Packers team historian Cliff Christl has assembled an oral history series on the NFL Draft, highlighting significant and noteworthy years as a prelude to Green Bay hosting the 2025 draft in late April. New installments will be posted most weekdays. For access to the full series thus far, click here.
1936
The first National Football League draft – or what the league called at the time "the selection of players" – was held on Feb. 8, 1936, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia. There were nine teams represented, and they drafted 81 players over nine rounds. The club owners had agreed to disperse players via a draft nine months earlier at a special meeting held at the Fort Pitt Hotel in Pittsburgh.
Minutes of NFL meeting, May 19, 1935
"Motion by Mr. (Bert) Bell, seconded by Mr. (George Preston) Marshall, that the following rule relative to the selection of players entering the National League for the first time become operative beginning with the season of 1936.
- At the annual meeting in February, and each succeeding year thereafter, a list of first year eligible players be presented by each club, and their names placed upon a board in the meeting room for selection by the various clubs. The priority of selection by each club shall follow the reverse order of the championship standing of the clubs at the close of the preceding season; for instance, the club which finished last in either division, to be determined by percentage rating, shall have first choice; the club, which finished next to last, second choice, and this inverse order shall be followed until each club has had one selection or has declined to select a player, after which the selection shall continue as indicated above until all players whose names appear on the board have been selected or rejected."
The motion also included four other items that would allow players not drafted to sign with any team in the league; that if a player could show reasonable cause for wanting to play in a different city from the team where he was drafted, he shall be permitted to do so if his reasons were valid and the league president approved; in the event of a controversy between a player and club, the league president shall settle the matter; and if a selected player failed to sign a contract, he shall be placed on a reserve list.
The entire motion carried unanimously.
Bidding war over Stan Kostka led to first draft
NFL owners might have adopted the college draft with altruistic intentions in mind, but the decision also was driven by the high-priced bidding war that took place before the 1935 season over Stan Kostka.
A burly 6-foot, 225-pound fullback who possessed a rare mix of power and speed, Kostka had averaged 6 yards per carry for the University of Minnesota's 1934 mythical national champions. He hailed from the stockyard town of South St. Paul, Minn., and was once referred to in a Minneapolis Star headline as "Snorting Stan the Blasting Bull."
Clark Shaughnessy, father of the modern T-formation and coach at Big Ten foe University of Chicago when Kostka was a senior (Football in War & Peace, by Clark Shaughnessy, 1943): "Kostka was simply a bull. I doubt whether any fullback ever hit harder than he could, and in the open field he was one of the few men in modern times who could simply run through a tackle. He had so much speed, momentum and drive that he would bowl over a tackler, and then tear out of his grasp with those hard-churning legs."
Bell, president of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1935 and NFL commissioner 22 years later when he reminisced about his pursuit of Kostka (Associated Press, Jan. 30, 1957): "In (1935), I telephoned Stanley Kostka … in Minneapolis. I asked him point blank if he would sign with the Eagles if I came out there and offered him a contract for more money than anyone else in the league would give him. He said yes. I went to Minneapolis. We met in a hotel. I asked him how much he had been offered by other clubs. He told me the top was $3,500. I'll give you $4,000, I told him. But Kostka hemmed and hawed. … I told him, look, I'll give you $6,000 if you'll sign now and let me go home. He hedged, so I left. (On the way home) I made up my mind that this league would never survive unless we had some system whereby each team had an even chance to bid for talent against the other."
Kostka on signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers (Christl interview, March 28, 1979): "I was the instigator of the draft. I think every club in the league contacted me: Chicago Bears, Green Bay, Giants, Brooklyn, Pittsburgh made serious offers. A team would send me a wire and say they'd give me 3,500 bucks. I'd send a wire back and say Green Bay or the Bears said they'd give me 4,000. I kept that up. I got $5,000 and a $500 bonus. Shipwreck Kelly signed me and (Art) Rooney got pretty disturbed. I think Nagurski was making like $3,000 or less. Most of the guys were making $50 a ballgame."
George Kirksey, United Press (Oct. 31, 1934): "Players who have been hit by him say Stan Kostka, Minnesota's 215-pound fullback, hits like he was shot out of a Krupp 155-millimeter howitzer."
