First Draft: A focus on parity

GREEN BAY – In May 1935, NFL team owners approved a plan from Eagles owner, Bert Bell, that called for a Draft were the lower performing teams would have the top choice of college prospects —drafting in reverse order according to their previous season finish.

“The first National Football League Draft — or what the league called at the time ‘the selection of players’ — was held on Feb. 8, 1936, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia. There were nine teams represented, and they drafted 81 players over nine rounds,” wrote Packers Historian Cliff Christl.

The nine teams in the order of first-round selection were Philadelphia Eagles, Boston Redskins, Pittsburgh Pirates, Brooklyn Dodgers, Chicago Cardinals, Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions and the New York Giants.
“When club owners approved the Draft before the 1935 season, the NFL’s nine teams fell into two distinct categories: the haves and the have-nots,” Christl said.

Fortunately, the Green Bay Packers fell into “haves” category, along with the rival Bears team.

“The haves included the Bears, who had won back-to-back NFL championships in 1932 and ‘33, and the first two Western Division titles in 1933 and ‘34 with a combined regular-season record of 23-2-1; the Packers, who had won an unprecedented three straight NFL titles from 1929-31 and had finished under .500 only once in their first 14 NFL seasons; and the Giants, reigning league champions and winners of the first two Eastern Division titles,” Cliff added.
“The most notable have-nots were the Eagles and the then Pittsburgh Pirates, the league’s two newest members. Both played in the Eastern Division and had finished last and second-to-last in their first two seasons. Their combined record over that period was 12-28-3.”

“Bell was very persuasive. He was the guy who worked hard for it, to get everybody to go along. There wasn’t that much opposition to it,” Pittsburgh owner, Art Rooney, told Christl and Don Langenkamp in 1978.

“I was for it immediately, even though we paid the biggest price. We stood to lose the most by having a draft. Without a draft, pro football would have been hurt. It was definitely a contributing factor to the growth and success of pro football,” Bears’ owner George Halas told Christl in the late 1970s.

The first selection — picked by Bell’s Eagles — was Heisman Trophy winner, Jay Berwanger, out of the University of Chicago.

“The Eagles selected the halfback but traded his rights to the Bears. Considering pro football wasn’t a very lucrative career in 1936, Berwanger never played in the NFL,” Pro Football Hall of Fame records state.