Commissioner of the NFL
The commissioner of the National Football League is the chief executive officer of the National Football League. The position was created in 1941. The current commissioner is Roger Goodell, who assumed office on September 1, 2006. As of November 2025, he is the only living NFL commissioner.
Until 1941, the NFL's chief executive was the league president. On January 17, 1941, the NFL franchise owners amended the league's constitution to change the chief executive's title from "president" to "commissioner".
Temporary Secretary
Ralph Hay (1920)
In 1920, the Canton Bulldogs were one of 14 teams to form the American Professional Football Association, which would become the National Football League two years later. Bulldogs owner Ralph Hay was named the first head of the league.Hay did make one notable contribution in his short tenure as Temporary Secretary. Vernon Maginnis, who operated one of Akron's professional teams in 1919, wanted to field a team under the name of the Massillon Tigers in 1920. Hay was unimpressed with Maginnis, as the team he had led in 1919 was not a success and Hay did not believe that a traveling team was deserving of the Massillon Tigers name. Hay sought another investor for the Tigers, but because the Tigers of the 1910s had been operating at major financial losses and most of its players had defected to start the Cleveland Tigers, potential owners such as F.J. Griffiths and Cupid Black either balked at or ignored overtures to run the Tigers in 1920. With no credible owner stepping forward, Hay claimed the Massillon Tigers as his own, immediately announced it would not play in 1920, and prohibited all teams in the league from playing "any other Massillon Tigers team" such as Maginnis's. The Tigers, while technically listed as a charter member of the league, never played in it, and became the first team to be rejected as a member.
Presidents
Jim Thorpe (1920–1921)
Hay chose his own running back, Jim Thorpe, as the league's inaugural President; Hay believed Thorpe's status and fame as an athlete would bring instant credibility to the league. Thorpe was nominally the APFA's first president; however, he spent most of the year playing for Canton.Thorpe nominally oversaw what was in its first year a haphazard and somewhat informal league, not unlike the loose coalitions of squads such as the Ohio League, Western Pennsylvania League and New York League that had played prior to the APFA's formation. League teams regularly played those outside the league, and Thorpe allowed those games to be counted in the standings. As a result, there is some dispute whether a handful of teams, including the Chicago Tigers and Buffalo All-Americans, ever actually joined the league at all. His greatest personal achievement as league president was bringing his Bulldogs to New York City for a game against the All-Americans; this game, in which the All-Americans won 7–3, was played in front of approximately 20,000 fans at the Polo Grounds, a rousing success for the nascent league.
By the April 1921 league meetings, the question of who had actually won the league championship was still unresolved, as three teams laid claim to the title; there were even questions as to whether the league would survive beyond its first season, as the meeting had been postponed three months. Thorpe was missing from that meeting, never to return to his post, as was vice-president Stan Cofall, leaving secretary Art Ranney to preside over the meeting.
Joseph Carr (1921–1939)
At the same meeting where this dispute was resolved in favor of Ranney's own Akron Pros, Joseph Carr, owner of the Columbus Panhandles, was named league president. Carr moved the Association's headquarters to Columbus, drafted a league constitution and by-laws, gave teams territorial rights, developed membership criteria for the franchises, and issued formal standings for the first time, so that the APFA would have a clear champion. The Association's membership increased to 22 teams. Carr first set a deadline for the season to be completed and a minimum number of league games to be played in order to win the league championship. This led to standardized schedules and prevented teams from scheduling non-league teams to pad their win columns.Contracts
After taking office, Carr began cleaning up the problems surrounding professional football. By 1925, he introduced a standard player's contract, fashioned after the ones being used in pro baseball, so players could not jump from one team to another. Carr also declared that players under contract from the previous season could not be approached by another team unless first declared a free agent, thus introducing the reserve clause to professional football.Amateur issues
In the early days of professional football, the game was shunned by many in the college ranks. Fearing that the pro game tainted the college game, many college administrators barred players from having anything to do with the pros. Carr would try to attack this problem and bring a peace between the pros and amateur ranks.Green Bay Packers
The first major challenge to Carr's authority came at the end of the 1921 season, when the Green Bay Packers, who had joined the APFA that year, admitted to having used college players under assumed names. Carr immediately issued the Packers an indefinite suspension from the league, declaring that the Packers had breached both APFA rules and the public trust. However, a few months later, a group headed by Packers coach and future Hall of Famer Curly Lambeau applied for, and was granted, the Green Bay franchise.Prior to the 1923 season, Lambeau made an initial public offering selling shares of stock in the franchise; the Green Bay Packers Board of Directors has since become the only publicly held corporation to own a franchise in the league.
