George Halas

Halas' 1952 Bowman trading card
No. 7
Position:	End
Personal information
Born:	(1895-02-02)February 2, 1895 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died:	October 31, 1983(1983-10-31) (aged 88) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Height:	6 ft 0 in (1.83 m)
Weight:	182 lb (83 kg)
Career information
High school:	Crane (Chicago, Illinois)
College:	Illinois (1914–1917) Great Lakes Navy (1918)
Career history
As a player:
Hammond All-Stars (1919) Decatur / Chicago Staleys / Bears (1920–1929) Chicago Stayms (1920)
As a coach:
Decatur / Chicago Staleys / Bears (1920–1929, 1933–1942, 1946–1955, 1958–1967) Head coach
As an executive:
Decatur / Chicago Staleys / Bears (1921–1983) Owner Chicago Bruins (1925–1931, 1939–1942) Owner Newark Bears / Bombers (1939–1941) Owner Akron Bears (1946) Owner
Career highlights and awards
8× NFL champion (1921, 1932, 1933, 1940, 1941, 1943, 1946, 1963) 2× AP NFL Coach of the Year (1963, 1965) NFL 1920s All-Decade Team NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team Sporting News 1940s All-Decade Team Second-team All-Pro (1920) Chicago Bears No. 7 retired 100 greatest Bears of All-Time Second-team All-Service (1918)
Career NFL statistics
Games played: 104 Touchdowns: 10
Head coaching record
Regular season:	318–148–31 (.671)
Postseason:	6–3 (.667)
Career:	324–151–31 (.671)
Player stats at PFR
Coaching stats at PFR
Pro Football Hall of Fame

George Halas
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	United States Navy
Years of service	1918, 1942–1946
Rank	Captain
Unit	Seventh Fleet
Battles/wars	World War I World War II
Awards	Bronze Star

George Stanley Halas Sr. (February 2, 1895 – October 31, 1983), nicknamed "Papa Bear" and "Mr. Everything", was an American football end, coach, and executive. He was the founder and owner of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL), and served as his own head coach on four occasions. He was also lesser-known as a player for the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball (MLB). He is the namesake for the NFC Championship trophy.

Halas was one of the co-founders of the American Professional Football Association (now the NFL) in 1920, and in 1963 became one of the first 17 inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Halas was the oldest person in NFL history to serve as a head coach, aged 72 years and 318 days when he coached the final game of his career in December 1967, a record that stood for over 50 years until Romeo Crennel became the interim head coach of the Houston Texans in October 2020, aged 73 years and 115 days.

Early life and sports career

Halas was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a family of Czech-Bohemian immigrants.^[1][2][3] His parents, Barbara (Poledna), who ran a grocery store, and Frank Halas, a tailor, were migrants from Pilsen, Austria-Hungary.^[4][5][6] He was the brother of Walter Halas. George had a varied career in sports. In 1915, Halas worked temporarily for Western Electric, and was planning on being on the SS Eastland. He was running late, however, as he was attempting to gain weight to play Big Ten football and missed the capsizing, which killed 844 passengers.^[7] After graduating from Crane High School in Chicago, he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, playing football for coach Bob Zuppke, as well as baseball and basketball, and earning a degree in civil engineering.^[8] He also became a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He helped Illinois win the 1918 Big Ten Conference football title.

Serving as an ensign in the Navy during World War I, he played for a team at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station,^[8] and was named the MVP of the 1919 Rose Bowl. In recognition of his Rose Bowl accomplishments, Halas was inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 2018.^[9] On a team which included Paddy Driscoll and Jimmy Conzelman, Halas scored a receiving touchdown and returned an intercepted pass 77 yards in a 17–0 win over the Mare Island Marines of California; the team was also rewarded with their military discharges.

Afterward, Halas played minor league baseball, eventually earning a promotion to the New York Yankees, where he played 12 games as an outfielder in 1919.^[8] However, a hip injury effectively ended his baseball career. Halas said that he was succeeded as the Yankees' right fielder by Babe Ruth,^[10] but in reality, it was Sammy Vick.^{[citation needed]} Later that year, Halas played for the Hammond Pros and received about $75 per game.^[11]

On February 18, 1922,^[12] Halas married Wilhelmina "Minnie" Bushing,^[13] to whom he remained married until her death in 1966.^[14]

Professional football career

After one year with the Pros (also known as the All-Stars), Halas moved to Decatur, Illinois to take a position with the A. E. Staley Company, a starch manufacturer. He served as a company sales representative, an outfielder on the company-sponsored baseball team, and the player-coach of the company-sponsored football team the Decatur Staleys. Halas selected his alma mater's colors—orange and navy blue—for the team's uniforms.^[15] In 1920, Halas represented the Staleys at the meeting which formed the American Professional Football Association (which became the NFL in 1922) in Canton, Ohio.^[16] After the Staleys' season ended, Halas and teammates George Trafton, Hub Shoemake, and Hugh Blacklock joined the Chicago Stayms for a December 19 match against the Chicago Cardinals, marking the only time Halas would be an NFL team's opponent for another team besides the Staleys/Bears.^[17] The game ended in a 14–14 tie.^[18]

