1920 Racine Street Cardinals -- A No APFA FOF9 Dynasty

[Passacaglia]

So I wasn't able to get the scheduling to work the way I wanted to for my Small Town Football League, so it's time to move on to my next idea!

1920. Pro Football is a loose collection of teams that play football games against each other sometimes, and anything resembling a league is also informal, a group of teams that happen to play each other often. Amid all this, leaders of a few teams get together to create a "national" league -- the American Pro Football Association, which in two wears would change its name to the National Football League.

We're going for a world in which that doesn't happen, and instead the four largest leagues formalize on their own, but agree to basically all the things that are required in FOF9 -- creating a playoff and a championship game, a draft, and contracts (which were also informal at the time, with players playing for a new team sometimes on a week-to-week basis).

Scheduling will be kept strict, with teams playing only teams in the same league as them. This is actually a change from the way things were, where teams could be "in" a league, but still several of their games would be against whoever they could find to play them. I'm going with the idea that stricter scheduling is part of the formalization that keeps these leagues in existence, and prevents a national APFA from being formed. Plus, it aligns with me personal desire to avoid rematches in the playoffs.

Just to tamper down anyone excited by seeing Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, and others in action, we're not doing player files - all fictional players. The alternate reality is just setting the team structure and the schedule. Of course, the style of football played will be extremely different from the 1920s, too.

[Passacaglia]

We'll start with the Ohio League -- probably the top league out there. Some of these teams had more than one name, and I chose the one that seemed most fun, or reduced the number of duplicate names, even if it wasn't the name they had at the start of 1920.

Canton Bulldogs -- I'm not sure if any of these leagues awarded a champion, but if they did, it would have been Canton in 1919 . They went 9-0-1 that year, and have been dominant since 1916, although like many teams, they didn't field a team in 1918 due to the war and the flu.

Dayton Triangles -- They were the best team in the league in 1918 with Canton out, and they were pretty good in 1919 at 5-2-1.

Akron Burkhardts -- Kind of a down year for them in 1919 at 5-5, but they are not too far removed from titles in 1913 and 1914. Better known as Akron Indians or Akron Pros, but since I already have teams with those names, I went with Burkhardts, which they used in 1916-1917.

Cincinnati Celts -- Founded in 1910. Ended up joining the APFA in 1921, but folded after one year in it.

Cleveland Indians -- Just started in 1916. They joined the APFA right away in 1920, and lasted only two seasons. They were the Cleveland Tigers in 1919 and 1920, but I went with Indians, which they used the rest of their years, since there's a lot of Tigers.

Columbus Panhandles -- Went 3-6-1 in 1919. Joined the APFA in 1920, and folded in 1926.

Massillon Tigers -- They went 6-3-1 in 1919 and have been good-not-great for the last few years. Massillon was the only major Ohio League team to NOT join the APFA. They ended up folding in 1923, proving that it didn't matter whether a team joined or not, they all seemed doomed to eventually fail.

Toledo Maroons -- Went 4-2-2- in 1919. Waited until 1922 to join the NFL, then folded in 1923.

[Passacaglia]

Next up, Pennsylvania! This is mostly based on the Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit which the wikipedia says existed past 1920, but they only list champions up to 1905, and all those teams had foled by 1920. It took some digging, but I was able to find 8 teams to fill this league.

Frankford Yellow Jackets -- "One of the best independent teams in the nation in the early 1920s. Pennsylvania has blue laws which prevented teams from joining the APFA in 1920 since they couldn't play football on Sundays until 1924. By that time, Frankford was the only team that joined, and won an NFL title in 1926. Folded in 1931 after a fire damaged their stadium.

Hope-Harvey Irish -- Technically founded in 1921, but apparently I'm going to give them a pass and put them in, since they are essntially the Steelers, have a fun name (actually thre fun names -- it was tough to choose between Hope-Harvey Irish, Majestic Radios, and J.P. Rooneys), and were the only team in Pittsburgh proper. This wiki says they joined the NFL in 1933 as PA's blue laws were repealed -- not sure why Frankford was able to join in 1924 then.

