Bulldogs

Ralph Hay managed the Bulldogs from 1918 and pushed the 1920 gathering that became the American Professional Football Association, later the NFL. The Bulldogs themselves did not survive their own creation by much — the Cleveland move came in 1924, and the league expelled the franchise in 1927 as it trimmed its smaller members.

Before that end, the team had a run worth the plaque. Between 1921 and 1923 the Bulldogs went 25 games without a loss, 22 wins and 3 draws, a league record at the time, and closed it out with back-to-back NFL titles: 10–0–2 in 1922, 11–0–1 in 1923. Guy Chamberlin held the dual role of player and coach for both. Jim Thorpe had already given the club its Ohio League titles a few years earlier, from 1915 to 1920, before becoming the new league's first president.

The rivalry with the Massillon Tigers did more to shape early professional football than any single Canton season. It returned in 1911, dropped the Bulldogs name for a spell as the Canton Professionals, and only took it back in 1915. The club had started, in 1903, as a local Ohio League side with no reason yet to think a hall of fame would one day stand a few streets from its old ground.