Kostka played one year with the Dodgers and quit to become head coach at Chisholm High School in Minnesota. The United Press reported during the 1935 season that he was the highest paid rookie in the league with a salary close to $5,000. At the time, the average salary for a back was reported to be $200 to $250 per game.
Bell's purpose: Parity
When club owners approved the draft before the 1935 season, the NFL's nine teams fell into two distinct categories: the haves and the have-nots.
The haves included the Bears, who had won back-to-back NFL championships in 1932 and '33, and the first two Western Division titles in 1933 and '34 with a combined regular-season record of 23-2-1; the Packers, who had won an unprecedented three straight NFL titles from 1929-31 and had finished under .500 only once in their first 14 NFL seasons; and the Giants, reigning league champions and winners of the first two Eastern Division titles.
The most notable have-nots were the Eagles and the then Pittsburgh Pirates, the league's two newest members. Both played in the Eastern Division and had finished last and second-to-last in their first two seasons. Their combined record over that period was 12-28-3.
Art Rooney on the more successful teams agreeing to the draft (Christl & Don Langenkamp interview, Nov. 3, 1978): "Bell was very persuasive. He was the guy who worked hard for it, to get everybody to go along. There wasn't that much opposition to it."
George Halas, then Bears owner and coach (Christl interview, circa late 1970s): "I was for it immediately, even though we paid the biggest price. We stood to lose the most by having a draft. Without a draft, pro football would have been hurt. It was definitely a contributing factor to the growth and success of pro football."
Wellington Mara (Christl interview, Jan. 10, 1979): "I remember my father (Tim Mara) said, 'Well, this is something we should do because we're not going to be any stronger than the so-called weaker clubs. And we should go along with it.' Not much was done in the league those days that George Halas was opposed to."
NFL Meeting, Feb. 8, 1936
The meeting was called to order at 1:30 p.m. that Saturday.
Minutes: "When the meeting came to order, the President (Joe Carr) called attention to the provision of the Constitution and By-Laws providing for only two representatives of each club to be present, but owing to the fact that the selection of players was to be an early order of business, a motion by Mr. Bell, seconded by Mr. Marshall, that the league waive this rule for this meeting in order to give clubs an opportunity to have their coach or additional persons present who were familiar with the records of the players, was carried unanimously."
Three teams took advantage of the motion by having more than two representatives in attendance: the Boston Redskins, Chicago Cardinals and Giants. The only head coach not in attendance was Steve Owen of the Giants. The franchise was represented by Tim, John and Wellington Mara.
Minutes: "The President announced that the next order of business would be the selection of five players by each club as provided for in the resolution adopted at Pittsburgh on May 19, 1935; whereupon the names of approximately 90 players were placed on a blackboard in the room, and the selection of players proceeded with the inverse order of the standing at the close of the season of 1935."
With the Bears and Cardinals having both finished 6-4-2, the first coin flip in draft history took place to break the tie for the fifth and sixth choices.
The list of names on the blackboard was compiled by Wellington Mara, then a 19-year-old student at Fordham University.
Minutes: "At the conclusion of the selection of five players by each club, a motion by Mr. Bell and seconded by Mr. Marshall, that the selection be extended to permit each club to select nine players. Carried unanimously."
Lee Joannes, Packers president from 1930-47 (Christl interview, May 15, 1979): "(Wellington Mara) was kind of a nut on digging up football players, and he used to make up the list. So you can see how primitive it was. I think he did it for two or three years. It was as raw as you could make it."
Wellington Mara (Christl interview, Jan. 10, 1979): "I suppose I was the Joel Buchsbaum of my day. I used to spend all my spare time reading magazines and getting out-of-town papers, and so on. And I guess nobody else was willing to make up a list. The reason was I was the youngest one around and they wished it off on me. As I recall, you were limited in your selections to people who were actually on a list."
Halas (Chicago Tribune, March 14, 1967): "If the guy's name wasn't on the blackboard, he wasn't draft bait. He was a free agent, and you all could sound him out. I don't think, though, anyone tried to hide a sleeper. No one finessed. We all knew who the good players were. In 1936, the late Frank Korch (a Chicago sportswriter) was both our publicity man and our talent scout. Frank was a good judge of talent. We fortified Frank's recommendations with tips from friends and former players."
