(whistle blowing) (bright upbeat music) - By the late 20s, the NFL was maturing close to the point where we start to recognize it as the NFL of today.

(bright upbeat music) Portsmouth was one of the last small cities to field a team, get a franchise.

What was kind of extraordinary about Portsmouth was it was able to field an incredible team for a brief moment in the sun, a little sweet spot that almost was sweet enough to get them a national championship.

But they put together the team that ultimately did win the championship in 1935 in Detroit.

- [Narrator] Before moving to Detroit and becoming the Lions in 1934, they were the Portsmouth Spartans.

From 1928 to 1933, they played their home games here, on this patch of grass along the banks of the Ohio River, called Labold Field.

During that time, the team played a seminal role in helping to craft the modern NFL.

And while these walls no longer host professional football, the games that played out within them, the team that called them home, and the legacy left behind continues to be felt today.

Let's dive into the incredible story of the Portsmouth Spartans.

(waves lapping) (birds chirping) - Going back to like the first, second decade of the 20th century, the 1910s, thereabouts, you began to see the development of semi-pro leagues in the region along the Ohio River.

Basically, these teams were ways for the community to come together and it was a way to sort of boost community pride.

And these would've been, you know, people that had day jobs working in factories, former high school stars, maybe some college guys that had come back.

They weren't making money, they were just playing and having a good time, and they were sponsored by different industries in the different towns.

- [Narrator] In 1920, Portsmouth saw the creation of the N & W Smoke House Football Team, co-sponsored by the Norfolk & Western Railway, and The Smoke House, a popular Portsmouth tobacco shop.

The Smoke House team functioned from 1920 to 1925.

In 1926, Portsmouth fielded two different teams, the Studebaker Presidents and the Portsmouth Merchants.

But in 1927, the Portsmouth Shoe-Steels emerged, and this is where the story really takes off.

- [Andrew] A key player in the development of the Shoe-Steels, you might say pro football generally in Portsmouth was a guy named Jack Creasy.

He was a graduate of Portsmouth High School, he was a star on their football team.

He went and played college football briefly, came back, and decided to organize a team.

- [Narrator] The team Creasy organized in 1927 was co-sponsored by the Selby Shoe Company and the Whitaker-Glessner Company, a steel manufacturer.

Thus, the Shoe-Steels were born.

With the team in place, Creasy had one more order of business.

- Creasy was able to somehow recruit Jim Thorpe.

And so by recruiting Jim Thorpe as both a player and coach, Creasy was able to recruit a really good team, because these players, of course, would dream to play and be coached by Jim Thorpe, you know, who already at that point in time, he would've been 40 years old.

So it was late in his career.

Everybody knew who Jim Thorpe was.

He would've been a giant ticket draw.

- [Narrator] Jim Thorpe was a legendary athlete, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, the first Native American to win gold for the United States.

He also played six seasons of Major League Baseball before turning in a Hall of Fame career in the NFL.

That Jack Creasy could lure him to the Shoe-Steels as a player-coach for one season was nothing short of remarkable.

Thorpe's contract with the Shoe-Steels was only for 10 games, but it was enough to make his lone season in Portsmouth special.

The Shoe-Steels finally got over the hump and beat their rival, the Ironton Tanks, for the first time after nine grueling years of defeat.

They then went on to secure a spot in the regional championship, an 11th game in which Thorpe, staying true to his 10-game contract, was not present.

The Shoe-Steels would fall seven to six to the Ashland Armcos.

on July 14th, 1928, just seven months after the team's championship appearance, Jack Creasy unexpectedly passed away from appendicitis at just 26 years old.

Creasy's untimely death was not enough to undo the foundation he had built for professional football in Portsmouth, as the city moved forward with even bigger aspirations.

- They decided to build upon what Thorpe and Creasy had created, but then reorganize as a new team, one that would unite the whole city, not just the shoe workers and the steel workers.

And you know, they had a big contest for naming the new team and all that.

And the winning name, of course, was the Spartans.

- [Narrator] The name Spartans accomplished three things.

First, it was not suggestive of any organization or business, adding an element of community togetherness.

