The narrative unfolds in February 1936, in a hotel lobby in Chicago, where a pivotal moment in sports history transpires between George Halas, owner of the Chicago Bears, and Jay Burwanger, the first Heisman Trophy winner. Burwanger, despite being the inaugural NFL draft pick, famously declined to play professional football after negotiating a contract that he deemed insufficient. This episode elucidates the inception of the NFL draft, a mechanism designed to end the chaotic bidding wars for talented players, born out of necessity rather than grand vision. We explore the economic pressures faced by teams like the Philadelphia Eagles, which catalyzed a transformative proposal by Burt Bell, establishing a system that would ensure competitive balance across the league. Ultimately, this episode serves as a reflection on the complexities of valuing talent in professional sports and the enduring legacy of decisions made in that era.

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The narrative unfolds in February 1936 within the confines of a modest hotel lobby in Chicago, where an encounter between two pivotal figures in American football transpires. George Halas, the esteemed owner and coach of the Chicago Bears, confronts Jay Burwanger, a halfback from the University of Chicago and the inaugural recipient of the prestigious Heisman Trophy. This moment marks a critical juncture, as Halas has recently acquired Burwanger's rights from the financially beleaguered Philadelphia Eagles, who were unable to sustain the burgeoning salaries demanded by star players. When presented with an initial offer of $13,500—a considerable sum for that era—Burwanger asserts his worth, countering with a staggering demand of $25,000 for a two-year, no-cut contract. This audacious request prompts a stalemate; Halas, who had previously compensated his Hall of Fame fullback significantly less, cannot acquiesce to Burwanger's demands. Consequently, Burwanger exits the negotiation without ever having played a single down in professional football, leaving behind a profound legacy that would shape the NFL draft system.

Two men standing face to face.

One is George Hallis, owner and coach of the Chicago Bears, already a two time NFL champion.

The other is Jay Burwanger, halfback from the University of Chicago, winner, the very first Heisman, and the most celebrated college football player in America.

House has just acquired Burwanger's rights from the Philadelphia Eagles and he's ready to make him a bear.

He asked the young man for what he wants.

Burwanger looks at him and says, $25,000, two years, a no cut contract.

Palace, who paid his own hall of Fame fullback Bronco Nagurski, less than $3,000 a year, stares back at him.

The two men shake hands, say goodbye, and Jay Burwanger, the first player ever selected in an NFL draft, walks out of that hotel lobby and never plays a single down of professional football.

This is the story of the NFL draft, an idea born from a bidding war, a system designed to save struggling league and that man who looked at professional football and said, no, thanks.

The NFL did not begin as a grand vision for competitive balance.

It began because one man, Burt Bell, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, got humiliated trying to sign a fullback from Minnesota named Stan Koska.

Now, Stan koska was a 6 foot 225 round battering ram.

The Minneapolis Star called him the Snorting Stan and a blasting bull.

Now Crook Shaughnessy, the legendary coach at the University of Chicago at the time, said of him, I doubt whether any fullback ever hit harder than he could in the open field.

And he was one of the few men who could simply run through a tackle.

He every team in the league wanted them, and the Bears, the Packers, the Giants, the Dodgers, the Pirates, and Burt Bell's Philadelphia Eagles.

Bell was desperate.

It was a franchise born from the ashes of the bankrupt Frankfort Yellow Jackets, established as a replacement team.

And in their first three seasons, the Eagles had finished with records of 3, 5 and 1, then 4 and 7.

So Bell flew to Minneapolis, sat down with Koska in a hotel room and asked him what other teams had offered.

Costco had told him the top bid was $3,500.

Now Bell made his move.

I'll give you 4,000, he said.

Now Koska hesitated and said 5,000.

Still hesitating.

6,000.

Sign now and I can go home now.

Koska didn't sign, and Bell flew back to Philadelphia empty handed.

And a few days later, Koska inked a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers for $5,000 plus a $500 signing bonus, making him at the time the highest paid rookie in professional football history.

Bronco Nagurski, the most feared player in the league, was making roughly $3,000.

A year.

Later, Koska admitted exactly what he had done.

In his own words, he said, I was the instigator of the draft.

Every club in the league contacted me.

I'd send them a wire back and say, Green Bay or the Bears.

They said, they give me 4,000.

And I kept that up.

A man had run an auction on himself, and the owners have been powerless to stop him.

And on the flight home to Minneapolis, Burt Bell made a decision.

He would later say, I made up my mind that this league would never survive unless we had some system by whereby each team had even a chance to bid on a talent against the other.

He had an idea.

The proposal was simple and it carried Bill's name with it, with a second from George Preston Marshall, owner of the Boston Redskins at the time.

Now, every year, the teams would select college players in reverse order of the previous year's standings.

The worst team would pick first, the champion would pick last, and once a team selected a player, no other team could negotiate with that same player.

The bidding wars would end, and the vote was unanimous.

Even George Hallis, who Chicago Bears, would sacrifice the most under his system.

He voted yes.

Halas understood something that the others were slower to grasp.

A league is only as strong as its weakest franchise.

And if the Eagles and the Pirates kept hemorrhaging money, there would be no league left for the Bears to dominate.

Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Purdue had all recruited him more aggressively, but Chicago offered the smallest package, but he chose them anyway.

Now, in an era before two platoon football, before players specialized on offense or defense.

Burwanger did everything.

He called the plays, he ran a ball, he threw it, he punted, he returned punts, he returned kickoff extra points and he played linebacker.