That said, Korch didn't attend the meeting, according to the minutes. The Bears were represented by Halas, who was team president, and club secretary Ralph Brizzolara.
Jay Berwanger: The first No. 1
The first player selected also was the first Heisman Trophy winner: halfback Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago, then a member of the Big Ten. Berwanger (6-1, 195) was selected by the Eagles, but his rights were traded to the Bears for an unidentified tackle before the two-day league meeting ended.
That tackle turned out to be third-year veteran Art Buss, who was considered a promising young lineman. Nevertheless, the deal alone essentially defeated the purpose of the draft. The Eagles had finished 2-9 in 1935; the Bears, 6-4-2.
In the end, Berwanger accepted a job with a rubber company and never played a down in the NFL. As Bell, then president of the Eagles, feared, Berwanger's demands – reported to be $1,000 per game – were not only too rich for him but also for the Bears.
Shaughnessy, Berwanger's coach (United Press, Nov. 14, 1935): "Jay is the best all-around back I've ever seen, anywhere, at any time. I've seen players who have been better perhaps at one certain task, but I've yet to see one who could do everything as well as he."
Berwanger (Christl interview, June 4, 1979): "That was the first year of the draft. I don't know if they knew what they were doing. It was a different ballgame then. Those of us in school didn't know anything. The whole thing was a surprise. It was a new thing, and I don't remember paying any attention to it. The only thing I knew was what I read in the paper. I don't think I ever got any notification other than that. I'm sure I didn't."
Halas on Berwanger (Christl interview, circa late 1970s): "He wanted $14,000 a year and I was willing to give him $12,000 and a share of profits from the previous year. Then some of his fraternity brothers talked to him and talked him into going into business."
Berwanger (Christl interview, June 4, 1979): "Nobody made me an offer. I asked George Halas the one time I saw him – it wasn't a formal meeting or anything – that I wanted $12,500 for two years with a no-cut contract. He just wished my date and I a bon farewell. I was being a little facetious, but for that I would have played. But Bronko Nagurski wasn't making over $7,000, and he was the greatest player around in those days. They weren't paying any kind of money. I wanted to go into business and for the money they were paying it didn't make any sense to play pro ball. It wasn't that I had anything against pro ball. There just didn't seem to be a future there for me."
First test run for physical testing: Alphonse "Tuffy" Leemans
A native of Superior, Wis., Tuffy Leemans was the draft's first case in point of an unheralded college player who turned out to be better than many of his contemporaries on the All-American teams.
Leemans (6-0, 187) played at George Washington University, a private school in Washington, D.C., regarded as a second-tier program in the days before formal collegiate divisions. In Leemans' senior year, George Washington finished 6-3, beating the likes of Emory & Henry, Catawba and Davis & Elkins by a combined score of 98-7; and losing to Alabama and Rice by a combined 80-0.
A triple-threat quarterback in college, Leemans was moved to halfback when he reported to the College All-Stars in August, six months after the draft. Within a short time, he was outshining Berwanger and Notre Dame's Bill Shakespeare, the third choice in the draft and also third in the Heisman voting, in daily practices, as well as scrimmages.
Nevertheless, Berwanger and Shakespeare started what was the third College All-Star Game between the defending NFL champion and the top collegiate players of the previous season based on the fan voting which determined the All-Star starters. But in the end, it was Leemans who played the most snaps of the halfbacks and stood out above the others, although it was his fumble in the fourth quarter that allowed the Detroit Lions to gain a 7-7 tie.
Discovered by Wellington Mara, who happened to be in the stands at Washington's Griffith Stadium when George Washington played Alabama, Leemans was drafted by the Giants in the second round. And while Berwanger and Shakespeare, two of the first three backs drafted, never played pro ball, Leemans led the NFL in rushing as a rookie and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1978.
Frank Korch, personnel advisor to Halas and Collyer's Eye sportswriter, on naming Leemans to his 1935 Little All-America team (Collyer's Eye & Baseball World, Nov. 22, 1935): "Al Leemans, for one, is as fine a football player as there is in any section this year. Alabama and Rice blasted George Washington U., but even with the loser, Leemans was the towering performer on the battlefield."