Conshohocken Athletic Club -- Founded 1914, folded 1925. Won the Eastern Pennsylvania Championship in 1919 with an 8-0-1 record.

Glassport Odds -- Founded 1913, folded 1950. Considered one of the fastest teams in pro football around 1920.

Holmesburg Athletic Club -- Founded 1915, folded 1923. Won the Philadelphia City Championship in 1919 and 1920.

McKeesport Olympics -- Founded in 1896, kept going until 1939, when it shut down due to the way. They were "Sandlot Grid Champs" over the J.P. Rooneys in 1929. Unknown why they didn't join the NFL when they could.

Union Club of Phoenixville -- Seems like they put a lot of stock on the fact that they beat the Canton Bulldogs in 1920, but Canton had gones back a step by then. The team folded right after that, and the coach plus some players formed the Union Quakers of Philadelphia which eventually was merged into the Frankford Yellow Jackets.

Pitcairn Quakers -- Founded in 1904, "quietly folded" in 1920. They went 5-5 in 1919, and throughout their history, they were 0-14 against future NFL teams.

[Passacaglia]

Time for the New York Pro Football League!

Buffalo Bisons -- Probably the best team in the area. Founded in 1915, joined the APFA right away, folded in 1929. Probably should have won the APFA title in 1920, but there was controversy. Had a sharing agreement with Phoenixville that its players would play in PA on Saturdays, then for Buffalo on Sundays. Tough to decide whether to call them the Bisons, which they had from 1924-1929, or the All-Americans, which they had from 1920-1923.

Detroit Heralds -- Work with me here. This team was kind of a wildcard regarding where to put it. A lot I saw on them has them associated with the Ohio League, implying they are in it, or mentioning that they played a lot of teams in the Ohio League, which basically meant it was in the league. But, I already had enough trouble fitting Ohio into the 8-team max. That left Chicago, which could work since it's really a spread-out Western league. But, Detroit isn't even that far west, and that league also had enough teams to fill its max of 8. Since New York needed a team, I put Detroit in it. Founded in 1905, joined the APFA in 1920, folded in 1921, and all its players were given to Buffalo.

Lancaster Malleables -- Won the championship in 1913 and 1914.

Rochester Jeffersons -- Won the championship in 1916. Founded in 1898, joined the APFA in 1920, folded in 1925.

Syracuse Eleven -- This wiki says founded in 1921, but later clarifies that some Syracuse team existed since 1890, and it was difficult to tell what was the same team based on records. Apparently claimed to be in the APFA when it joined, but since there was no formal schedule, it was hard to disprove. It's now considered to be believed that they were not. Folded in 1921.

Tonawanda Lumberjacks -- Tough to decide whether to call them Lumberjacks or Kardex. Founded in 1913, joined the APFA in 1921, and couldn't afford the franchise fee the next year. Unknown if they stayed in existence.

Watertown Red & Black -- Founded in 1896, did not join APFA, still in existence! Their logo says they are "semi pro and proud" which is pretty cool. Stayed independent until 1968, and bounced around some different leagues after that. Dressed up as the Cleveland Browns for those Chunky soup commercials with Donovan McNabb.

Whitestone Warlows -- Founded 1894, did not join APFA, lasted until 1939. They claimed to be "New York Independent Football Champions" in 1900 and 1901. I saw them also associated with Pennsylvania football leagues, but New York needed the teams. It doesn't look like they were ever called "Whitestone Warlows" but they were called Whitestone, and called Warlows, so I just put them together.

[Passacaglia]

And last is Chicago. I saw a reference to a Chicago Football League somewhere, but not much else about it. I'm assuming it was a local league and not as major as the other leagues I have here, but I'm going to use it here anyway. It's also not that relevant to the geography -- this is more of a Western League really, but that seems like a dumb name for it, since I'm already putting it in the Western Conference. It's centered around the Chicago area, so that seems good enough.

