No you’re not reading this wrong, the city of Dayton did have a major league football team nearly a century ago. The Dayton Triangles were one of the first NFL football teams and represented the Gem City for nine years, starting in 1920.
The Triangles started out as a group of alumni, students and local athletes from St. Mary’s University (which became the University of Dayton) who were basketball players and branched out into other sports, such as football and baseball.
The team started playing in 1913 and won the Dayton City Championship as well as the Southern Ohio Championship in their first season. They went 7-0 and proceeded to win the city championship in the next two seasons.
The successful program was then restructured in 1916 as a recreational football program that included employees of three downtown Dayton factories: the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, the Dayton Metal Products Company and the Domestic Engineering Company. This is how the Triangles’ name came to be, as they were owned by three different local factories.
1916 was a successful year for the team, as they went 9-1, beating teams from Cincinnati, Detroit, Toledo and Pittsburgh.
That season the Triangles weren’t able to stake a claim for the Ohio League championship. The Canton Bulldogs, based out of Canton, Ohio claimed the title and didn’t respond to a challenge issued by Dayton.
The 1917 season brought more changes, as the team officially made their name the Dayton Triangles and began playing games at Triangle Park. They went 6-0-2 for the season. The team managed to score 188 points and gave up only 13 to their opponents.
1918 saw the U.S. enter into World War I, and many teams lost players to military service, including the Triangles. However, due to the city being a hub for industrial jobs essential to the war effort, the team had more available players at home than most of their competition.
That year they claimed an Ohio League Championship after going 8-0 in the season. During this run, they beat future NFL teams such as the Toledo Maroons, Hammond Pros, Columbus Panhandles and Detroit Heralds.
After a lackluster 1919 season, the Triangles became one of the first NFL teams in 1920. At that time the NFL was called the American Professional Football Association (APFA).
Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Thorpe was the first president of the league, and it consisted of 14 teams. Of these, only two exist today: the Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals).
On Oct. 3, 1920 the Triangles played the Columbus Panhandles in the inaugural NFL game, winning 14-0 at Triangle Park.
Triangles’ player Louis Partlow scored the first NFL touchdown. George “Hobby” Kinderdine of the Triangles kicked the first extra point. The other touchdown was scored by Francis Bacon.
Following this showing, the team had a decent season, going 5-2-2, the two losses against eventual league champion, the Akron Pros. A high mark of the season was a 20-20 tie game at home against the Canton Bulldogs. It was the first time a team scored three touchdowns against the Bulldogs in five years.
However, the team started to decline in subsequent seasons, due to the recruiting process of other NFL teams. While most NFL teams signed top college athletes around the country, Dayton still used mainly local players.
This lack of talent caused the Triangles to stop being competitive. They stopped drawing fans to the 5,000 person capacity Triangle Park, and they became a traveling team from 1924 to 1929. A traveling team is one that never plays games in its home field.
The Triangles became a doormat in the NFL, only winning five of 51 games from 1923 to 1929. The team had three winless seasons during this period as well.
Adding to this, the league began expanding and getting rid of teams based in mid-sized midwestern cities. In this new landscape, Dayton wasn’t big enough to support an NFL team.
The team was bought in July 1930 and moved to Brooklyn. The team continued to move around the country, going to Boston, then back to New York and finally to Dallas in 1952. The following year it was folded and the remains were sold to Baltimore. They formed the Colts, which then moved to its current Indianapolis home in 1984.
However, the NFL does not consider the Colts to have any traces of past teams, including the Triangles.
In its 17 years of existence, the Dayton Triangles had success, winning three Ohio City Championships and one Ohio League Championship. They had an all time record of 65-59-12 and are a permanent part of NFL history, being one of its first teams and winning its first game.
Henry Wolski
Executive Editor
