotiated the most exorbitant contract in NFL history for Grange. In an era when many NFL players were lucky to earn $100 per game, Grange would be paid in excess of $100,000 for the remainder of the season with the Bears. Though professional football didn’t enjoy nearly the mainstream popularity and success as collegiate football at the time – when President Calvin Coolidge was introduced to the team, he remarked, “Chicago Bears? I always did enjoy animal acts.” – the Bears considered Grange a can’t miss attraction on the professional circuit. Pyle also negotiated lucrative endorsement deals which placed Grange’s name and likeness on candy bars, soft drinks, dolls, malted milk, and toy footballs nationwide.
The Jacksonville All-Stars, the week-old team that the Bears were in town to face, were the brainchild of Florida entertainment promoter John O’Brien. Seeing the crowds in excess of 70,000 that Grange and the Bears had drawn across the country, O’Brien couldn’t help but want in on the action himself.
Days earlier, O’Brien had found his own cash cow in the form of an incredibly popular Stanford All-American, Ernie “The Lion of the Sierras” Nevers. With Ernie Nevers leading the charge, O’Brien saw the All-Stars gaining popularity in Florida before eventually taking to the road like the Bears.
Ernie Nevers (left) and Coach Glenn Scobey “Pop” Warner. (Wikipedia)
Called “the football player without fault” by former coach Glenn “Pop” Warner, Nevers was, behind Grange, the most publicized football player of the 1920s. Nevers was fresh off a year that saw him named the Rose Bowl Player of the Game after playing 60 minutes at both ends of the ball and rushing for more yardage than Notre Dame’s vaunted Four Horsemen backfield combined. Though he had hoped to pitch for the St. Louis Browns after leaving college, O’Brien presented Nevers a mid-December offer he simply couldn’t refuse. Christmas would come several days early for Nevers when he signed a $50,000 contract to play five exhibition games with the Jacksonville All-Stars, beginning with the January 2nd game against the Bears. The signing made front-page news across the nation.
With Nevers under contract, the rest of the still non-existent All-Stars were hastily assembled from collegiates and NFL cast-offs.
O’Brien reached out to Pyle to arrange a game in Jacksonville when the Bears barnstorming tour came through Florida. “I aim to cover the South with an announcement that no red-blooded man should miss the titanic struggle between the Galloping Ghost and the Lion of the Sierras – Red and Ernie,” he told Pyle. “It will be a sell-out with lamentable numbers turned away at the gate.”
Pyle agreed, but his offer was steep.
A matchup with the Bears would cost O’Brien a $20,000 cash guarantee, in addition to 65% of the live gate.
Exorbitant ticket prices would be necessary to recoup O’Brien’s investment, but Jacksonville’s economy was booming in the mid-20s. The city had recently left behind an incredible 1924. The recently-permitted 18-story Barnett Bank building at the southwest corner of West Adams and Laura Street gave Jacksonville a new annual city building record. Records had also been set for rail traffic, ocean trade, and bank clearings. Even the local post office experienced a historic year, processing over $1 million in receipts for the first time in city history.
There were early warning signs for the Jacksonville game though, as crowds proved disappointing for the Bears’ first two games in Florida. A Christmas day game in Coral Gables between the Bears and a local collegiate squad drew only 8,000 fans at a wooden 25,000 seat stadium that was quickly erected by 200 carpenters in the 48 hours before the game and immediately disassembled afterward (Grange recalled, “They sold tickets, ranging up to $20 apiece. And the next day, they took down the stadium. You’d never know a ball game had taken place there.”). Though necessary with Pyle’s fees, these high ticket prices – four times higher than Bears tickets at Cubs Park – resulted in lackluster attendance. “Even in inflated Coral Gables,” Grange noted, “the fast money boys considered the prices exorbitant.”
Worse, word quickly spread that the Coral Gables game lacked much excitement on the field. Local reporters called it “dull and uninteresting.”
The Bears’ next game took place in Florida’s bay area against the Tampa Cardinals. As a publicity stunt, the Cardinals were led by a 41-year old Jim Thorpe who hadn’t competed regularly in years. Fewer than 8,000 fans witnessed the “pathetically out of shape” former legend struggle up and down the field against the Bears. A Florida Times-Union headline the next day declared, “Tampa Game a Near Bust.”
Red Grange and his “Chicago Bears” pose at Plant Field the day before the January 1, 1926 Tampa game.(Tampapix.com)
The Bears’ matchup with Jacksonville’s All-Stars was the most heavily promoted of the three Florida games due to the face-off between Grange and Nevers, and Jacksonville Mayor John T. Alsop and Chamber of Commerce President E.P. Owen saw the game as a huge opportunity for the city, writing an open letter to employers in the Jacksonville Journal urging them to close their businesses on Saturday morning so that employees could attend the historic game.
To help boost ticket sales, a fifteen-piece concert by the nationally renowned Vessella’s Band was held in the lobby of the Mason Hotel (later proceeding to Hemming Plaza). Patrons jammed the hotel lobby to purchase passes to the game. Mayor Alsop rallied the crowd, calling the upcoming contest “the greatest football game ever arranged in America,” as did Ernie Nevers, who promised to represent the entirety of Jacksonville against the Bears. Never also led the All-Stars in public workouts, appeared at a variety of social events around the city, and spoke regularly on Jacksonville’s municipal radio station WJAX.