Rock Island Independents -- Probably the best team in the region at the time. Tried to schedule a "championship" game with Canton at the end of 1919 in Rock Island, but Canton turned it down. This whole idea seems like it was the start of the APFA/NFL. They were basically a founding member, but folded in 1926.

Minneapolis Marines -- Completely dominant until the war (although I'm not sure they played any kind of tough competition). During the war, some of the team enlisted, and the rest went to play for Rock Island. Most of those players stayed there. Ended up joining the APFA in 1921, and folded in 1930, unable to compete with the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers.

Congerville Flyers -- Known as the Muncie Flyers once they joined the APFA, but Congerville seems more fun. 4-1-1 in 1919. Joined the APFA right away, and it seems like they were a victim of the disorganization of the league. After getting destroyed 45-0 by Rock Island in their first game, no one wanted to schedule them, and the teams that did cancelled. They went 0-1 in 1920 and 0-2 in 1921 in APFA games before leaving the league. Folded in 1926.

Decatur Staleys -- Founded in 1919 by A. E. Staley, won the Central Illinois Championship, and joined the APFA in 1920. After the 1920 season, Staley gives the team to player/coach George Halas and gives him $5000 to move the team to Chicago, provided he keeps the name "Staleys" for a year. They play as the Chicago Staleys in 1921, and the Chicago Bears from 1922 on.

Green Bay Packers -- Also founded in 1919, and joined the APFA in 1921. One of its founders, Curly Lambeau, was also given money to name the team after its sponsor, in this case $500 from the Indian Packing Company. Even though that company folded in 1921, the name stuck.

Hammond Pros -- Founded in 1917, joined the APFA in 1920. Doormat of the league, going 5-26-4 in seven seasons, until the NFL got rid of them in 1926 when they cut down to 12 teams.

Louisville Brecks -- Founded in 1899, but the whole history is a jumble of not really knowing who's on what team in Louisville the whole time. This is the team that joins the APFA, though. Another doormat, going 1-8 over the course of three seasons.

Racine Street Cardinals -- Founded in 1898, disbanded in 1906, and formed again in 1913. They were named the "Racine Street Cardinals" because they played on Racine Avenue. According to ChatGPT, Racine Avenue was never actually called Racine Street, it sounds like when people talked about the team, they just assumed it was Street. I do that all the time, but it's crazy that it makes its way into how a team is named. Changed their name to Racine Cardinals in 1919, joined the APFA in 1920, then changed their name to Chicago Cardinals when a team from Racine, WI joined the league in 1922. Moved to St. Louis, then to Phoenix.

And -- THIS IS US! I lived on Kenmore Avenue for a few years in Chicago, just three blocks from Racine. It was 11 miles north of where the Cardinals played, but they were called the Racine Street Cardinals, not the 61st Street Cardinals, so I think it's significant enough to make that my team in all this.

[Passacaglia]

Can I just say this league really chewed up teams and spit them out? It feels like it's crazy that it survived at all with so much change. I think I said this earlier, but it seems like, whether they joined the league or not, most of them were gone within ten years. As I glance, I'm seeing three teams (Bears, Packers, Cardinals) that are still in the NFL, one team (Watertown) that survives as semi-pro, plus a couple that made it past 1930. So that's 26 that didn't. It's tempting to say they wouldn't have survived anyway, but these were the best pro teams around, and almost all of them failed.

[Passacaglia]

I feel like the maps were pretty fun for my last dynasty attempt, and they would be fun here too...



Thoughts:

Detroit in the New York league doesn't seem so bad here. Obviously Ohio would be a better fit, but this one isn't horrible. Whitestone feels like just as much of an outlier -- I read something that put them in the Pennsylvania circuit, and that makes sense based on this. I know Ohio way more than I know Pennsylvania -- my expectation was that the Pennsylvania league would be spread throughout the state like Ohio, but instead we've got 4 Philadelphia area and 4 Pittsburgh teams. I'm glad it worked out that it was half-and-half instead of a weird 5 vs 3 split. As I've pondered this split, I keep thinking, "Wait what about Lancaster? Does that just look close to Philadelphia on the map? Maybe it's just a trick of the eye and they're not all in the Philadelphia area after all!" But then I remember the Lancaster Malleables are in Lancaster, NY. Oh well. Anyway, I really wanted to include the Portsmouth Spartans, since they become the Detroit Lions, and it would have spread Ohio out even more, but they didn't form until 1928.

