The College All-Star Game, Ballot Stuffing, and the NFL
The College All-Star Game, Ballot Stuffing, and the NFL
When Arch Ward was the Chicago Tribune's sports editor, he found time to start or play a role in starting the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, Golden Gloves boxing, the All-American Football Conference, and the College All-Star Game.
The man was a promoter who found ways to involve the public in his adventures, knowing their involvement would extend their relationship with the events. Ward started the Chicago Charities College All-Star game in 1934. The annual games continued until 1976, after which the NFL ended preseason All-Star games.
For decades, the College All-Star game signaled the start of a new football season. The game took the top college seniors from the previous season (and occasional minor league players), gathered them in Chicago for a few weeks of training, and had them play the defending NFL champs in the exhibition season opener.
Football's increased complexity, the potential for injuries, and the fact that the College All-Star game took most of the players selected in the top rounds of the draft away from their new teams made the game untenable.
An interesting aspect of the game in the early days was that fans nationwide voted the players onto the roster. The Chicago Tribune managed the process but encouraged newspapers and other organizations across the country to promote voting, and the local rags gathered and counted the ballots submitted to them before reporting the results to the Tribune for the nationwide tally.
There have been claims that ballot stuffing occurred in Chicago elections in the past, but you have yet to see ballot stuffing until you look into the College All-Star game's voting. There was nothing nefarious about the ballot stuffing, but it was still ballot stuffing by any definition. So, let's look at how the voting and game worked, partly through the experience of Mike Kochel, who played in the 1939 game after being one of the Seven Blocks of Granite at Fordham and substituting for Vince Lombardi.
The voting opened around the Fourth of July when newspapers told readers to submit their ballots, naming up to eleven players per ballot. You might think the ballots were preprinted forms with a curated list of nationwide candidates, but they were not. Most ballots listed football's eleven positions and had voters write in whatever names they saw fit.
Despite publishing voting forms that did not push readers to vote for one player or the other, newspapers commonly encouraged readers to vote for players who grew up in the area or played for in-state colleges. For example, the Rock Island Argus promoted voting for area players and offered cash prizes to the newspaper boys who collected the most ballots.
Others took a more parochial approach. The Times of Streator, Illinois, might have been called the Cheater from Streator due to their printing ballots listing only the two local boys interested in playing.
None of the local promotions were illegal; perhaps they were encouraged by the Tribune since it drove engagement, and Bradley's Ted Panish ended up making the team.
In all, they received more than 11 million votes. The top vote-getters started the game and others joined the team based on vote totals, talent, and storylines of interest to the Chicago-area attendees.
Not only did the fans select the players for the game, but they also selected the coaches, with Notre Dame's Elmer Layden earning the head coach title while other top vote-getters assisted him.
Mike Kochel made the roster and headed to Chicago to practice at Northwestern before playing in front of 81,456 fans at Soldier Field. The Giants beat the All-Stars 9-0 and raised some money for charity.
Like Sid Luckman and seven other Chicago All-Star teammates, Kochel headed to New York to play the Giants again in a second All-Star game on September 8 with a different combination of players. Three days later, he played in a third All-Star game with another mix of players against the Redskins in Boston. Only after playing in his third All-Star game did he report to the Chicago Cardinals, who had played and lost to the Detroit Lions in their first regular season game the day before the Boston All-Star game.
Football has changed dramatically in the intervening 85 years, making it difficult to imagine that the NFL once allowed its top draft picks to risk injury and miss all of training camp and the first game of the season to play in charity All-Star games. Think about that as you watch the multi-million dollar commercials during today's Super Bowl.
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I loved that late summer All-Star game at least the few I remember watching. It is a cool part of American football history. I never realized the fan and newspaper voting was what decided the College rosters. Great piece of research!and post