History
It was probably the most unusual franchise in NFL history, a team whose goal was to publicize a kennel in tiny LaRue, Ohio, that specialized in breeding Airedales.
Walter Lingo, the founder and owner of Oorang Kennels, was crazy about Airedales and American Indians. He felt there was a bond between the two and that the Airedale, as a hunting dog, could learn more from Indians than from white hunters.
Lingo evidently didn't know much about football, but he did know Jim Thorpe. And, in 1922, he knew that he could buy a franchise in the National Football League for just $100, which was about five percent of his total advertising budget. He could pay for the franchise by selling one male Airedale and have $50 left over.
So Lingo talked Thorpe in organizing and coaching a team made up entirely of Indian players: the Oorang Indians. Their home field was in Marion, Ohio, about 14 miles from Larue, but that hardly mattered, because they played only one home game in their two NFL seasons. And they won only four times.
That didn't matter much, either, because their role was to spread the word about Oorang Kennels. Thorpe's traveling troupe looked more like a circus, or a version of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show with Airedales, than a football team. Along with Thorpe and his players, there were other Indian performers and a pack of trained Airedales.
The main attraction at an Oorang game was the halftime show. The dogs performed stunts, the Indians demonstrated dancing, tomahawk and knife throwing, rifle shooting, and lassoing. The Airedales tracked and treed a bear and then one of Thorpe's players, Nikolas Lassa, also called "Long-Time-Sleep," wrestled with it.
With all that going on and an owner who didn't particularly care about football, it's not surprising that the team didn't play up to its abilities. There were two future Hall of Famers on the roster, Thorpe and Joe Guyon, but they didn't play much. Thorpe sat out quite a few games and never played more than a half, while Guyon didn't even join the team until midway through the first season.
The Oorang Indians drew sizeable crowds in 1922, but attendance dropped sharply in 1923. Most fans knew the team wasn't very good, and they'd already seen the halftime show, so they stayed away. Lingo didn't bother to renew the franchise in 1924.