[Passacaglia]

The teams that didn't quite make the cut:


Youngstown Patricians -- Won a claim to the Ohio League title in 1916. Folded in 1919, but had the chance to reform and join the NFL In 1922, but the owner did not have the funds. Fun name which would have been neat, but I didn't want to take out a non-NE Ohio team for a NE Ohio team, and teams like Cleveland, Akron, Canton and Massillon were all pretty much requirements. I found this interesting quote from the wiki:

The NFL considers Youngstown–located halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh–to be "shared" between the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers, making it fertile battleground territory for the rivalry the two teams have had since the Browns joined the NFL in 1950 from the All-America Football Conference.

No source attributed, so grain of salt and all that, but I found it weird that the NFL considers teams to have "territory" at all. The wiki goes on to discuss blackout markets, and maybe that's all they're talking about (that Youngstown is in the blackout market for both teams), but the statement seemed to imply more than that.

Elyria Athletics -- Won a title in 1912. Folded after 1920.

Shelby Blues -- Dominant from 1909 to 1911. Folded in 1920, tried to come back in the late 20s, but folded again.

Chicago Tigers -- Created in 1920, folded in 1920. Looked like they were created just to be in the APFA, and had no reputation at the time. Plus I didn't really want to remove a city just to put a 2nd team in Chicago.

Peoria Tractors -- Fun name, but in the end, just didn't seem like they were strong enough to be worth including.

Canada -- For a while, I toyed with the idea of including Canada teams to the New York league as a bridge between Detroit and Buffalo. I asked ChatGPT for some ideas -- it suggested Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Toronto Argonauts, St. Catherine's, and it kept suggesting Windsor Independents as a rival for Detroit, even though I kept saying I didn't care about that. In the end I decided to keep it US based, since Canada already had rules that were pretty different at this point (these teams did play US teams, but usually played different rules in each half). And by this time, I'd already settled on the 8 teams in place now, and didn't feel like there were good options for how many and which teams to take out.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

No source attributed, so grain of salt and all that, but I found it weird that the NFL considers teams to have "territory" at all. The wiki goes on to discuss blackout markets, and maybe that's all they're talking about (that Youngstown is in the blackout market for both teams), but the statement seemed to imply more than that.

Googling turns up a combination of AI summaries and specific (mostly Wiki) links that clarify how the two are related but not exactly the same thing either.

Territory determines, among other things, the exclusive right to host a game in a given location. For example, the Carolina Panthers could not come down to Athens, GA (Falcons territory) to host a "home" game. Shared territories (like Youngstown I guess) exist, where both teams have equal rights in that regard

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Googling turns up a combination of AI summaries and specific (mostly Wiki) links that clarify how the two are related but not exactly the same thing either.

Territory determines, among other things, the exclusive right to host a game in a given location. For example, the Carolina Panthers could not come down to Athens, GA (Falcons territory) to host a "home" game. Shared territories (like Youngstown I guess) exist, where both teams have equal rights in that regard

I guess that makes sense -- feels weird, but probably something that needs to be agreed to by the league.

[Passacaglia]

Racine Street Cardinals logo is done!



This is really the thing that needs to be done last, since technically it can be done afterward, but it's fun, and would still be nice to have in place before I start.

The logos are inspired by NawlinsFan's 1977 helmet logos. I've mentioned this in other places before, but I like the "name on top, helmet on the bottom" format he has, because when you look at a team's schedule, it shows just the middle of each of these images. Having the helmet in place like this makes it so you can see the logo for each team -- with other helmet images, you just get a bunch of facemasks.

