26 November 1914

Friars Football Poster

The Old Friars Club began with a small group of young men in 1908. The club was organized as a place for "up and coming young fellows" to meet. The membership grew steadily and within a year, there were over 100 members, requiring the club to seek a larger space in which to meet. From these early club meetings, the Fort Wayne Friars Football team was organized, playing as an amateur team from 1910 to 1914. Most games were played on Sunday afternoons and included social activities both before and after the games. Knute Rockne, a well-known Notre Dame football player, played for the Friars in 1913 under the alias, "Jones." The Friars' biggest rival was the Wabash Athletic Club, but the team also played college and high school teams as well as neighborhood groups. The Friars played teams from Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois.

Local enthusiasm for good football led the club to launch its professional team in 1915, becoming the first professional football team in Indiana and one of the first professional football teams in the Midwest. In 1915, the Friars team featured nine Notre Dame players. Sunday afternoon games during 1915-1916 were very successful, attracting 3,500 spectators to League Park at $1.00-$1.50 a head. The United States' entry into World War I resulted in over ninety percent of the players going into military service and marked the beginning of the decline of the Fort Wayne Friars.

This poster is from a Thanksgiving Day game in 1914, between Walsh Hall of Notre Dame and the Fort Wayne Friars. The game was played at League Park and was considered a preliminary game for the Amateur Championship of Fort Wayne held later that year.