The Dayton Triangles were an original NFL team when the league was founded as the American Professional Football Association in 1920. Triangle Park in Dayton, OH was the home of the “first-ever NFL game” between the Dayton Triangles and the Columbus Panhandles.
This week I brought Bruce Smith, a former resident of Dayton. He grew up near the park, the place where now you will see a historical marker with the words “SITE OF FIRST GAME IN THE NFL.” I came across Bruce via Darrin Hayes over at the Pigskin Dispatch, one of the original podcasts of the Sports History Network.
Bruce grew fond of the story about the Dayton Triangles, so he ultimately decided to start a podcast with a jam-packed 20 episodes of information about the history of the team. You can learn more about the podcast and Bruce over here at his page.
Below is a short history of the Dayton Triangles, authored by Bruce.
Dayton Triangles History
The first seed of one of the founding teams of the National Football League was planted in the fall of 1908, when a group of local boys enrolled at the Saint Mary’s Institute (later renamed the University of Dayton) in Dayton, Ohio. As “day” students, who came to campus for classes and went home each day, they often clashed with the resident students at the Institute.
Father William O’Maley, a young administrator at the school, organized some of the day students into a basketball team to help them gain a sense of identity. That team, the Saint Mary’s Cadets, was wildly successful, and by 1909 they had branched out into other sports, including football.
Meanwhile, by 1915 Dayton had become a booming center of industry. Three of the city’s leading businesses banded together to create a recreational facility for their workers and the entire local community.
These three businesses, known collectively as “the Triangle,” established Triangle Park in 1916 and created the Dayton Triangles football team that same year. The young men who had started out as the Saint Mary’s Cadets formed the nucleus of the team, along with players from the company teams of the Dayton Metal Products Company and the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, better known as Delco.
One of the key contributors to the formation of the park and the team was Forrest Burleigh (F. B.) MacNab, a Delco executive who headed the committee that ran the team and Triangle Park in its early years.
First Coach
The first head coach of the Dayton Triangles was Nelson Strobridge “Bud” Talbott. Talbott had been an All-American during his college career as a left tackle at Yale.
He was the son of Harold Talbott, the head of Dayton Metal Products Company, one of the three Triangle companies. Coach Talbott was a master strategist of the gridiron game. He was also a forward thinker who introduced the use of the tackling dummy at the team’s practices.
The Triangles played a strong first season in 1916, finishing 9-1. Their only loss was 10-7 to the Cincinnati Celts, a team the Triangles had beaten earlier in the season. Despite doing well on the field, the Triangles had trouble drawing crowds at Triangle Park. This attendance problem would persist throughout the team’s history.
The 1917 season was affected by the great war then raging in Europe. After the United States declared war on Germany, Coach Talbott enlisted, along with the club’s first business manager, Mike Redelle. The team turned to quarterback Alphonse Herman “Al” Mahrt to coach the team in 1917.
Mahrt, who had been one of the original Saint Mary’s Cadets, was one of the great passing quarterbacks in the early history of football. Mahrt was also an inspiring leader on the field, making him a natural choice to step in as coach of the Triangles. To replace Redelle as business manager, F. B. MacNab hired Carl Storck, who had been a hard-working running back for the Cadets and the 1916 Triangles.
The 1917 Dayton Triangles went undefeated in eight games, with two ties. Their only taste of defeat in 1917 came in an exhibition game against a select team of military players under the direction of former Triangle coach Talbott, who was by then a Captain in the United States Army.
The Dayton Triangles had to fill another head coaching vacancy in 1918 after Al Mahrt also enlisted to join the war effort. Carl Storck, whose nickname was “Scummy,” hired Earle “Greasy” Neale to coach the team and play running back in 1918; thus, Dayton’s 1918 brain trust was “Scummy” and “Greasy.” To further complicate football in the year 1918, the global influenza pandemic struck, sidelining several topflight teams.
The 1918 season turned out to be the best in Dayton Triangles history. The Triangles finished with a perfect 8-0 record, outscoring their opponents 188-9 and were clearly the top professional football team that year. However, because teams like the Canton Bulldogs and Cincinnati Celts did not compete, the Triangles’ 1918 achievement was tainted.
The 1919 season marked a return to normalcy across America. With Coach Talbott and quarterback Mahrt back from the war, the Triangles compiled a record of five wins, two losses, and a tie.
The 1920 Season
The year 1920 brought momentous changes both on and off the gridiron. Triangles manager Carl Storck represented Dayton at two meetings in the late summer at Canton, Ohio that resulted in the creation of the American Professional Football Association (APFA), which would eventually become the National Football League (NFL).