As you can see, we've got a leather helmet instead to reflect the 1920s theme. I found a Racine Cardinals logo and slapped that on. I would have used the color of the logo for the background, but the logo is more pink than red, and I doubt that was the color they intended. I'm not sure I have the skills to make the logo red, but maybe? Or maybe I should just suck it up and make the background pink.

Would love feedback on how this looks -- still not sure I know what I'm doing here. Do the colors look weird? Is the logo too big or too small? Or placed wrong? Or is there anything else I can do to improve it?

[Passacaglia]

So I've put this away for a few days while I was on vacation, and it hit me as I was on it -- from Chicago to Richmond, VA with a stop at Hershey, PA and Detroit on the way back -- that I drove through or close to nearly half the league.

Started in Chicago suburbs, and drove through Chicago (1) and Hammond (2), stayed in Indianapolis, driving kinda near Muncie (3), and through Dayton (4) on the way to Richmond. On the way back, I saw a sign for McKeesport (5) so I figure I was near it. We drove through Pittsburgh (6), and I assume I must have been near Pitcairn (7) and Glassport (8). We came through the Ohio Turnpike, passing Akron (9), Cleveland (10), and Toledo (11) before heading up to Detroit (12), then came back to Chicago tonight. Could probably make arguments that we were pretty close to Canton, Massillon, and even Columbus, Cincinnati, and Louisville, but those might be pushing it.

[Passacaglia]

Another attempt at the logo...



Pretty much the same, except I changed the logo from pink to red. I experimented with making the RC look the same brown color as the helmet, but I didn't like that much.

[Passacaglia]

Oh, the font on top is also not bold -- I think that makes it look a little cleaner, but not as impressive. I dunno.

[Passacaglia]

Next up -- the schedule!!

I've had this schedule set for a couple weeks now, though just a day or two ago I considered changing it.

Most teams will play everyone in their league twice. Since each league is 8 teams, this ends up being 14 games, like this:



Pretty straightforward. We play the other 7 teams in the league, then flip the home and away for the 2nd half of the season. I've made sure no team has a streak of more than 2 games at home or on the road, also. This is based on rank, so the order will change for me, but the pattern of playing each team once in the first half of the season and once in the second half of the season will keep going year after year.

This is also a good chance to show off more helmet logos, since I'm done with them for the Chicago League. This is the view that made me want to do it this way, instead of just slapping a big logo there -- having the helmets lined up like this makes it look way better. I probably could have moved some logos down a little, but this looks pretty good to me considering I'm not usually good at this kind of thing. Also, there are some nods here to alternate names -- the Congerville Flyers have an M on the logo for Muncie, and the Green Bay Packers have a logo with their original Acme Packers name.

There's also one wrinkle to the schedule. In these days, there wasn't much of a schedule, and even though the teams were technically organized into a league, teams still had to find their own games just like before, and they would play against teams in the league and not in the league. And just like before, the bigger and more successful teams would end up playing more games, while teams like Muncie were unable to schedule games and ended up folding.

In a nod to this, my schedule has the top 2 teams in each league play each other Week 1. If you look back at my list of teams in each league, they are alphabetical except for the top 2. Those are the teams I considered to be the best in each league right now -- in future seasons, it will be based on the standings from the year before. So here's the schedule for Minneapolis:



Same as Racine Street, except they have an extra game against Rock Island in Week 1. This means the top 2 teams from the season before will play 15 games, while everyone else plays 14. I like this because it makes a head-to-head tiebreaker a little less likely to be needed, and with a glance at the standings you can see who was good before and who was coming from further down last season -- if you're in the middle of the season, the teams with 8 games played were in the top 2 last season, and the teams with 7 games played were in the bottom 6.

I'm considering making this variation more drastic, with something like 16 games for the #1 and #2 team, 14 games for #3 and #4, 12 games for #5 and #6, and 10 games for #7 and #8. Seems insane, but look at these standings for 1920 and 1921:





If anything, 10 games for the worst teams in the league is way too much, but I want every team to sort of be participating here.

Thoughts?

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Just to tamper down anyone excited by seeing Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, and others in action, we're not doing player files - all fictional players. The alternate reality is just setting the team structure and the schedule. Of course, the style of football played will be extremely different from the 1920s, too.

