Author Michael Benter discusses his book about Milwaukee's early NFL team

By Bob Wolfley of the Journal Sentinel

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In the 1920s, Milwaukee had a team that competed in the fledgling years of the National Football League. Author Michael Benter has written a book about that team that was recently published, "The Badgers: Milwaukee's NFL Entry of 1922-1926" (St. Johann Press, 388 pp.). Another team in that league, the Green Bay Packers, did survive those early years and became one of the more unlikely stories in professional team sport. We asked Benter, a Milwaukeean, some questions about the Milwaukee Badgers:

Did the players share common backgrounds? - Many of the players in the early '20s were from the East Coast. The Ivy League was the strongest conference then. You had Yale and Harvard as dominant teams, national powers. People that followed pro football in its early days wanted to see the Eastern stars and Milwaukee's 1922 team, their inaugural team, was stocked with Eastern players. Jim Dufft of Fordham, Fritz Pollard of Brown, John Alexander, Paul Robeson and Budge Garrett of Rutgers were fairly well-known and very skilled players on the first Badgers' squad.

What kind of coaching did these players get? Did they practice frequently? - A player, usually an exemplary player, was the team's coach. Budge Garrett and most likely Fritz Pollard - a story within itself - coached the '22 Badgers, until Jimmy Conzelman took over for the last three games. Before the season Earl Potteiger, another player, organized and coached what would be known as preseason practices today. Coaches couldn't coach from the sidelines back then, so it was natural that a player took that role. . . . (Back) then were "managers," they concentrated on administrative and personnel duties. In Milwaukee's case, Ambrose McGurk one of the team's owners was the manager.

Where did the Badgers play their home games? - Athletic Park, home of the AA Milwaukee Brewers and owned by Otto Borchert. After Borchert passed in 1925 it was called Borchert Field. The Badgers paid a few hundred dollars game rent to Borchert for use of the field. Sometimes the team couldn't practice there on Saturday's because there would be an attractive high school doubleheader grid contest that superseded the pros. Can you imagine Green Bay Preble playing West at Lambeau negating a Packers' walk-through the day before a game today?

What was the biggest game in the team’s brief history and how many fans attended it? - A November 1922 game with the Oorang Indians of LaRue, Ohio drew the biggest crowd in Badger history, 6,500. The Indians were led by Jim Thorpe and were made up of Native Americans who played football at Carlisle Indian School or Haskell University. Sponsored by a company that sold Airedale dogs, the Indians were the brainchild of Walter Lingo, the kennel's  owner. During halftime of some of their games the Indians performed rope tricks, did tricks with Airedales and on a few occasions had a team member wrestle a bear. There is no evidence that the Indians put on a halftime show of that nature in their two appearances in Milwaukee in 1922 and 1923. The Indians were a good draw because of their uniqueness and reputation. They got Milwaukeeans who never would attend a pro game to come out for reasons other than football.

Who was the best player on the Badgers? - A player who got his due more for his coaching ability with Milwaukee and later with a couple of other NFL teams was Jimmy Conzelman. He was a triple threat back who could pass, run and kick. He was a fiery competitor who hated losing. Red Dunn was a great player and had the same skill set as Conzelman and losing him after only one season, 1924, hurt the Badgers on the field and in the stands, because he was a native Milwaukeean and had starred at Marquette. Those two are probably 1 and 1A. There were others who showcased their talents before or after their stays in Milwaukee. Robeson, later an icon of stage and screen and a human rights activist, and Pollard were superior players, but during their one year with the Badgers they were often injured. Johnny Blood McNally was with the '25 team, an awful team that scored only one touchdown that year, and that was by way of a fumble recovery in the opponent's end zone. He never got a chance to show the skills he later did with Green Bay. Same for Lavvie Dilweg, another fine player who played with the '26 Badgers.

How much were the players paid? How much did the highest-paid player get? - The average player made around $100 a game. The stars, like Paddy Driscoll of Chicago, $300. I have a copy of one NFL contract for a Badger player, Clem Neacy, an end. He was paid $110 a game. 

