page_title: History of the NFL Commissioner
section_title: Jim Thorpe (1920)
hierarchical_section_title: History of the NFL Commissioner / Presidents / Jim Thorpe (1920)
caption_attribution_description: Jim Thorpe
context_page_description: The Commissioner of the NFL is the chief executive officer of the National Football League.
context_section_description: 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 (and thus the rights to the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup) was still unresolved, as three teams (possibly four) 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 (and future league president Carl Storck as secretary).
caption: Jim Thorpe
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