The inaugural season of the new league started auspiciously for the Dayton Triangles on October 3, 1920, when the Triangles defeated the Columbus Panhandles 14-0 at Triangle Park. After a scoreless first half of play, running back Lou Partlow scored a rushing touchdown, widely regarded as the first in NFL history. Center George “Hobby” Kinderdine kicked the first extra point. Later in the game, Francis Bacon became the first player in NFL history to return a punt for a touchdown.
Perhaps the greatest football game ever played in Dayton occurred on October 24, 1920. On that date, the nearly legendary Canton Bulldogs, led by their superstar player-coach Jim Thorpe, came to town for their first game ever against Dayton.
The 20 points the Triangles scored that day were the highest single-game total against Canton in the Jim Thorpe era. The great Thorpe put himself in the lineup in the second half with the score tied at 14 apiece, and Dayton still almost won. Only a blocked extra point after a Lou Partlow touchdown and two late field goals by Thorpe prevented Dayton from beating Canton outright. The game ended in a 20-20 tie.
When Canton faltered later in the season, Dayton began to entertain aspirations of becoming the first champion in league history. Only two hard-fought, heartbreaking losses to the eventual champion Akron Professionals prevented Dayton from hoisting the championship mantle in 1920. As it was, Dayton finished with six wins, two losses, and two ties, good enough for sixth place in the initial APFA standings.
On the morning of January 31, 1921, while golfing near the family’s winter residence in south Florida, Coach Talbott’s father Harold collapsed and died. The elder Talbott’s death set in motion a series of events that would force his son to spend more time on family and business priorities, pulling him increasingly away from the team he loved and helped to found. It marked the beginning of the end for the Dayton Triangles as a professional football powerhouse.
Because of the need to spend more time away from the team, Coach Talbott persuaded the Triangles to hire his former mentor and college coach Frank Hinkey to serve as an assistant coach of the team for the 1921 season. Without the full-time services of Talbott as head coach, the Triangles struggled to a record of four wins, four losses, and a tie. However, they did avenge their two losses to the Akron Pros from the previous season with a tough 3-0 win at Triangle Park.
With Coach Talbott’s availability at a premium and Coach Hinkey’s health failing, Carl Storck took on the additional responsibility of coaching the Dayton Triangles in the 1922 season. Under Storck, and with limited assistance from Talbott, the Triangles managed a record of four wins, three losses, and a tie.
It was the last season in which the Triangles had a winning record. Tragically, F. B. MacNab, who had been so instrumental at the beginning of Dayton Triangle history and was a strong backer of the team, passed away due to kidney disease at the age of just 37. After the 1922 season ended, quarterback Al Mahrt retired, and the Dayton Triangles offense was never the same.
With MacNab gone and Coach Talbott only available part-time, the Triangle companies withdrew their financial support for the team. Carl Storck was forced to assume ownership of the Dayton Triangles franchise beginning with the 1923 season, a fact that was not revealed to the general public in Dayton until 1925. Missing Talbott’s expert coaching and Mahrt’s field generalship, the Triangles slid to a record of one win, six losses, and a tie.
In the years that followed 1923, fan interest in the team waned. To maximize revenues, the Triangles became a road-only team. Storck eventually turned over coaching duties to other men, but by the late 1920s, the Triangles had no hope of keeping up with better-financed teams in larger markets.
Finally, before the beginning of the 1930 season, Carl Storck sold the Dayton Triangles franchise to New York-area businessman Bill Dwyer for $2500. Dwyer moved the team to Brooklyn, New York, and renamed them the Brooklyn Dodgers, after the local baseball team. The Dayton Triangles ended as the last original NFL team still standing. They had lost only one game in their first three seasons of play and won only one game in their final three seasons.
Although Carl Storck no longer owned an NFL franchise after selling the Triangles to Bill Dwyer, he continued to work as a high-ranking official in the league, eventually succeeding Joe Carr to become the third president of the league. Storck was the last man to serve as president of the National Football League before the commissioner era began in 1941.
For more on this topic, don’t forget to check out the extensive article covering all of the original 14 teams of the American Professional Football Association.
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Loved the podcast about the Dayton Triangles.
Bud Talbott is my grandfather, Harold Talbott is my great grandfather.
My only comment is that the way the Talbott family pronounces our name is Tall-butt, not Towel-bit.
Outside the family, everyone pronounces it the way you do, but we pronounce it as I mention above.
Again, thank you for all the fun information
James,
Thank you for the kind words (sorry about the pronunciation). If you ever wanted to share some information with us, we have many forms of media you could help with.