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Meet the American who was the first paid professional football player: Pudge Heffelfinger
The name of the first professional football player seems too perfect to be true.
Pudge Heffelfinger sounds like a mythical Midwestern gridiron god more than a living, breathing human being.
Heffelfinger’s fable is actually nonfiction fare. He was as real as the broken ribs he brutally delivered to a poor college kid while scrimmaging for kicks and giggles with the Yale varsity football team — at 49 years old.
This groundbreaking goliath of American sports was “unquestionably the most amazing football player I had ever known,” legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice gushed in the introduction to Heffelfinger’s own book.
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Heffelfinger was a Paul Bunyan-esque behemoth from Minnesota: tall, strapping, handsome and ferocious.
He starred for Yale from 1888 to 1891 and was the best player on some of the most dominant teams in college football history.
William Walter “Pudge” Heffelfinger was a strapping 6-foot-3, 205-pound lineman for the dominant Yale teams of 1888 to 1891. He became the first professional football player in 1892, when the Allegheny Athletic Association paid him $500 to play against the rival Pittsburgh Athletic Club. (Courtesy Pro Football Hall of Fame)
A year after manhandling overmatched amateur college opponents, Heffelfinger reshaped America’s favorite sport forever.
He was paid $500 to take the field for the Allegheny Athletic Association in an 1892 contest against the rival Pittsburgh Athletic Club.
“Pudge Heffelfinger was unquestionably the most amazing football player I had ever known.” — Grantland Rice
Heffelfinger entered history that day as the first known pro football player.
“Other players may have been paid to play before him — we don’t know for sure,” sports historian Ken Crippen, founder of The Football Learning Academy, told Fox News Digital.
“But Heffelfinger was the first for whom we have proof. After Heffelfinger … you were going to get the best players by throwing money at them.”
Heffelfinger proved to be one of the great ironmen in sports history. He played competitive football well into his 60s, after college as a barnstorming mercenary and in later years as a celebrity figure at charity games.
Grantland Rice, left, and Joe E. Brown, right, at the Santa Anita races. Rice is known for, among other things, crafting legendary phrases such as “The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.” He called Pudge Heffelfinger “the most amazing football player I had ever known.” (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
Some sources put his last game at age 65, helping raise money for World War I veterans in 1932.
This super-human figure coached football, mentored players and championed football in media.
He helped popularize the game by publishing the annual “Heffelfinger’s Football Facts” from 1935 to 1950. It featured news, stats and schedules for both pro and college football.
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“It has been said by some historians that I will go down as ‘the greatest player of all time,’” Heffelfinger wrote in 1954, the year he died, in a biography called “This Was Football.”
“Deep in my heart I know it’s not true,” he added. “I can honestly claim, however, that I stuck with the game longer than anybody else did. On and off, I was an active football player 50 years.”
Born into new era of sports
William Walter “Pudge” Heffelfinger was born on Dec. 20, 1867, in Minneapolis to Christopher and Mary Ellen (Totton) Heffelfinger.
Yale University’s 1888 football team, coached by Walter Camp, went 13-0 and outscored its opposition 694-0. Pudge Heffelfinger (back row, center) towered over his teammates. (ullstein bild via Getty Images)
His father was a Civil War veteran wounded at Gettysburg, who then built a prominent shoemaking business in Minneapolis.
“Pudge wasn’t really pudgy,” Richard Goldstein wrote in “Ivy League Autumns,” published in 1996.
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“He picked up the nickname while playing sandlot football in Minneapolis at age 15.”
Heffelfinger was born into a nation on the cusp of the sport-as-entertainment explosion that followed the Civil War.
The Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team, played their first game in the spring of 1869. In the autumn of that same year, Rutgers and Princeton battled in the first college football game.
The Red Stocking Baseball Club of Cincinnati, Ohio, poses for a team photo in 1869, which was issued as a trade card. The Red Stocking, the first pro baseball team, and the first college football game, both emerged in 1869 — part of a post-Civil war obsession with sports as entertainment. (Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images)
Heffelfinger starred in both baseball and football at Central High School in Minneapolis. It’s the same high school that produced music legend Prince — before closing in 1982.
His athletic exploits gave Heffelfinger the opportunity to play at Yale, the best college program in America, under coach and pigskin pioneer Walter Camp, widely proclaimed as the father of modern football.
“Heffelfinger was extremely quick, powerful, intelligent and fearless,” Goldstein wrote. “He pounced on opponents while playing defense and led the line charge on offense, springing from a semi-erect stance.”
The U.S. Postal Service issued a Walter Camp stamp in 2003 to pay tribute to his unparalleled contributions to American football. Pudge Heffelfinger played for Walter Camp at Yale. (United States Postal Service)
Added Goldstein, “Heffelfinger’s specialty was moving to the right, then turning in to lead interference for a Tennessean named Thomas (Bum) McClung, Yale’s star halfback.”