Second, the name complimented the community's interest in classic names from ancient Greece, as Portsmouth High School was called the Trojans.

Finally, the name had a connotation of fight and toughness, something the team would become known for.

The newly-formed Spartans now set their sights on joining the National Football League.

The team's location made it an attractive prospect for inclusion in the NFL, though being a small city came with its own set of unique challenges.

- Part of the thinking of the NFL was to help facilitate games between the eastern coast cities and those in the west.

So they could play games up in Chicago or Green Bay, and then on their way to the East Coast, they could stop off and play in Portsmouth.

The salaries of the stars at this point in time are starting to get pretty high.

So the larger cities were having the largest gate ticket sales, they could then pay the highest salaries for the best players and put together the best team.

And that's one reason why the smaller cities were unable to compete.

In some ways, Portsmouth was one of the last small cities to field a team and get a franchise.

- [Narrator] Before Portsmouth could officially join the NFL, the team needed a stadium.

Spartans' ownership decided to privately finance the endeavor after a series of failed ballot referendums.

Majority owner Harry N. Snyder convinced the city to lease Labold Field, that patch of grass on the banks of the Ohio, upon which his construction company, Universal Construction, would build Universal Stadium.

Universal Stadium was a largely wooden structure when it first opened in September, 1930, but that didn't matter, the city of Portsmouth had an NFL team.

(bright triumphant music) After a mostly forgettable inaugural season in 1930, the next few years would be a whirlwind that influenced not only the league, but the game of football itself.

The drama began at the end of the 1931 season.

- The Green Bay Packers were crowned the champion in '31, but that was only because they decided not to play one last game in the season against Portsmouth.

Because the game was listed as optional, you know, the owners up in Green Bay were like, "Nope, we're done.

We're the champs."

And so in some ways, that really ignited the rivalry between Green Bay and Portsmouth.

In '32, Portsmouth first played Green Bay up in Green Bay and they lost.

So "Potsy" Clark, the coach, was determined to beat them on home turf when the Packers came to Portsmouth.

Green Bay arrived by train, and then they had get from the train station to the stadium.

And they faced, you know, I would say not a very welcoming, you know, crowd that was yelling and screaming at 'em.

Probably the biggest crowd that Portsmouth has ever had for any kind of sporting event, estimates on the high end go up to as high as 17,000 people.

The stadium really could hold maybe 7,000.

"Potsy" Clark told the team just before they went out on the field that he was not taking anybody out unless they came out on a stretcher.

And so he played all 11 players, offense, defense, both ways.

The whole game, no substitutions.

- [Narrator] This demanding accomplishment has a specific name, Iron Man.

And the game against Green Bay quickly became known as the Iron Man Game.

- If you go back to the news reporting on the Spartans in the '32 season and the lead up to the so-called Iron Man Game, you'll see that they're already being described as the Iron Men.

It's probably because of being from Portsmouth, which was known as a iron and steel manufacturing center.

But it's because of this game that the term Iron Man comes to mean a player that plays both offense and defense for a whole game, 'cause that's what these guys did.

And they did it in such a way that they defeated Green Bay 19 to 0.

And the Packers were set to become the new champions to continue their championship.

But that loss ended up costing Green Bay and then it played out so that Portsmouth ended up in a tie with the Chicago Bears.

And so that meant that there needed to be a postseason game to actually determine a champion.

And so that's how you get the first championship match in NFL history that pitted the Portsmouth Spartans against the Chicago Bears.

Because of the weather up in Chicago, and we're talking about in December of 1932, they had a really bad storm that came through.

They had to move the game inside.

So it became the first indoor NFL game in history, as well.

- [Narrator] The game was supposed to be played at Chicago's Wrigley Field, but was moved to Chicago Stadium, home of the NHL's Blackhawks.

The move indoors added several challenges to how the championship game was played.

Fortunately, a circus had recently left the venue, so sod was already installed.

The length of the field was only 80 yards, so every time a team crossed midfield, the ball would be moved back 20 yards to make up the difference.

