The Pacific Coast Professional Football League (PCPFL), also known as the Pacific Coast Football League (PCFL) and Pacific Coast League (PCL) was a professional American football minor league based in California. It operated from 1940 through 1948. One of the few minor American professional sports leagues that competed in the years of World War II, the PCPFL was regarded as a minor league of the highest level, particularly from 1940 to 1945, at a time in which the National Football League (NFL) did not extend further west than Chicago and Green Bay. It was also the first professional football league to have a team based in Hawaii (the Hawaiian Warriors).
Formed from the wreckage of a failed California Pro Football League, the PCPFL showcased the Los Angeles Bulldogs and the Hollywood Bears. The league became the “home” of African American football stars (including Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, and, briefly, Jackie Robinson) as the NFL had developed and enforced a color barrier in 1934 and extended until 1946.
After reaching a peak in 1945, the importance and popularity of the PCPFL declined rapidly in the post-World War years as the NFL's Los Angeles Rams and the All-America Football Conference's Los Angeles Dons established a major league presence with games in the Coliseum. The resulting competition was devastating to the PCPFL: teams averaging over 10,000 spectators per game in 1944 and 1945 and 1,000 by 1946.
In December 1948, the PCPFL folded. The Los Angeles Bulldogs, the only league member to have participated in every season of the league's existence, was in such financial straits that they did not play the last two scheduled games in 1948, and the Hollywood Bears had become a traveling team in 1948.
League origins
History of early professional football in California
Prior to 1936, the history of professional football in California was not a hopeful one. While there were two “major league Los Angeles teams” in 1926 (the Buccaneers of the NFL and the Los Angeles Wildcats of the first American Football League), both were actually traveling teams (the Buccaneers were based in Chicago, the Wildcats in Moline, Illinois) that lasted only one season, but several NFL and AFL teams would also play exhibition contests in the West, sometimes with other NFL or AFL teams, but also against some of the local semi-pro teams in the region, in the following year or two.
Pacific Coast League (1926) In the wake of two barnstorming tours by Red Grange (the latter of which also featured the Buccaneers and Wildcats) a league was formed in 1926 and called the Pacific Coast League, but it lasted only one season after drawing an average of 3,500 fans a game.
California Winter League (1927–1928) With an aim to mimic Grange tour success, in January 1927 the Galloping Ghost AFL's Yankees joined by another AFL team - the Los Angeles Wildcats and together with the NFL's Duluth Eskimos and Los Angeles Buccaneers formed the California winter league, following the end of the fall NFL & AFL seasons. The teams also schaduled game against the PCL Hollywood Generals and the California All-Stars (amalgamation of the Oakland Oaks and San Francisco Tigers). It was the first major league to operate in the West Coast.
The best team in both seasons was the Los Angeles Wildcats, dubbed Wilson’s Wildcats by the press and included a few Providence Steam Roller players plus a collection of West Coast stars, was not chosen to play in the champion series, as they did not drew well enough. Instead, Grange’s Yankees played against the Buccaneers (known as Brick Muller's Buccaneers), winning the first one 14-0 and losing the second one 6-7. The Eskimos finished last, and were known as Nevers-Imlay Giants after getting reinforcement from West Coast colleges (including Tut Imlay).
For the 1928 season, the Cleveland Bulldogs (known as Benny Friedman's Bulldogs) replaced the Buccaneers, which lost to the Yankees 6-13 in the 1928 championship game.
The league folded after decline in attendance in the second year.
American Legion League (1934–1935) In 1934, four teams from the Los Angeles area and two from San Francisco formed another Pacific Coast League.
When the two San Francisco teams withdrew from the league after the 1934 season, the four L.A. teams continued to compete in 1935 as the American Legion League (some called it the American Legion Football League, or ALFL). It folded after one season under the new name.
After the season, Westwood played an exhibition game against the 1935 NFL Champions, the Detroit Lions, at Gilmore Stadium in Los Angeles before 16,000 fans: the Lions beat the Cubs in a rout, 67-14.