Our Own Hall of Fame

CARL STORCK

LEAGUE MANAGED PENSION

NFL Founded in 1919; Carl Storck Was There

THE DAYTON DAILY NEWS   FEBRUARY 27, 1961

BY MARY ELLEN LYNCH

Daily News Staff Writer

     Carl Storck loved football and football broke his heart.

     There was no National Football league when thickset Storck was plunging through the line for Stivers and racking up a reputation as one of the best fullbacks in the school’s history.  That was in 1913.  But six years later he was to help found the shaky professional league that grew into today’s giant.

     After high school, Storck played a little pro ball, then entered the YMCA athletic directors school in Chicago.

     HE WAS assistant physical education director at the Dayton “Y” in 1917 when General Motors tapped him to manage its recreation facility where Triangle park is located now.  It was the beginning of an association with GM that was to see Storck rise to a series of high management posts.

     BUT HE HADN’T forgotten football.  While Storck was rising in GM, he helped organize and became president of the Dayton Triangles, one of the nation’s outstanding early professional football teams.

     When the National league was created in 1919, the Triangles were in it, Storck was one of its hard-working spearheads and its first treasurer.

     The league then was a far cry from the league now.  Big towns were represented, but so were many small ones.  Fans were a sometimes thing.

     THE PLAYERS in places like Pottsville, Pa., and Rock Island, Ill., didn’t always get paid in those early years.  But Storck saw to it that the Dayton Triangles did.  (The franchise was sold to Brooklyn in 1929).

     Roly poly and affable, Storck was an early president of the Agonis club, Dayton’s fun-loving sports organization.  He loved candy, was never without a bag of chocolates, doted on the New York baseball Giants, uncomplainingly bore the life-long nickname of “Scummy.”

     HIS FORTUNES in business and sports soared.  In 1932 Storck was named personnel manager of GM’s Buick division and president of his beloved National Football league.

     But within two years disagreements with the league’s powerful George Preston Marshall (still owner of the Washington Redskins) led to Storcks ouster.  He was

through in professional football, the thing he loved most, and his life was never quite the same after that.

     STORCK RETURNED to Dayton as assistant to the works manager at Delco, but eight years later—sick and bitter—he retired.  He was 49 years old.

     Carl Storck was to live eight more years.  They were years far removed from executive suites and the excitement and clamor of football stadiums.

     HIS HEALTH continued to decline and, in 1945, he entered the rest home he never left.  Financial woes added to his physical ones.  Finally, Storck was broke.

     At that time the National league had no regular pension fund, and only a special pension voted hastily by club members kept the league’s former president from spending his last days in the Montgomery county home.

    When Storck died in 1950 it was hard for his friends to believe that he was only 57.  He seemed much older.

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