Rules at the time saw teams begin a new play at the location on the field where the previous play ended.

The tall hockey boards encircling the field made this difficult, so the hash mark was introduced to circumvent the problem.

From this point forward, the NFL would permanently incorporate the hash mark into the game.

Portmouth lost the championship game nine to nothing.

To make matters worse, the team had been losing substantial amounts of money since its inception.

Before the era of massive broadcasting revenue and merchandise sales, teams primarily relied on ticket sales for profit.

The Spartans could not manage this landscape and saw large financial losses from weaker-than-expected ticket sales throughout their time in Portsmouth.

As a result, the team was sold and moved to Detroit in 1934, where they became the Detroit Lions.

The sting of losing the hometown team was made worse when in 1935, just one year after leaving, the Lions won the NFL Championship.

- There were 12 Spartans that ultimately became members of the Detroit Lions, and 9 of those 12 were players from the Iron Man Game.

And you hear stories in Portsmouth today about how those guys that were Spartans that were in that championship game, underneath their jerseys, they had on like, a Portsmouth undershirt or something like that, that the Spartans were the ones that were really on the field, and it was really the Portsmouth Spartans that won Detroit's 1935 National Championship.

It's been speculated that one of the reasons why Green Bay was able to survive as a smaller city is because they did win championships.

So if Portsmouth had won the championship in 1932, then the argument goes, maybe they could have had better attendance, maybe their ticket sales would've been better, maybe they would've been able to survive.

But you know, I kinda come down ultimately on the side that the market here just was not big enough to support, you know, a modern NFL team with the large contracts for the superstars.

(gentle solemn music) - [Narrator] With the team long gone, let us return to Labold Field and these historic walls that house so much history.

You might be surprised to learn that the Spartans never actually played a game in this version of the stadium.

While the team played in the mostly wooden Universal Stadium, there were always plans to make it something grander.

After the team moved to Detroit, the city received financial assistance from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration and constructed Portsmouth Municipal Stadium, now called Spartan Municipal Stadium, to honor the old hometown team.

Remnants of the old Universal Stadium remain, including the wooden bases of the light poles, the shape and style of the score box, and the old ticket gate.

The stadium currently hosts the Notre Dame Titans, a local high school.

It co-hosted the city's other high school, the Portsmouth Trojans, until 2009 when they built their own stadium.

Now, ownership of the stadium is being transferred from the city of Portsmouth to Shawnee State University, with hopes to breathe new life into this historic structure.

- The reason why Spartan Stadium is very much important, not only is it a staple of this community, but it's also time for us to invest in that pillar of our community, invest in our youth and athletics here in this region, and for Portsmouth to be a beacon of hope.

At times, it's easy to want to tear stuff down and just move forward, but there's some value in investing time, energy, and resources into things that are already in place.

Because if you go down to that stadium, you can just feel it.

You can just feel the excitement, you can just feel the history.

- [Narrator] Gerald Cadogan was a part of that history.

Before playing football collegiately and professionally, he logged countless hours on this field as a standout for the Portsmouth High School Trojans.

He knows the history and importance of football in this town and wants to make sure athletics remain an integral component of the community.

- There's just so much you can learn from sports, from overcoming adversity when you're faced with the situation, how to navigate through that, teamwork, and being part of something that's bigger than you.

And I think those are some tangible items that sometimes get lost in the shuffle in this day's culture and utilizing sports can be that vehicle to drive those messages home.

We want this region to be bright and we wanna provide resources and education and activities for the city of Portsmouth, Scioto County and beyond, just to make everyone better.

- It involves a commitment, ultimately, to historic preservation.

The stadium is a source of great inspiration and it's a common bond for people that live here in Portsmouth.

To know that we once were home to an NFL team, plus one that has such awesome history is inspirational.

(gentle solemn music) - [Narrator] "Foothill Features" is supported by: Portsmouth Scioto County Visitors Bureau, explore the adventure, explore the excitement, explore Scioto.

"Foothill Features" is supported by: Shawnee State University, preparing today's students for success in tomorrow's world.

(gentle bright music) (gentle bright music continues)