Jack McBride, who had played 10 years in the NFL, mostly for the Giants, and coach of the New York Yankees of a newly formed AFL (Washington Evening Star, Sept. 3, 1936): "(Leemans) was the best back on the field (in the College All-Star Game), and he'll show you again when he gets going in pro football."
Gomer Jones, Ohio State All-American and the All-Stars' starting center (Washington Evening Star, Sept. 3, 1936): "The boys knew Tuffy was good, and he simply had a tough break in fumbling. He was better than Berwanger."
Before pro teams hired scouts and long before they began timing and testing prospects, Jim Pixlee, Leemans' coach at George Washington, was an early advocate of conducting laboratory tests on his players to gauge what he called "split vision" and reflex action among other things. Following Leemans' performance in the All-Star Game, Pixlee said his star player had all the necessary qualities to be an outstanding back except for one.
Pixlee (Washington Evening Star, Sept. 6, 1936): "Practically all good football men have talents in common. Stamina, speed, coordination and good minds. All these Tuffy has in abundance excepting only sheer speed. He has speed enough, but would not be classed as a speedster. … A good ball-carrier looks and acts as though he is going places he does not intend to go. If he looks at his objective hole, he draws the defense into that hole and destroys his own effectiveness."
Pixlee (Washington Evening Star, Sept. 6, 1936): "Tuffy has splendid split vision. … A good football player must have fast mental and physical reflex actions. Tuffy has the fastest reflex actions I ever have seen in an athlete. … We can test athletes for it in the laboratory… His reflex action is so fast that he doesn't need to depend upon conscious mental reactions."
Pixlee (Washington Evening Star, Sept. 6, 1936): "Tuffy is best in close quarters where several men are in the picture. The tacklers fail to get him down for the reason that he can't be hit solidly with the shoulders … and Tuffy's split vision and marvelous reflex action make it possible to present to the tackler a slipping target that retains its ground traction and leverages. In close quarters he is like a champion boxer. He appears to be hit and is hit, but not solidly because he rides the blow and dissipates the shock by going away."
Herman Ball, who was hired as a scout by Marshall, Washington's owner, in 1945 and coached for him from 1947-54 (Christl interview, Nov. 5, 1978): "Marshall regretted all of his living days that he didn't take Tuffy Leemans. Tuffy Leemans went to George Washington, and the Giants took him. Whatever happened, (Marshall) didn't make a great effort to get him. He always said he let Tuffy get away from him."
Draft? What draft? Confusion reigned among players
More than a decade before the first draft, Curly Lambeau started heading to the West Coast on an annual basis shortly after the Green Bay Packers season ended to scout the East-West Shrine Game, the first of the major college all-star games and played back then on New Year's Day. Before the game in 1936, Lambeau and his second wife drove from Green Bay to San Francisco, arriving there on Dec. 26.
Lambeau (San Francisco Examiner, Jan. 19, 1951): "As far as the pros are concerned, I discovered the East-West game. There was a time when I had it all to myself. I came out here annually and built my team. I have missed only one game since it started (in 1925). … Whatever success I had at Green Bay was due almost entirely to the East-West game. I never heard of some of the players who later starred for me until I saw them in action at Kezar (Stadium)."
In that first draft, two of Lambeau's top three choices had started for the West squad: guard Russ Letlow and end Bernie Scherer.
Lambeau telegram to the Green Bay Press-Gazette after watching the East and West practices for several days (Press-Gazette, Dec. 31, 1935): "There are about a dozen good pro prospects, mostly on the East team this season. The best tackle is Joe Stydahar of West Virginia, weight 222. He didn't wear shoes until he was 17 years old and is plenty tough and a fighter. Letlow of San Francisco University looks good. He weighs 210."
As it turned out, after the Bears drafted Stydahar sixth, Lambeau grabbed Letlow with the next pick.
Following the East-West game, Lambeau got a second look at Letlow when he played against the Packers during one of their offseason barnstorming tours. Less than three weeks before the draft, the Packers had beaten the Pacific Coast All-Stars, 24-14, in a charity game at Kezar Stadium, and Letlow started at left guard for the All-Stars.
