Bulldogs

The men who put together the Canton Athletic Club in 1903 were building for a factory town that wanted a football team of its own, and within a few years the side had taken the name that stuck: the Bulldogs. Ohio's independent league gave them their first stage, and they took it three times, in 1916, 1917 and 1919, before the sport reorganised itself into something more permanent.

That reorganisation suited Canton. The Bulldogs carried their Ohio League form into the young NFL and won back-to-back championships in 1922 and 1923, the second of them sealed with a 6–0 win over the Chicago Bears. League Field, holding around 8,000, was a small ground even by the standards of the day, but it was full for the games that mattered.

Maroon and white marked out a team that belonged to a league still finding its shape, playing Ohio sides as often as the coast-to-coast opponents that would define the sport later. No fixture carried the weight of the meetings with the Massillon Tigers, the rivalry that had already been running before the Bulldogs ever wore an NFL jersey and that gave the town's football its edge long after the trophies stopped coming.