History
Duluth's NFL franchise was originally a kind of cooperative, owned by 11 players. They split expenses and profits, if there were any. The team was known as the Kelleys because the Duluth-Kelley Hardware Store bought the uniforms.
In 1925, the players ending up losing more than $44 apiece, so they asked their volunteer secretary-treasurer, Ole Haugsrud, to take over the franchise. He and the team's coach, Dewey Scanlon, paid a dollar to make it a legal transaction.
Haugsrud felt that the team needed one big star who could draw fans, and he'd gone to high school in Superior, Wisconsin, with just such a star: Ernie Nevers, the All-American fullback from Stanford. The NFL was facing a major challenge in 1926 from the American Football League organized by Red Grange and his manager, C. C. Pyle. Pyle claimed that he had already signed Nevers for the AFL, but Haugsrud learned that Nevers hadn't accepted the offer yet. So he made Nevers an even better offer.
The team became as Ernie Nevers' Duluth Eskimos, and Haugsrud agreed that they would play all their league games on the road, in exchange for a sizeable cut of gate receipts. NFL owners were quick to schedule games with the Eskimos because of Nevers' box office value.
The result was the longest road trip in sports history. The Eskimos played 29 games, including 16 exhibitions, from October into February. After two home exhibition games, they were on the road. They ended with a respectable 6-5-3 NFL record and a profit.
However, 1927 was a bad year. With the AFL threat ended and Grange now playing for his own team, the New York Yankees, in the NFL, owners weren't so eager to schedule the Eskimos and fans weren't so eager to see Nevers. Duluth slipped to a 1-8-0 record.
Nevers then decided to return to Stanford as an assistant coach to Pop Warner, and the NFL gave Haugsrud permission to put the franchise in mothballs for the 1928 season. Then he sold it to a promoter in Orange, New Jersey, who used it for a new team called the Tornadoes.