Bulldogs

Ohio's professional game grew out of local athletic clubs racing to field the strongest side money could buy, and Canton entered that scramble when the Canton Athletic Club was set up in November 1904. Play began the following year, and the "Bulldogs" name stuck during the 1906 season.

That habit carried into the Ohio League, where Canton took the title in 1916, 1917 and 1919, largely on the back of Jim Thorpe, who ran the team as player-coach through 1920. When the National Football League formed, the Bulldogs joined and, under Guy Chamberlin, won back-to-back league championships in 1922 and 1923 — the high point of the franchise's history. Pete Henry and Link Lyman anchored those title sides; both are enshrined there alongside Thorpe.

In 1924 the franchise was sold to Samuel Deutsch and shipped to Cleveland, where it won that year's NFL Championship under a new name. Canton got a team back in 1925, but the revival lasted two seasons before money problems shut it down for good in 1926.

None of it mattered as much, while it lasted, as the games against the Massillon Tigers. For years their meetings decided the Ohio League title outright.