Why did winning coach leave Philly?

Something happened, as something always seems to happen to success in Philadelphia sports.

In 1926, Guy Chamberlin coached Frankford to 14 wins and an NFL title. Then, before the Yellow Jackets had a chance to defend their championship in 1927, he was gone, off to play for, and eventually coach, the Chicago Cardinals.

The name of the long-forgotten coach of that long-dead franchise surfaced earlier this week when the San Diego Chargers, who had gone 14-2 in the regular season, fired Marty Schottenheimer.

Only one other man in NFL history had not returned to a team that won at least 14 games.

Guy Chamberlin.

Football researchers have long sought an explanation for the sudden departure of the player-coach who led three teams to four NFL titles in five years. In the four major professional sports, only hockey's Scotty Bowman has matched that record, winning three titles with three teams.

Was Chamberlin fired? Did the Yellow Jackets' new president want him gone? Did the Cardinals lure him away? Was money the issue?

If the reason was ever reported or publicly noted, the subsequent 81 years seem to have forever obscured it.

The struggling young league, which just a few years earlier had been formed out of the Midwestern-based American Professional Football Association, was still more novelty than institution. In Philadelphia papers, for example, high school football often got more play than the Yellow Jackets.

"I've never been able to find more than surmises," Bob Carroll, the executive director of the Pro Football Researchers Association, said yesterday of Chamberlin's departure. "One is that Chamberlin and the players he wanted were too costly. Another theory is that he was fired as a result of a power battle within the Frankford organization.

"It's definitely unlikely that he fled to Chicago for more money," Carroll added. "The Cardinals had to have a $1,000 fine from 1925 waived so they could play in 1926. And in 1927 they only played a partial schedule."

Chamberlin, an all-American end at Nebraska in 1915, would be named to both the College (1962) and Pro (1965) Football Halls of Fame.

But those elections shed no light on why the 32-year-old left Frankford, where he rented a home, worked as a trucker in the off-season, and belonged to the local American Legion post.

Berlin "Guy" Chamberlin was born in Blue Springs, Neb., in 1894, not far from where future movie stars Robert Taylor and Harold Lloyd grew up.

His high school had no football team, so the big, towheaded boy wasn't exposed formally to the sport until entering Nebraska Wesleyan College in 1911.

University of Nebraska coach Jumbo Stiehm noticed him there and, in an era when talented players frequently ping-ponged from school to school, persuaded Chamberlin to play for him.

A halfback and end, Chamberlin was a star at Lincoln. As a senior, he scored 15 touchdowns in an eight-game season. When Nebraska beat Notre Dame, 20-19, a Fighting Irish assistant named Knute Rockne said of Chamberlin, "He's a team in himself."

The onset of World War I must have hastened his desire to drop his original name, Berlin being neither a popular name nor destination in those Germanophobic days. He enlisted in the Army in 1917, serving as an athletic director at Camp Kearney in California.

After the war, Chamberlin turned to professional football, playing with both the Canton and Cleveland Bulldogs. His natural leadership enhanced by his military experience, he was named a player- coach of Canton in 1922, at age 26.

His Bulldogs won NFL titles in 1922 and 1923. When the team was dismantled the next season, some players ended up in Cleveland, where Chamberlin guided the relocated Bulldogs to another NFL crown in 1924.

The Yellow Jackets, formed by an athletic association headquartered on what is now the site of Frankford High School, had beaten Chamberlin's championship teams in 1923 and 1924. So when Frankford president Theodore Holden, who owned the Whitehall Textile Co., offered him a job as player-coach before the 1925 season, Chamberlin quickly accepted.

An Evening Bulletin sportswriter indicated that the new coach did not immediately win the hearts of Yellow Jackets fans.

"There are those who get much fun out of putting Chamberlin on the pan," he wrote, "but they must admit he's a brainy player and wide-awake on the field."

The Yellow Jackets had their own stadium at Frankford Avenue and Devereaux Street, frequently attracting crowds of 10,000 to 15,000 to their games, played on Saturday afternoons because of Pennsylvania's blue laws.

The surrounding community adored them. When the Yellow Jackets traveled to New York's Polo Grounds for a game with the Giants, that city's newspapers noted that a band, cheerleaders, and thousands of fans in yellow and black accompanied them.

Chamberlin, who would be named to the NFL's all-1920s team, caught only 15 passes in two seasons as a two-way Frankford star. He guided his team to a 13-7 record in 1925, good enough for sixth place.

Before the '26 season, Red Grange, the legendary Galloping Ghost, had bolted to the New York Yankees of a new rival organization, the American Football League.

The AFL stuck a team in Philadelphia, the Quakers, that would win its championship that year and divert local attention from Chamberlin's squad.

When the Yellow Jackets beat the Bears, 7-6, on Dec. 4 - the margin was a blocked extra point by Chamberlin - only 10,000 fans showed up at Shibe Park. A week earlier, 22,000 had paid to see Grange and his Yankees play there against the Quakers.

But with players like Chamberlin, Tex Hamer, Two Bits Homan and Hap Moran, the Yellow Jackets shot out of the gate in 1926. They finished with a record of 14-1-2, outscoring opponents, 236-49. And, having beaten their closest rivals, the 12-1-3 Bears, the Yellow Jackets were declared league champions.

One day after the season, Holden, claiming the time he devoted to the team was hurting his business, stepped down. He was replaced as president of the Frankford Athletic Association by lawyer James P. Adams.

The Yellow Jackets, unlike other pro teams, were run not as a business but as part of the athletic association. Deficits were made up by association members, and profits went back into the organization.

Chamberlin left shortly afterward for the Cardinals, who went 5-6-1 in '27. The speculation began.

A Philadelphia Record story implied that money might have been the reason.

Under Holden, "stars were obtained and good salaries paid," the story read, "the net result of which was a title for the community and a lot of good, available money for the treasure chest of Frankford."

Charlie Moran took Chamberlin's job. He handed the team over to his son, Tom, when he left to umpire in the 1927 World Series between the Murderers' Row New York Yankees and St. Louis.

He returned, but with his team 2-5-1 and the ire of Frankford fans rising, Moran was fired.

The Yellow Jackets became the Philadelphia Eagles in 1933.

Chamberlin, meanwhile, played one year for the Cardinals, then took over as coach in 1928. When Chicago went 1-6, by far his worst season, he retired. His six-season winning percentage (58-16-7) of .759 remains among the highest in NFL history.

He returned to his Nebraska farm and became a state livestock inspector and, years later, a football broadcaster. Today, an annual award to a Nebraska football player is named in his honor.

When, in 1962, the National Football Foundation named him to its College Hall of Fame, Bears owner-coach George Halas called Chamberlin "the greatest two-way end in the history of the game."

But in Philadelphia, a league title and 27 wins in two seasons weren't enough to keep a Hall of Fame coach.