Yellow Jackets

The Yellow Jackets never got the chance to build a rivalry that lasted, because by the time Philadelphia had another NFL side worth the name, Frankford itself was gone. What replaced them tells its own story: when the club folded, Bert Bell and Lud Wray bought the franchise rights and took on debt to found the Philadelphia Eagles.

The team traced back to the Frankford Athletic Association, formed in 1899, and did not enter the NFL until 1924, taking the Yellow Jackets name from the insects that swarmed their practice field. Guy Chamberlin, later inducted into the Hall of Fame, coached the side to the 1926 NFL Championship on a 14-1-2 record, with Hap Moran captaining the team.

Frankford Stadium, known locally as Yellow Jacket Field, held about 10,000 and burned in 1929. The club patched together home games at Baker Bowl and Philadelphia Municipal Stadium after the fire finished the ground off in 1931, but there was no repairing the finances behind it. In 1931, with debts mounting and no stadium to call their own, the Yellow Jackets folded.

Two years later, the franchise existed only as a name absorbed into a new club a few miles across the same city, and the 1926 championship remains the one thing Frankford took with it into that ending.