Nerd History: Steagles!

Football season is upon us, and my Patriots have already blown a winnable game.

Sigh.

In honor of football season starting, though, the History Channel, in a rare feat of actually sharing something about history that isn't about Hitler, posted a pretty neat story about two football teams coming together during the lean years of World War II (okay, it's adjacent to Hitler, but we'll let it pass):

The National Football League faced an uncertain future during World War II. Due to government restrictions on travel, the NFL nearly canceled the entire 1943 season before agreeing to slash team rosters and reduce the regular season schedule. The military draft had already claimed more than 600 players—a vast majority of the sport’s elite athletes.

...

Though both franchises were losing money, they stood to lose even more if they didn’t play at all. So the respective owners agreed to a one-year-only merger that created the “Phil-Pitt Combine.” It didn’t take long for fans and journalists to devise a far more interesting nickname: the “Steagles.”

It's kind of a neat story, especially if you enjoy pre-merger NFL.

Hopefully I'll be back in full force by the end of the month.