Yes, Heffelfinger was football’s first pulling guard. It’s still a dramatic feature of the game today.
“Playing left guard, Heffelfinger was extremely quick, powerful, intelligent and fearless.”
Listed at 6 feet, 3 inches and 205 pounds, Heffelfinger was a giant in his day. Towering over his teammates, he helped Yale dominate college football.
He was a three-time All American performer and would have earned the honor four times, notes Goldstein, but for the fact that the award wasn’t introduced until his sophomore season.
Pudge Heffelfinger starred at Yale from 1888 to 1891. Despite his nickname, he was not pudgy. But he towered over other players of the era. (Courtesy Pro Football Hall of Fame)
The 1888 Yale team, his freshman year, went 13-0 and outscored its opponents 694-0. It was the single most dominant team in more than 150 years of college football history.
“‘Pudge’ not only lettered in football, but he also lettered in baseball, rowing and track,” reports the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
He was reportedly the only four-letter athlete in Yale history and left Yale recognized as football’s greatest player.
Pro football’s birth certificate
Pro football of today grew out of community and company football clubs in the “Gridiron Breadbasket” of western Pennsylvania and Ohio.
These still-amateur teams were boosted by the growing popularity of college football.
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The Allegheny Athletic Association was founded on the north side of Pittsburgh in 1890, often fielding former college stars and competing against college programs.
Pro football’s “birth certificate”: Dated Nov. 12, 1892, this Allegheny Athletic Club expense accounting sheet lists “game performance bonus to W. Heffelfinger for playing (cash) $500.00.” The ledger notation is the earliest evidence of a player being paid to play football. (Courtesy Pro Football Hall of Fame)
“The new club was a natural rival to the older Pittsburgh Athletic Club but labored under several disadvantages,” writes the Pro Football Researchers Association.
The “Triple A’s” sought to level the playing field the old-fashioned way: with money.
A handwritten ledger from the Allegheny Athletic Club shows an entry on Nov. 12, 1892 for “game performance bonus to W. Heffelfinger for playing (cash) $500.00.”
The Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, calls the document “Pro Football’s Birth Certificate.”
Pudge Heffelfinger was a Paul Bunyan-esque figure from Minnesota. He still towered over other men while being honored at an undated football game later in life. He continued to play football until his mid 60s. (Courtesy Pro Football Hall of Fame)
“Apparently, he was well worth it, as the Allegheny Athletic Club defeated the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, 4-0,” writes the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“Heffelfinger recovered a fumble and returned it [25 yards] for a touchdown for the game’s only score. Touchdowns were worth just four points in 1892.”
The Allegheny Athletic Club netted a tidy $621 profit for the day, despite devoting nearly half the team’s $1,062 in expenses to Heffelfinger. The payout was big money at the time.
“The average annual income of a Pennsylvania family in 1892 was $834,” Pudge’s great-great-nephew, Tom Heffelfinger, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2018.
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The story of Pudge Heffelfinger, the first professional football player, lived on only through word of mouth and hazy legend for nearly 75 years.
History changed in the 1960s when a mysterious man walked into the office of Pittsburgh Steelers president Dan Rooney.
“After a brief discussion, the man gave Rooney a typed, 49-page manuscript about the early history of pro football,” the Pro Football Researchers Association reported in 1989.
In this Feb. 5, 2017, file photo, New England Patriots’ Tom Brady raises the Vince Lombardi Trophy after defeating the Atlanta Falcons in overtime at the NFL Super Bowl 51 football game in Houston. Pro football today is about a $19 billion-a-year business. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)
“When Rooney read the paper, he realized he had a piece of research of incalculable importance. Unfortunately, by that time, the man had departed.
As best Rooney could recall, the visitor’s name was Nelson Ross. But although Rooney tried to track down Ross, the man never resurfaced.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame dug into the story, and found in its files the ledger entry from the Allegheny Athletic Association showing the details of the day it made Heffelfinger the first pro football player.
The practice of paying players was formalized in 1920 with the creation of the American Professional Football Association. Two years later, it was renamed the National Football League.
‘Forever young’
William Walter Heffelfinger died on April 2, 1954, in Blessing, Texas. He was 86 years old.
The Texas Historical Commission memorialized the football great with a signpost tablet placed outside his burial site at Hawley Cemetery in Blessing.
Wiliam Walter “Pudge” Heffelfinger, who played football into his 60s, chronicled his groundbreaking sports journey in the 1954 book, “This Was Football.” (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)
It highlights his many contributions to the game, including his advent of the pulling guard and his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951.
Heffelinger enjoyed quite a life outside football, as politician, businessman and media mogul.
“Pudge gave forth an aura of shining light, a special, ageless glory … the living symbol of the game, indestructible and forever young.”
