In the annals of sports history, there exists many a fascinating tidbit. Today on Friday Funday, we will look at another one: the Tonawanda Kardex. This was an American Professional Football Association franchise in the early days before the APFA evolved into the modern-day National Football League. It operated for two seasons, 1920 and 1921, and the Kardex caught our attention about 30 years ago when we were young.

Tonawanda is a suburb of Buffalo, in the northwest part of New York state. The claim to fame for the football team? “They are easily the shortest-lived team in the league’s history, and the shortest-lived known team in North American major league sports history.” They played one official AFPA game, lost by a 45-0 score, and folded—never to play another contest ever. A Google search brings up all sorts of tragicomedy.

We don’t need to re-hash it all here, as you generally can read a lot about the team on your own. However, it is interesting to note how “loose” of an association the APFA was in 1921: three other teams posted 0-2 records for the season, themselves going scoreless. Travel was difficult at the time, and it made scheduling a challenge for most teams that paid the $50 membership fee to the league for that specific season. Crazy!

There were 21 teams in the APFA that season; ten of them failed to win more than a single matchup. Several teams had the same nicknames as their same-city baseball counterparts (the Detroit Tigers, for example, posted a 1-5-1 record in the 1921 APFA). However, three teams from the season actually still exist today: the Chicago Staleys (now the Bears, coached even then by the legendary George Halas) were the champions.

In addition, the Chicago Cardinals—now in Arizona—and the Green Bay Packers posted at least .500 records in competition, as well. Thus, the roots of the league we know today are there, even if the Kardex failed to take root. For the record, there were five teams that posted a negative sabermetric rating of worse than minus-25: Kardex, Muncie Flyers, New York Brickley Giants, Cincinnati Celts, and Louisville Brecks.

Those Giants bear no relation to the modern-day Giants, however, which were a separate franchise that originated in 1925. The deep history of the NFL cannot match that of MLB, although it’s similar to the National Hockey League with its early seasons and crazy machinations like these in the APFA. And nothing stands out to us like the Tonawanda Kardex: the shortest-lived team in North American sports history.