45 Facts About Joseph Carr

Joseph Francis Carr was an American sports executive in American football, baseball, and basketball.

Joseph Carr is best known as the president of the National Football League from 1921 until 1939.

Joseph Carr was one of the founders and president of the American Basketball League from 1925 to 1927.

Joseph Carr was the promotional director for Minor League Baseball's governing body from 1933 to 1939, leading an expansion of the minor leagues from 12 to 40 leagues operating in 279 cities with 4,200 players and attendance totaling 15,500,000.

Joseph Carr revived the Columbus Panhandles football team in 1907, manning the team with railroad employees.

From 1921 until his death in 1939, Joseph Carr served as president of the NFL.

Joseph Carr oversaw the growth of the league from its origins, principally in small or medium-sized cities in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois into a national league with teams in major cities.

Joseph Carr's father, Michael Karr, was a shoemaker who was born in Ireland in 1841 and immigrated to the United States in 1864.

Joseph Carr's mother Margaret Karr was born in New York to Irish immigrant parents.

Joseph Carr had five older siblings, Bridget, James, John, Mary, and Michael, and a younger brother, Edward.

Joseph Carr was educated at St Patrick School and later St Dominic's School, both in Columbus.

Joseph Carr left school at age 16 and became employed as a machinist.

Joseph Carr wrote about all sports, but his boxing stories were especially popular.

In 1900, Joseph Carr organized a baseball team made up of employees of the railroad's Panhandle Division.

In 1907, Joseph Carr began a long association with the sport of football.

Joseph Carr obtained permission from the Panhandle Athletic Club to reorganize the Columbus Panhandles football team, a team that had been formed in 1900 or 1901 and disbanded in 1904.

Joseph Carr secured players from the railroad shop where he worked.

However, once the APFA was formed in 1920, Joseph Carr's Panhandles played in the league's inaugural season.

At the annual meeting of the APFA held in Akron, Ohio, on April 30,1921, Joseph Carr was elected as the organization's president.

Joseph Carr was re-elected president in January 1922, and he held that position for 18 years until his death in 1939.

Joseph Carr moved the APFA's headquarters to Columbus, drafted a league constitution and by-laws, gave teams territorial rights, developed membership criteria for the franchises, and issued standings for the first time, so that the APFA would have a clear champion.

Joseph Carr declared that players under contract from the previous season could not be approached by another team unless first declared a free agent, thus introducing the reserve clause to professional football.

Indeed, at the same meeting at which Joseph Carr was elected president, the APFA adopted a rule prohibiting teams from using players who had not completed their college course.

In January 1922, Joseph Carr responded with the severest possible action, kicking the Packers out of the APFA.

Joseph Carr believed that the league needed to model itself after Major League Baseball with teams in the country's largest cities.

Joseph Carr oversaw the establishment of successful teams in the nation's largest cities, including the following:.

On three occasions prior to the game, Joseph Carr reportedly warned the Pottsville management not to play the game, "under all penalties that the league could inflict".

However, the Maroons stated that Joseph Carr knew of the game and had allowed it to take place.

In 1925, Joseph Carr was one of the moving forces behind the formation of the American Basketball League, the first attempt to create a major professional basketball league in the United States.

At the ABL's organizational meeting, held in Cleveland in April 1925, Joseph Carr was elected as the ABL's president and secretary.

Joseph Carr returned to professional baseball in 1926 as president of the Columbus Senators, a minor league club playing in the American Association.

Joseph Carr remained president of the Senators until early 1931, when the club was sold to the St Louis Cardinals, and Carr was replaced by future National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Larry MacPhail.

In January 1933, Joseph Carr was hired as the promotional director for the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, the governing body for Minor League Baseball.

In February 1939, Joseph Carr was unanimously reelected as president of the NFL, this time for a 10-year term.

Three months after his reelection, on May 20,1939, Joseph Carr suffered a heart attack and was taken to a Columbus hospital where he died several hours later.

Joseph Carr had a prior heart attack in September 1937, resulting in a hospitalization lasting several weeks.

Joseph Carr's funeral was held at the Holy Rosary Church in Columbus and was attended by leaders of the NFL.

Carr was buried at St Joseph Cemetery, located approximately 10 miles south of Columbus in Lockbourne, Ohio.

The NFL Most Valuable Player Award was named for Joseph Carr starting in 1939 and continuing through the 1946 season, after which it was discontinued.

Joseph Carr was one of the inaugural inductees into the Helms Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Mr Joseph Carr was the NFL's first president, a position he held until his death, and much of the league's success can be traced back to the solid foundation he laid.

In January 1963, the inaugural group of inductees was announced with Joseph Carr being one of "the first 17 immortals" to be voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Joseph Carr was one of six officials selected "for helping to guide the pro sport from its original role as a stepchild of the college game to its modern popularity".

Joseph Carr was described in a biographical portrait released by the Hall as the "Father of Professional Football" for his organizational work in the early days of professional football.

In 2010, football historian Chris Willis published a biography of Carr titled, "The Man Who Built the National Football League: Joe F Carr".