While the league has since imposed rules that require a controlling owner to hold a minimum 30% stake in the team, limit the number of owners a franchise can have to a maximum of 24, and bans any publicly owned companies from owning teams, the Packers are exempt from these rules under a grandfather clause.
Grange rule
When Red Grange, a star player at the University of Illinois, turned pro by joining the Chicago Bears immediately after his final college football game, college officials everywhere criticized the league. Ernie Nevers, another All-American player, did the same thing a few days later. To help ease tensions and promote the professional game in the college circles, Carr established a rule prohibiting college players to sign with professional teams until after their class had graduated. These decisions gave the NFL credibility and much needed support from the colleges and universities from across the country.Milwaukee Badgers
In 1925 it was revealed that the Milwaukee Badgers used four high school boys in a hastily arranged game with the Chicago Cardinals. As a result, the Badgers were fined $500 and given 90 days to dispose of its assets and retire from the league. Though finding no evidence to suggest the Cardinals management was aware of the status of the four youths before the game, Carr nonetheless fined the club $1000 for participating in the game. Art Foltz, the Cardinals player who confessed to having made the “introductions", was banned from play in the NFL for life.Pottsville Maroons
As in 1925, the Pottsville Maroons, a first year NFL team, played an exhibition game against a team of former Notre Dame stars including the famous "Four Horsemen”. The game was played at Philadelphia's Shibe Park which was within the protected territory of the Frankford Yellow Jackets, who were playing a league game just a few miles away at Frankford Stadium. On three occasions prior to the game, Carr reportedly warned the Pottsville management not to play the game, "under all penalties that the league could inflict”. Ignoring Carr's warnings, the game was played as scheduled. However, the Maroons stated that Carr knew of the game and had allowed it to take place. For this act, the Pottsville Maroons were fined $500 and had their franchise forfeited; as a result, the team was stripped of their NFL title, and it was given to the Chicago Cardinals. However, Carr's decision and handling of the situation are still being protested by many sports historians, as well as by the people of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and controversy still surrounds who actually won the 1925 NFL Championship, since the Maroons had earlier beaten Chicago and were actually awarded the league championship before they were suspended.Franchise stability
Carr also knew that for the league to survive, franchises needed to have a sense of stability. In his early years as president, NFL franchises constantly were setting up and then folding. From 1920 through 1932 more than 40 NFL franchises went through the league. The only two charter members to stay with the league by 1932 were the Chicago Bears and the Chicago Cardinals. In those first years, 19 teams lasted one year and 11 teams lasted two years. Carr envisioned the day the NFL could compete with Major League Baseball as America's favorite spectator sport. While few really took him seriously, he thought in time it could happen and devised a plan to make it happen.Carr knew that the NFL's success rested on franchise stability. He also believed that franchises had to be located in the biggest cities, just like those in major league baseball. This resulted in the NFL shaking off its "town team" roots. His own Panhandles, for instance, disappeared by 1929.
Carr went out of his way to recruit financially capable owners. Beginning with New York City, the largest city in the country and a market the NFL had tried to enter since the first season, Carr convinced successful bookmaker Tim Mara to start a club. The club became known as the New York Giants and it is still partly owned by Mara's family.
He continued to recruit stable owners and eventually placed teams in larger cities by moving the Dayton Triangles to become the Brooklyn Tigers in 1930, establishing the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles in 1933, moving the Portsmouth Spartans to become the Detroit Lions, establishing the Cleveland Rams in 1937, and the Washington Redskins in 1937 after that franchise moved from Boston. By 1937 the National Football League and Major League Baseball were almost identical, with 9 out of 10 NFL franchises in MLB cities. Only Green Bay, Wisconsin, did not have a major league baseball team. By placing teams in big cities the NFL gained the stability it needed and established a game plan for a bright future.