100 years ago today, the National Football League was founded in Canton, Ohio by 15 men who showed up to an automobile dealer’s showroom. Following World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic, there was a hunger for things to return to normal. The men, representing 10 football franchises in Midwestern states answered the call to start a league. Only two survive to this day—the Racine Cardinals, now the Arizona Cardinals, and George Halas’s team, the Bears, which moved to Chicago. It was Halas who soon after made a motion to change the name of the association to something pithier — the National Football League.

“Thinking back to that meeting in Canton, Ohio, I am pretty sure none of us had the remotest idea what we were starting,” Halas said celebrating the 50th anniversary in 1970.

Besides Halas, the most memorable name present was Jim Thorpe, the famed Olympian athlete who was now the Canton Bulldogs’ star halfback. That team’s owner, Ralph Hay, owned the car dealership and called the meeting that day. A $100 fee was required to join the association, and Thorpe, who was unanimously named president, was instructed to form a committee to work with a lawyer on a constitution, bylaws, and rules for the association.

A silver cup was donated as a prize for the team that won the association’s championship: “This gave all of us a feeling we were involved in a project that had dignity and stability,” Halas recalled.

Less than three miles away sits the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where Thorpe and Halas are today enshrined.

A block from where that fateful meeting was held, on decorative pylons that are part of the new Canton Centennial Plaza, the names of every man who ever played in the NFL during its first 100 years — more than 25,000 of them — are inscribed. And, across the street from the former car dealership is a new mural depicting the meeting. Thursday night, the NFL will mark the anniversary during their televised game. CHECK OUT the NFL video tribute to 100 years… (1920)

–Mural photo, copyright the artist Dirk Rozich, LLC

The opening of the new 2-acre park and outdoor gathering space in Canton, called Centennial Plaza, has been postponed due to the COVID-19 situation. It features two stages, a 60-foot video screen and café. Along with the engraved player names, visitors will be able to use cell phones to access digital information about any player listed. The park is expected to open to the public in October.

The 11 player-recognition pylons – one for each decade — will be dedicated this week during halftime of Thursday’s national broadcast of the Cleveland Browns-Cincinnati Bengals game.

Along the route between the NFL Hall of Fame only 3 miles away, a new public art walking tour called “The Eleven,” chronicles the 11 greatest moments in pro football history. 9 of the works are finished—including a commemoration of the 1967 “Ice Bowl” Super Bowl at Green Bay’s frigid (-19 below) Lambeau Field. Another commemorates “The Draft,” with Bert Bell, the owner/founder of the Philadelphia Eagles and later NFL commissioner, who in 1936 came up with the idea for the