Despite a 10–1–2 record, the Staleys ended the season awash in red ink. The Staleys' financial troubles didn't dissuade Halas from significantly upgrading the roster, to the point that it was a works team in name only. After the first game of the 1921 season, company founder and namesake Augustus E. Staley turned over control of the team to Halas so he could move the team to Chicago, where the team had attracted its biggest gates of the 1920 season. Staley gave Halas a $5,000 bonus for the move to Chicago provided that he keep the Staleys franchise name for the 1921 season. Halas then took on teammate Edward "Dutch" Sternaman as a partner.^[19][20] The newly minted "Chicago Staleys" set up shop at Cubs Park, soon to be known as Wrigley Field; Halas had a good relationship with Chicago Cubs owner William Wrigley Jr. and president Bill Veeck Sr. The Staleys maneuvered their schedule to win their first NFL championship that year.^[21] The following year, Halas renamed his team the "Chicago Bears." Years later, he recalled that he wanted to find a way to choose a name that would give a nod to the Cubs. Reasoning that football players were far bigger than baseball players, he concluded, "if baseball players are cubs, then football players must be bears!"^[22][21]

Halas was not only the team's coach but also played end (wide receiver on offense, defensive end on defense) and handled ticket sales and the business of running the club. Named to the NFL's all-pro team in the 1920s, his playing highlight occurred in a 1923 game when he stripped Jim Thorpe of the ball, recovered the fumble, and returned it 98 yards—a league record which would stand until 1972. In 1925, Halas persuaded Illinois star player Red Grange to join the Bears; it was a significant step in establishing both the respectability and popularity of the league, which had previously been viewed as a refuge for less admirable players.

After ten seasons, Halas stepped back from the game in 1930, retiring as a player and handing coaching duties to Lake Forest Academy coach Ralph Jones; but he remained the team's owner, becoming sole owner in 1932. However, severe financial difficulties brought on by the Great Depression put the Bears in dire financial straits even though Jones led them to the NFL title in 1932. Halas returned as coach in 1933 to eliminate the additional cost of paying a head coach's salary. He coached the Bears for another ten seasons. His 1934 team was undefeated until a loss in the championship game to the New York Giants.

In the late 1930s, Halas—with University of Chicago coach Clark Shaughnessy—perfected the T-formation system to create a revolutionary and overwhelming style of play which drove the Bears to an astonishing 73–0 victory over the Washington Redskins in the 1940 NFL Championship Game—still the most lopsided margin of victory in NFL history. Every other team in the league immediately began trying to imitate the format. The Bears repeated as NFL champions in 1941, and the 1940s would be remembered as the era of the "Monsters of the Midway".

Halas and Shaughnessy had created a revolutionary concept with the T-formation offense. The complex spins, turns, fakes, and all-around athletic versatility required to execute the scheme limited the possible players available. Halas believed he'd found the perfect quarterback for his new offense in Sid Luckman, a passing star at Columbia University. Luckman was a single wing tailback; the tailback is the primary runner and passer in that scheme. Luckman launched his Hall of Fame career playing quarterback for the Bears from 1939 to 1950. Halas was not satisfied with other players who succeeded Luckman under center. During this coaching stint, he had on the Bears roster two future Hall of Fame players, Bobby Layne in 1948 and George Blanda from 1949 to 1958. Other notable players included Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Lujack from 1948 to 1951 and Zeke Bratkowski from 1954 to 1960. Blanda played in the NFL until 1975; Bratkowski moved on the Los Angeles Rams before signing with Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers in 1963, where he played an important role as "super sub" to starter Bart Starr in winning three straight NFL championships in 1965–'66–'67; and Bobby Layne quarterbacked the Detroit Lions to three NFL championship games between 1952 and 1954, winning two.

Halas entered the Navy again after the advent of World War II in 1942, with the rank of lieutenant commander. He served overseas for 20 months under the command of Admiral Chester Nimitz. His duties were supporting the welfare and recreational activities of the Seventh Fleet.^[23] He was awarded the Bronze Star during his recall and released from duty in 1946 with the rank of captain.^[24] While Halas was in the Navy, the Bears won another title in 1943 under Hunk Anderson and Luke Johnsos. Returning to the field in 1946, he coached the club for a third decade, again winning a title in his first year back as coach.^[25] That same year, Halas met with the Army Chief of Staff, General Dwight Eisenhower, the Navy Chief of Staff, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Carl Spaatz, and offered to set up an annual charity football game, with the Bears as hosts, whose proceeds would go to the relief agencies of the armed forces. By mid-1957, proceeds from this game were $438,350.76^[24] and proceeds from all games the Bears participated in between 1946 and 1957 were over $2 million.^[26]

After a brief break in 1956–57, he returned as head coach for a final decade from 1958 to 1967. Despite winning his sixth and last league title in 1963, he did not enjoy the same success as he had before the war, and officially retired on May 27, 1968.^[27] He did win his 200th game in 1950 and his 300th game in 1965, becoming the first coach to reach both milestones. His six NFL Championships as a head coach is tied for the most all time with Green Bay's Curly Lambeau and later, New England's Bill Belichick.^[28] In 40 years as a coach, he endured only six losing seasons, three of which came during his final stint.

Head coaching record

Coaching tree

Assistants under George Halas who became college or professional head coaches:

• George Allen: Los Angeles Rams (1966–1970), Washington Redskins (1971–1977), Chicago Blitz (1983), Arizona Wranglers (1984), Long Beach State (1990)
Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=George_Halas
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