“He was a Minnesota delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1904 and 1908. He served as Hennepin (Minnesota) County Commissioner from 1924-48 and even ran, although unsuccessfully, for Congress in 1930,” writes the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
But it was the moment in 1892, when his $500 exploits paid off in victory for the Allegheny Athletic Association, that heralded a new era in American culture.
Then-Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, number 12, jogs toward the locker room after the Packers defeated the San Francisco 49ers 30-28 at Levi’s Stadium in Sept. 2021. (Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports)
Professional football today is the great colossus of global sports.
Its popularity in America is rivaled only by college football; its profitability around the world is matched by no other sport.
For instance, the National Football League generated $17.2 billion in revenue in 2021.
Today, it’s roughly a $19 billion-a-year business.
Game-day pay has also grown dramatically in the numerous autumns since Pudge pocketed five bills.
Heffelfinger likely would have marveled at all the changes.
“I’d love to live another 86 years — just to see what’s around the corner!” he enthused in his book, “This Was Football,” published the year he died.
Pudge Heffelfinger at age 82 in Blessing, Texas, around 1950. He died at age 86 in 1954. Heffelfinger was the first athlete paid to play football. He continued to play competitive football until age 64. (Public Domain)
Grantland Rice dug deep into the well of English-language literature to find ways to pay homage to Heffelfinger.
To read more stories in this unique “Meet the American Who…” series from Fox News Digital, click here.
“To borrow a line from old Bill Shakespeare: ‘Cowards die many times before their death. The valiant never taste of death but once,” wrote Rice.
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“Pudge gave forth an aura of shining light, a special, ageless glory. He was the living symbol of the game, indestructible and forever young.”
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The Minnesota ICE shooting that resulted in the death of Renee Good has drawn strong reactions everywhere.
According to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Good was operating a vehicle that agents ordered her to exit. Good, according to Noem, refused and “attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.”
After Vice President JD Vance delivered a strong statement defending ICE agents for their work, the White House posted a graphic with a portion of Vance’s plea and the caption, “STAND WITH ICE.”
Texas Rangers first baseman Mark Teixeira rounds the bases after hitting a home run against the Baltimore Orioles at Ameriquest Field Aug. 7, 2005, in Arlington, Texas. (Tim Heitman/USA Today Sports )
Former MLB All-Star Mark Teixeira, who launched his campaign for Texas’ 21st Congressional District in August as a Republican to “help defend President Trump’s America First agenda,” voiced his support.
“I stand with ICE,” the former Texas Ranger, Atlanta Brave, Los Angeles Angel and New York Yankee wrote on X.
Teixeira’s announcement followed Rep. Chip Roy’s decision not to seek re-election and run for Texas attorney general. Roy, who represents the district, made the announcement in a campaign video shared on X last year. His video centered on preserving the Lone Star State’s legacy of “liberty, freedom and self-determination.”
Former New York Yankee Mark Teixeira throws out the first pitch before a game between the Minnesota Twins and the Yankees in the 2019 ALDS at Yankee Stadium. (Brad Penner/USA Today Sports)
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Noem called the incident “domestic terrorism.”
“An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively, shot to protect himself and the people around him,” she said.
Federal authorities said Good tried to run over ICE agents who were part of a 2,000-member team sent to the Twin Cities to round up and deport undocumented immigrant criminals.
Teixeira, 45, played 14 seasons in the majors. He debuted with the Rangers in 2003 but is perhaps best known for being an MVP candidate and World Series champion with the Yankees, the final stop of his career.
New York Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira hits an RBI single against the Oakland Athletics during the sixth inning at the Oakland Coliseum May 22, 2016, in Oakland, Calif. (Kelley L Cox/USA Today Sports)
One of the best hitters in the game, Teixeira was a three-time Silver Slugger Award winner and finished his career with a .269 batting average and 409 home runs. He was a five-time Gold Glove winner and was a member of the Yankees’ 2009 World Series championship team.
The congressional race is set for November 2026, with a primary scheduled for March.
Fox News’ Jackson Thompson contributed to this report.
Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
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Aiming to not only hold but expand their 53-47 majority in November’s midterm elections, top Senate Republicans are showcasing the plummeting rates of border crossings during a stop Friday at the nation’s southern border with Mexico.
And the group, led by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, is also highlighting how President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers are “putting more money in Americans’ pockets.”
The stop at the border, hosted by One Nation, a nonprofit outside group closely aligned with Thune, is seen as an unofficial kickoff by Senate Republicans ahead of the midterms to tout the sweeping “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” Trump’s signature domestic achievement last year that was passed nearly entirely along party lines in the GOP controlled Congress.
At the event at the border, which was a regular stop for Republicans amid the surge in border crossings during then-President Joe Biden’s administration, the GOP senators are teaming up with members of the National Border Patrol Council. And they are highlighting how the passage of the domestic policy measure “secured transformational border security funding,” according to One Nation.