On defense, the Chicago Tribune called him the one man team.

Other writers called him the Flying Dutchman, an heir since his ancestry was German, not Dutch, and the man in an iron mask because he wore a custom face guard to protect his twice broken nose.

Decades later, Ford said, when I tackled Jay in the second quarter, I ended up with a bloody cut and I still have the scar to prove it.

Now Burwanger remains the only Heisman Trophy winner ever to be tackled by a future president.

He had been awarded a new trophy, the Downtown Athletic Club trophy, for being, in the club's words, the most valuable player east of the Mississippi, and a telegram included a trip for two to New York.

Now, that trophy would later be renamed the following year and after the club's athletic director, a man named John W. Heisman.

He was thinking about the Olympics.

He was a track star aiming for the decathlon.

And he was thinking about his business degree.

It was a side hustle.

Burwanger told the Associated Press, for the time being, I am mainly interested in finishing my courses at Chicago, graduating next June and then trying to get a place on the Olympic team.

He didn't make the Olympic team, but he was about to make history anyway on a February afternoon in a Philadelphia ballroom.

And we'll get to what happened then right after this message.

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February 8th.

We are in a Philadelphia ballroom where the first NFL draft is taking place.

The Ritz Carlton Hotel.

Nine teams, nine rounds and 81 players selected.

There were no television cameras, there was no draft analyst, no green room.

And most of the owners worked from list of players that they had compiled from newspaper clippings and college media guides.

Some names were misspelled, some players were selected who had already decided not to play pro football.

And.

And the entire affair was conducted in near obscurity.

Now the Philadelphia Eagles picking first selected Jay Burwanger, halfback, University of Chicago Heisman Trophy winner.

But Bell's Eagles knew they could not afford to sign him.

The team was broke.

So they traded Burwanger's rights to the Chicago Bears, the richest, most successful franchise in the league, owned by a man who had proven that he would pay for talent.

What happened next passed into legendary.

Now, according to the Pro Football hall of Fame and Burwanger's own account, Hallis had offered him a contract worth $13,500, a significant sum for that era, far more than most NFL players are.

But Burwanger, who had studied business at Chicago and understood exactly what the first Heisman winner's name was worth, made a counteroffer.

He said, quote, I said 25,000 for two years and a no cut contract.

Burwanger told the New York Times decades later.

We shook hands, said goodbye, and he and I have been good friends ever since.

Now Halas reaches limit at 13,500 and Burwanger held at 15,000, roughly $260,000.

George Hallis, who had built a dynasty on toughness and discipline, could not bring himself to pay a rookie more than four times what he was paying Bronco Nagurski.

And Jay Burwanger, a 22 year old with a business degree and a clear sense of his own worth, could not bring himself to accept less.

So Jay Burwanger did something that's incomprehensible to us modern people in the NFL.

Here, Burwanger walked away.

He took a job as a foam rubber salesman.

Now he was not alone.

As Bill Shakespeare, the Notre Dame back selected in the third round overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates also said no.

Paul Bear Bryant, drafted in the fourth round by the Brooklyn Dodgers, declined professional football to pursue coaching.

Probably a good idea that he did that and probably good for football.

Eddie Eldoretz of St. Mary's a third round pick of the Chicago Cardinals also walked away for all Americans in the first four rounds.

The very first NFL draft looked at professional football and the same thing.

Thank you, but no.

But Burwanger was the first and that's what mattered.

Of the 81 players selected, fewer than half ever played it down in the NFL.

The very first pick never suited up.

And the very idea that professional teams would could compel college stars to play for them, the core consumption of the draft was not yet a reality.

But the framework held the principle that the worst teams get the first chance at the best players survived its first test in every test since.

The draft that Bell created over the coming decades became the single most important engine of the competitive balance of American professional sports.

Yes, I said all American professional sports.

If the Green Bay, the smallest market in professional sports, cannot compete with the New Yorks and the Chicago's of the league, the entire enterprise will eventually collapse.

The draft was not a charity.

It was self preservation.

The man who chased Stan Koska in Minneapolis hotel room and who proposed the draft at the Fort Pit Hotel, who owned a team that finished 2 and 9 and earned the first pick in history, well, that man became one of the architects of professional football as we know it now.

The Burt Bell Award, given annually.

The NFL's best player of the year is named for him and his bus sits in the Pro Football hall of Fame.

As for Jay Burwanger, well, he never regretted his decision.

He built a successful manufacturing business, Jay Burwinger Incorporated, producing plastic and sponge rubber strips for car doors, trunks and farm machinery.

He wrote a sports column for the Chicago Daily News and he refereed college football games.

He served as a Navy flight instructor during World War II crew teaching pilots to fly, and later he said that those flights were more terrifying than anything that he had experienced in the war.

His son Collier later said of him, my dad always said football is what I did, but it's not who I am.

He was the only man in history to be the first Heisman Trophy, the first NFL draft pick and a phone rubber salesman all in the same remarkable life.

The draft was born in that room, and it has never stopped teaching the same lesson Jay Burwanger taught George Hallis in a Chicago hotel lobby.

Talent knows its value, and the league just spent the next 99 years learning to pay for it.

And what a year of change that was.

A year of surprises.

A year of AFL and NFL merging.

A year when the AFL got to look the NFL eye to eye and proved its worth.

Helped the merger, helped everything.

And a lot of great college football as well.

We'll have that and more coming up, but join us each day on pigskindispatch.com and that great pigskin dispatch timeline.

Till next time, everybody have a great gridiron day.