Why Does Every Chicago Bears Jersey Feature 'Gsh'? the Untold Story of 'Papa Bear'
By Maya Lin-Takahashi
To grasp why Halas earned such absolute reverence, rewind to September 1920 in Canton, Ohio. Halas, then an ambitious twenty-five-year-old athlete and recreational sports director for the A.E. Staley starch manufacturing company in Decatur, Illinois, walked into an automobile dealership. Alongside representatives from thirteen other independent athletic clubs, Halas helped organize the American Professional Football Association, rebranded two years later as the National Football League.
When company founder Augustus Staley realized industrial league athletics were becoming too expensive to sustain locally, he gave Halas a $5,000 allowance and his blessing to relocate the team to Chicago. Playing out of Wrigley Field, the franchise competed as the Chicago Staleys in 1921 before Halas formally renamed them the Chicago Bears in 1922. The logic was clean: baseball's Chicago Cubs played in the same venue, and Halas argued that football players were naturally much larger than baseball players. Thus, the Bears were born.
Halas wore every hat conceivable. He took snaps as an end, drove the team truck, booked hotel rooms, and sold tickets directly outside gate turnstiles. In 1925, Halas pulled off his greatest operational coup: signing University of Illinois superstar running back Harold "Red" Grange. The subsequent cross-country barnstorming tour drew over 70,000 fans at the Polo Grounds in New York, effectively saving the fledging NFL from immediate bankruptcy and solidifying professional football as a legitimate national pastime.
Maya is a hardware enthusiast who tests and reviews smart home devices, smartphones, wearables, and audio gear. She focuses on practical consumer value and build quality.