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune and fellow Senate Republicans speak to reporters at an event at the nation’s southern border with Mexico, on Jan. 9, 2026. (One Nation)
“This is a remarkable, remarkable difference in just a year,” Thune said at the event. “It’s been an incredible year of progress when it comes to the southern border and the American people are experiencing the benefit of that in the form of having safer streets and safer communities and safer neighborhoods.”
But with Democrats enjoying decisive victories and overperformances in the 2025 elections and in a slew of special elections and other ballot box showdowns last year, which were fueled by their laser focus on affordability amid persistent inflation, the Republican senators are also using Friday’s trip to spotlight the tax cut and energy policy provisions in the bill, which they rebranded as the “Working Families Tax Cut.”
“The Working Families Tax Cut will make buying groceries more affordable for working Americans this year,” the Senate Republicans touted on social media on the eve of the border stop. “Every Democrat voted against it.”
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And they also highlighted that “Senate Republicans have worked closely with President Trump to lower energy prices and make life more affordable — and the results speak for themselves.”
Thune, at the border, pointed to the tax cut provisions in the GOP measure, including no tax on tips and overtime and reduced rates for seniors on Social Security, along with “the jobs that are going to be created by the pro-growth policies that we put in place….are going to lead us to a place where the American people are seeing their incomes go up.”
But Democrats see the cost of living as their winning issue heading into the midterms.
“If the Republican agenda actually made life more affordable for working Americans, then they wouldn’t be desperately flailing as families struggle to afford groceries, health care, and housing,” Lauren French, communications director at Senate Majority PAC, the top Senate Democrat-aligned outside group, told Fox News Digital. “Instead of focusing on working people, Trump and Senate Republicans are focused on bringing chaos and instability into our communities.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., holds a political and policy event Friday at the nation’s southern border with Mexico. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Joining Thune, the longtime senator from South Dakota, at the border is Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, number two in Senate Republican leadership.
There are also Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who faces a bruising GOP primary showdown in March against challengers Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt; and Republican Sens. Jon Husted of Ohio and Ashley Moody of Florida, who were appointed last year and will face voters this November.
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GOP Sens. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska and Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who are up for re-election this year, are also on the trip, as are former Rep. Mike Rogers and former Republican National Committee chair Mike Whatley, the GOP Senate candidates in battlegrounds Michigan and North Carolina who are backed by Thune and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
“We’re seeing signs already that the economy is starting to tick up and is starting to take hold as the President’s policies are getting in place,” Whatley argued last month in a Fox News Digital interview. “We need to make sure that we have the trade policies, the tax policies, the regulatory policies from this administration that are going to help our small businesses, our manufacturers and our farmers across North Carolina.”
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But Democrats are energized as the midterm year begins, as they continue to keep their focus on the issue of affordability.
“Donald Trump has lost the economy, is losing his mind, and is going to lose the midterms,” Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin claimed in a recent statement.
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Southwest
Body found during search for missing Texas teen Camila Mendoza Olmos as another teen girl disappears
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A body was found Tuesday evening as authorities in Bexar County, Texas, grapple with a series of disappearances involving teen girls who all went missing within a week.
The body was found during the search for 19-year-old Camila Olmos, though police said it is too early to determine whether the remains belong to her.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said during a news conference that investigators had “just recently found a body in a field” around 4:40 to 4:45 p.m., adding that the medical examiner will determine both the identity of the body and the cause and manner of death.
The body was found by a joint team of sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents in an area of tall grass near a landscaping business, a few hundred yards from Olmos’ home, according to Salazar.
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Camila Olmos was reported missing on Christmas Eve. (Bexar County Sheriff)
A firearm was recovered near the body, which authorities said had been an item of interest during the search.
Salazar said investigators do not currently suspect murder and noted there were indicators consistent with possible self-harm, though he stressed it is too early to draw conclusions while the scene is still being processed.
Olmos was last seen leaving her home in far northwest Bexar County around 7 a.m. on Dec. 24, authorities said. Her case came as two other girls were reported missing in the area. Fourteen-year-old Sofia Gabriela Peters-Cobos has since been found safe, while 17-year-old Angelique Johnson remains missing, according to police.
Law enforcement has said there is no confirmed connection between the cases.
MISSING CAMILA MENDOZ OLMOS: DASHCAM CAPTURES LAST SIGHTING OF TEXAS TEEN WHO VANISHED CHRISTMAS EVE
Angelique Johnson, from San Antonio, Texas, was reported missing. (Bexar County Sheriff’s Office)
Texas Department of Public Safety said the Clear Alert for Olmos has been discontinued, though authorities urged anyone with information related to the cases or the whereabouts of Angelique Johnson to contact the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office.
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The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office and the San Antonio Police Department did not respond immediately to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
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