Rochester Jeffersons

The Rochester Jeffersons from Rochester, New York played in the National Football League from 1920 to 1925. Formed as an amateur outfit by a rag-tag group of Rochester-area teenagers after the turn of the century, the team became known as the Jeffersons in reference to the locale of their playing field on Jefferson Avenue. Around 1908 a teenager by the name of Leo Lyons joined with the club as a player, and within two years began to manage, finance, and promote the team on a full-time basis.

For their first decade of their existence the "Jeffs" played other amateur and semi-pro teams from the upstate New York area such as the "Rochester Scalpers" and the "Oxfords". By the fall of 1917, the Jeffs had started to look past state borders not only for big-name opponents, but for big-name talent as well.

At the end of October, 1917 Lyons managed to secure a match against the country's greatest team, the Canton Bulldogs, who had the legendary Jim Thorpe as their star attraction. Thorpe's squad crushed the Jeffs 41-0, but the audacity of challenging such a superior team to a match won Lyons and his club a bit of notoriety, and three years later they were fortunate to be included as an inaugural member of the newly formed "American Professional Football Association", which would be known in two years as the "National Football League".

The team folded after the 1925 NFL season; by this point, the team had not won a game in four years and had been a traveling team for two seasons (1920 and 1925).

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External links

*http://www.rochesterjeffersons.com/index.htm