If anyone who's been reading this has been reading my thread in the Off Topic forum, they probably already know that I'm backtracking on this. The vibe coding that I did to create schedules spurred me on to do some vibe coding to scrape the pro football reference site. I've got all the players from 1920-2024 in one spreadsheet now. I need to do a lot of work to make that into a file that FOF can use that's as fleshed out as possible, but it will be fun.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

I'm considering making this variation more drastic, with something like 16 games for the #1 and #2 team, 14 games for #3 and #4, 12 games for #5 and #6, and 10 games for #7 and #8. Seems insane, but look at these standings for 1920 and 1921:

I've decided I don't like the 16-14-12-10 model after all. For teams 7 and 8, having 10 games means 1 game against everyone, and 2 games against a few others. It feels like there's no good way to make that happen without making their schedule too hard, or just having them play each other a bunch of times. I'm tossing around the idea of having everyone play each other twice for 14 games, then having Team 1 play 2-4, and 2 play 3 for extra games. That way, the top team plays 17 games, Teams 2 and 3 play 16 games, Team 4 plays 15 games, and the rest play 14. I like the balance of that, but it seems hard to integrate it into the rest of the schedule. I've put it down for a while, but I might come back to it later.

I'm focused on getting the player files now. I have all the QBs and players from 1920-2024 that are in pro football reference in two big files now. There are only 10 QBs in 1920, and the game needs 162 QBs to avoid filling in its own players. I'm experimenting with ways to fill in players so that this works out best. I'm considering having players who enter the league in future years just start in 1920, but I need to make sure that doesn't mess up future draft classes.

[Passacaglia]

I don't think I've mentioned this part, but based on my thread on AV in the Off Topic forum, I have an issue with coming up with ratings for players before 1960, since that's when Pro Football Reference starts calculating AV. I think I've found as good a solution as I'm going to find.

Football

This site has a pretty comperehensive ranking of players that goes back to 1920. It's split in all sorts of ways -- by position, by decade, by rookie year, and has a list of best players of all time. There's even a link with ratings explanations!

This website uses statistics and results to rank players. It does not use opinion/bias to rank players.

Only professional league stats are factored into the ratings.

What a player did in High School or College does not factor into the ratings.

Oh. Very helpful.

But whatever. It gives me something to go on to fill in reasonable ratings for players from 1920-1959, and it might have a some extra players that Pro Football Reference doesn't have.

[Passacaglia]

So to recap, in the other thread, here's what I have on my list to get this dynasty ready to go:

1. Looking for dupes. I feel like this is pretty much done.

2. Filling blank positions. The script that I ran yesterday created a results file that had good position info, but it created a results file that made it difficult to figure out which players were the players it did that for. I'm running a new script that should create a results file with just the players whose positions were blank for all seasons in my current file.

3. Look at RB and FB. My plan is still to set any FB that is rated 3 or higher as a RB. Maybe I'll chose a year where I stop doing that, and a FB starts just being a FB. At least 1972, I think Larry Csonka and Franco Harris should be RBs, not FB. Mid to late 80s has some guys that are tough to figure -- Kevin Mack, John Williams, Keith Byars, Tom Rathman, Bo Jackson, Christian Okoye, Merril Hoge, Brad Muster, Ickey Woods, Craig Heyward -- some of those guys I could see putting at FB, some definitely RB, some I could see either way. Most recent FB rated 3 or higher is Mike Alstott, another tough choice.

4. Fill attributes.

This is somewhat in progress. I gave Google Gemini Pro this prompt:

Can you give me a list of the NFL quarterbacks that had the best TOUCH? I'm defining touch as the ability to throw accurate screen and short passes. How about a CSV with the best 10 QBs in each decade in TOUCH, and 5 that are particularly bad in each decade? Remember that the ranking goes from 0-250, and most QBs are in the 0-100 range (about 67%). I'm most interested in QBs whose TOUCH rating is different from their OVERALL rating.