How was it at the time that the Badgers came to have African-American players when that was not the case for some other team sports? - Some people actually came out to see the novelty of blacks and whites competing on the field. Some to heckle. Pollard, who spent time with the Akron franchise once said Milwaukee was "as bad" as Akron, where he had to dress at the team owner's cigar factory before games, instead of with his white teammates, though he never elaborated as to why. On the field, Pollard would raise his spikes and do a "bicycle kick" to keep some of the more racially intolerant players from piling on him. The Badgers had four of the 13 players African-American players that played in the NFL between 1920 and 1933. Garrett was half Native American.  Alexander was Jewish. The team was truly diverse. The diversity in the league took a hit when more of the college game's stars started coming into the league, especially after Red Grange signed with the Bears in 1926. Before that almost anyone was welcome. People came to pro football games for their novelty, to see the Oorang team, guys try to pile on Pollard. It was akin to pro wrestling. In fact, the pro game had such a less-than-stellar reputation that when it came time to note his occupation on his children's birth certificates George Halas listed "engineer," his course of study in college, probably because he felt being the owner of an NFL team didn't reflect well on him.

The Badgers were 0-9-1 against the Packers. Was that because the Packers were the more talented and superior team in all those years? - Consistency. Green Bay had fine players like Curly Lambeau, Charlie Mathys, Cub Buck, Milt Gardner and Jug Earp who were with the team year after year. Milwaukee's roster virtually changed each season. Lambeau was always the coach of the Packers each year. The Badgers had four coaching changes in five seasons. Due to financial woes, Milwaukee couldn't afford to keep decent players like Dunn and Hal Erickson, among others. 

How is it the Milwaukee Badgers lasted only five seasons in the NFL, but the Packers, in a much smaller market, were able to survive and then thrive? - The Packers were had great support in the community and the press. George Whitney Calhoun, the Packers' manager and a whiz at keeping the Packers in the public eye, he was one of the game's first skilled PR men. Trainloads of fans followed the Packers down to cheer them on against the Badgers. In fact, the Packers even scheduled a game against another pro team in Milwaukee's own market while the Badgers were out of town one weekend in 1922, much to the chagrin of Milwaukee's owners. Owner McGurk was a yardsman at the Chicago stockyards when he wasn't running the Badgers. He really wasn't financially set. He also wasn't the most forthright guy and at least one member of the Milwaukee press, George Downer, seemed to especially dislike him. His partner, Joe Plunkett, was also a Chicagoan. Plunkett was the better businessman, but he got out after a year, probably because he saw no future in the franchise. The Chicago roots of the two and the fact that they apparently did little to cement relationships in Milwaukee's sporting scene hurt the club immensely. Milwaukee had thriving amateur and semi-pro football scenes as well as numbers of people who followed the football teams of Marquette or the Wisconsin Badgers. If I could make a comparison in today's terms, it would be like the popularity of an arena team compared to the Packers or Wisconsin Badgers. The fact that McGurk's '25 team was involved in an ineligible players scandal that rocked the pro football world and drew the ire of Commissioner Joe Carr all but guaranteed the demise of the franchise.

Are there any similarities between the game played then and the game played now? - Well, it's still a game of blocking and tackling on a 100 yard field. Back in the '20s teams definitely didn't pass all that much, though Green Bay with Lambeau, a former Notre Dame player at the helm, passed more than the average team. That's because Notre Dame had a passing game as part of its arsenal for almost a decade before Lambeau ever came to South Bend. The Badgers probably put the ball up 7-10 times a game. They mostly ran out of sets like the Notre Dame Box, the T-formation, single wing. Old sets you hardly ever see today, unless they're a gimmick. Defenses weren't overly complex either. They were seven man fronts with either the four backfield players aligned in a box or diamond pattern. The players on the field were two-platoon performers for the most part. Players that were linemen on offense simply switched to the defensive line when their team was defending. The offensive backfield players usually made up the secondary. The game is vastly different in almost every phase now.