Chicago Athletic Association football

The Chicago Athletic Association was an American football team, based in Chicago, Illinois. The club itself had been organized in 1890, and in 1892 it formed a football team. The team was built around veterans of Chicago's University Club football team. History The University Club football team was the initial first-rate team produced by the city, because Illinois and Northwestern were still years away from being competitive, and Amos Alonzo Stagg would not form the University of Chicago's program until 1892. Chicago society therefore needed a team to represent the city in annual Thanksgiving Day games, and from 1888 to 1891 they created the University Club team and had it compete against either Michigan or Cornell each year. The University Club team was made up of recent college graduates, whose families were from Chicago but who were products of east coast football programs. In 1892, the Chicago A. A. football team not only took over the primer football role of the University Club team. It built a program of playing a season-long schedule of university and club teams. That team included at least eight names from the 1891 University Club team, and added Yale halfback star Pudge Heffelfinger to the line-up. The 1893 team featured Heffelfinger, Yale, Laurie Bliss, and five players from the University Club.