Whether Lambeau knew it or not, Letlow also was under contract to another NFL team by then. Both he and Scherer knew nothing about the draft at that point. In fact, Scherer insisted until the day he died in 2004 at age 91 that there was no draft that year.
Letlow (Christl interview, April 1980): "I played in the Knights of Columbus game after the East-West Shrine Game. Green Bay played the College All-Stars. And Milan Creighton, who was coaching the Chicago Cardinals at the time, was coaching the All-Stars. He was signing up everybody he could during training the week before the game. And I signed a contract to play for the Cardinals, although he did tell me there might be a draft. But I didn't know a thing about it out here in California. In those days, we didn't have television and the papers weren't too darn interested in pro football, either. Then in the middle of July, I got this telegram saying I was unconditionally released by the Cardinals. And the next day I got a telegram from Curly Lambeau saying I was the No. 1 draft pick of the Green Bay Packers. So I hopped in the car and headed for Green Bay."
Scherer (Christl interview, July 20, 2000): "I'll tell you a big misnomer. They all say the first NFL draft was in 1936. It was not. It was in 1937. I know, I was a part of it. Lambeau signed me in the old St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, the morning after the East-West Game, Jan. 2, 1936. There was no draft. Even in the Green Bay booklet, they say the first draft was in 1936. That's a lie. That's a hoax. I told people I was the first player ever to get a bonus. Lambeau took me to breakfast after he signed me for $125 a game."
Actually, the Packers announced Letlow's signing on March 12, 1936, a little more than a month after the draft. He played for them from 1936-42 and again in 1946, and was one of four guards named to the NFL's All-Decade Team for the 1930s.
Lambeau announced Scherer's signing on April 1, 1936. He played from 1936-38.
Bears land two future Hall of Fame linemen
Although the draft was designed to help the bad teams and, in a sense, punish the good ones, Halas reaped the benefits of it more than anyone else right from the start and for at least a decade thereafter.
Of the four future Pro Football Hall of Famers selected in the first draft, Halas wound up with two of them.
After picking Stydahar in the first round, Halas got the steal of the draft in the ninth and final round when he chose Colgate guard Dan Fortmann with the 78th of the 81 choices. Halas drafted Stydahar on the recommendation of Bears veteran end Bill Karr, who also had played at West Virginia. Halas drafted Fortmann, who was only 19 years old at the time, on a mere hunch.
Halas (Chicago Tribune, Feb. 2, 1967): "We had scouted Stydahar carefully and knew he had speed and size at 6-4 and 245 pounds. But (Fortmann) was strictly a shot in the dark. … We had gone into the draft with information on about 14 players – a far cry from the scientific drafting methods developed in recent years. … But no amount of scientific research could produce a finer pair of linemen than our '36 selectees."
Fortmann (Christl interview, April 14, 1979): "As I recall, I didn't know there was a draft. I bummed out to Chicago in spring vacation. I got out there on the thumb. George Halas wrote me a letter saying I was drafted. I said, 'Well, I'll go out there and look at the medical schools.' I was already accepted at Columbia, but I thought I'd see if there was any chance I could go to the University of Chicago. I was just 19 years old when I signed with the Bears. I signed my first contract for $110 a game and a $200 bonus – if I was a good boy – payable after the season. I made $1,700 my first year. I went to Chicago medical school and graduated in 1940, specializing in surgery."
Longtime Bears player and coach Luke Johnsos on Fortmann (Christl interview, March 1, 1979): "He weighed about 195 pounds. He was too small. But he had pretty good guys around him: (Bulldog) Turner, Stydahar. (Fortmann) had all the brains. Danny was quick and sharp."
Fortmann played from 1936-43 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1965. Stydahar played from 1936-42 and again from 1945-46 and was inducted in 1967. As anchors of the "Monsters of the Midway" lines of the early 1940s, they each played on three NFL championship teams.
One last item of business
Before the meeting ended, a motion carried unanimously to change the date for the selection of players from that of the annual meeting to the day prior to the playing of the championship game at the conclusion of the season; and that the meeting be held in the city where the championship game would be played.