The 67% number came from the SCRAMBLE rating in the example_quarterbacks.csv file that comes with the game. Here's what it gave me:



The column on the right shows whether or not they were in my QB file already. For some of these guys I was convinced that even though their position was "back" or even "halfback" that passing was enough a part of their game that I should change their position to QB. For some of these, there may have been some passing involved in their game, but not enough change the fact that I associate them with being RB (Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski). Some guys, like the highlighted Johnny McNally and Don Perkins, seem like AI flubs. Ernie Nevers was one I wasn't sure about -- I switched him to QB, but felt like it could have gone either way. In case you're curious about what it gave for the best touch QBs:



I'm okay with the dupes here, I can just take the average. I didn't ask for an overall_rating from it since I already have my own, but I guess it's nice to have as a comparison here. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out once several attributes are done.

5. Fill in fake players. I've done this for QBs -- I feel comfortable that I can roll with however many 1920 QBs I have, and add in enough fake ones that the real ones are all better than the fake ones. For 1921, it looks like the game is good at creating fake players that are all worse than the real one. I want to test that more to make sure though, then keep doing it for all the positions.

6. Player images. I have a python script that checks wikipedia for images of each player, and saves it as the ID listed for them on the CSV. That will work for 1920, and I'll run it once the CSVs are complete. The game doesn't generate ID numbers for future players until they enter the game, but it does keep them in the same order that they're in on the CSV, it's just that I have to wait until that draft class enters before I know which ID number they start at. So when each season starts, I'll be able to run that script and put in their pictures. Which is fine, since you can add these images in at any point.

7. Team logos. These can also be added in at any point. I've got maybe 10 of them done now, and will probably be able to knock the rest out while I'm waiting for scripts to run or for my limited free Gemini Pro time to reset.

Is there anything that anyone can think of that I might be missing?

[Passacaglia]

Starting to rethink my league structure. I like all the teams in it, and the balance of it. But after helping NawlinsFan test his league, we noticed that if a league gets over 36, it just crashes when trying to do FA. Has anyone else done a counterexample? It seemed like as I was testing, no matter what, if a league had more than 36 teams, it just couldn't get through the first day of FA. But 36 or less was fine. I also get a lot of crashes during the season itself -- usually I can just load my old save and it gets through next time, though. But still, I'm wondering if a smaller league makes more sense. It might be a better idea since there aren't as many players in the 1920s, too -- splitting them among 32 is pretty thin. Also, it annoys me that, despite all the other differences in my league structure, in the end, it still has an uninteresting total number of 32, just like modern times.

A couple ideas along those lines that I'm floating around:

1920 season -- There were 14 teams in the first APFA season. I'd take out Muncie, since they only played one game, and Chicago Tigers, since I don't like two franchises in the same city, and they only played one season.

East -- Akron, Buffalo, Dayton, Rochester, Canton, Cleveland, Columbus
West -- Decatur, Racine Street, Rock Island, Detroit, Hammond

That's 7 in the East, 5 in the West. I didn't want to split Ohio, but I could also just move Dayton to the West. I'd probably have all 12 teams play a round-robin, then have the top East team play the top West team.

1920-1925: The thing I don't like about the 1920 structure is that it leaves out Pennsylvania teams, since they were unable to join. Next idea is a league that takes all the teams that played in 1920-1925, with a caveat that you had to play at least half as many games as the team with the most games that season to really be called part of the league.

So it's the same 12 as before, plus:

1921 -- Green Bay Packers
1922 -- Toledo Maroons, Racine Legion, Milwaukee Badger, Oorang Indians
1923 -- Duluth Kelleys, Minneapolis Marines, St. Louis All-Stars
1924 -- Frankford Yellow Jackets, Kansas City Blues
1925 -- Pottsville Maroons, New York Giants, Providence Steam Roller

That's 25 teams. Probably an East with a 7-team Ohio division, and 6 teams further East (Buffalo, Rochester, Frankford, Pottsville, New York, Providence) and a West with the rest of the teams (including Detroit).