Searching for the “Zest” of the 1931 Chicago Bears episode artwork

EPISODE · Dec 17, 2025 · 16 MIN

Searching for the “Zest” of the 1931 Chicago Bears

from Sports History Network

When Football Is Football is part of the Sports History Network - The Headquarters For Sports Yesteryear.WHEN FOOTBALL WAS FOOTBALL HOME PAGEEPISODE SUMMARYThroughout the history of professional football, every so often you might notice a club roster that is so strong, so impressive, and so very talented, that you just could not anticipate anything less than total success for that specific team.This may have been the case with the 1931 Chicago Bears, a squad that featured no less than four future Hall of Famers in Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski, Link Lyman, and George Trafton. Despite this wealth of talent, the Bears stumbled to a good, but not great, 8-5 record, finishing in just third place in the final standings of the National Football League. This was before the league was divided into two divisions and there was no playoff system in effect, so that last game was indeed the end of the season...... Read the entire episode blog post and check out some other cool info regarding this episode here.WHEN FOOTBALL WAS FOOTBALL BACKGROUNDEach episode takes the listener back to the very early days of the National Football League. Author Joe Ziemba will share a forgotten or lost story from one of the NFL’s two oldest teams: The Bears and the Cardinals. Team championships, individual exploits, or long-buried items of interest from the earliest years of the NFL will be dusted off and resurrected for the listener. Not for the football faint-of-heart since these programs will document when the struggling Bears nearly went out of business or when Cardinals’ players earned $15 a game and were proud of it! It’s NFL history—with a twist!. See Joe's books below.Cadets, Canons, and Legends: The Football History of Morgan Park Military AcademyWhen Football Was Football: The Chicago Cardinals and the Birth of the NFLMusic for the episode - https://www.purple-planet.com/

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Searching for the “Zest” of the 1931 Chicago Bears

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