The McKeesport Olympics were a professional football

American football

American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

 team from McKeesport, Pennsylvania

McKeesport, Pennsylvania

McKeesport is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in the United States; it is located at the confluence of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny rivers and is part of the Pittsburgh Metro Area. The population was 19,731 at the 2010 census...

 from 1896 until around 1940. The Olympics were considered one of the top football teams in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 from 1910 until 1919.

The Olympics played against many of the teams that would go on to form the National Football League

National Football League

The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...

. These teams included the Buffalo All-Americans, Rochester Jeffersons

Rochester Jeffersons

The Rochester Jeffersons from Rochester, New York played in the National Football League from 1920 to 1925.Formed as an amateur outfit by a rag-tag group of Rochester-area teenagers after the turn of the century , the team became known as the Jeffersons in reference to the locale of their playing...

 and the Canton Bulldogs

Canton Bulldogs

The Canton Bulldogs were a professional American football team, based in Canton, Ohio. They played in the Ohio League from 1903 to 1906 and 1911 to 1919, and its successor, the National Football League, from 1920 to 1923 and again from 1925 to 1926. The Bulldogs would go on to win the 1917, 1918...

. The primary reason the Olympics never joined the NFL during the early era was the state of Pennsylvania's blue laws

Blue Laws

The Blue Laws of the Colony of Connecticut, as distinct from the generic term "blue law" that refers to any laws regulating activities on Sunday, were the initial statutes set up by the Gov. Theophilus Eaton with the assistance of the Rev. John Cotton in 1655 for the Colony of New Haven, now part...

 which prevented football from being played on Sunday; as a result, no Pennsylvania team joined the NFL (which played most of its games on Sundays) until 1924, though because most teams were available to play on Saturdays, they were able to schedule exhibition games against NFL teams fairly easily. Why the Olympics never joined after that was unclear. The team also played against a current NFL team, the Pittsburgh Pirates (renamed the Pittsburgh Steelers

Pittsburgh Steelers

The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional football team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The team currently belongs to the North Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League . Founded in , the Steelers are the oldest franchise in the AFC...

 in 1940) twice. The first game between the two clubs was held on October 31, 1938. The Pirates, led by Byron White

Byron White

Byron Raymond "Whizzer" White won fame both as a football halfback and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Appointed to the court by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, he served until his retirement in 1993...

, would go on to win that game 21-6. However almost a year later, on October 4, 1939 in McKeesport, while the Pirates would go on to win that game too, the semi-pro Olympics held them to a much closer score, 9-6.

The Olympics also played against several strong clubs that never made it into the NFL. These teams included the Youngstown Patricians

Youngstown Patricians

The Youngstown Patricians were a semi-professional football team based in Youngstown, Ohio. In the 1910s, the team briefly held the professional football championship and established itself as a fierce rival of more experienced clubs around the country, some of which later formed the core of the...

 and the Shelby Blues

Shelby Blues

The Shelby Blues were an American football team based in Shelby, Ohio. The team played in the Ohio League from 1900 to 1919. In 1920, when the Ohio League became the APFA , the Blues did not join but continued to play against APFA teams, only to later suspend operations...

. However the Olympics main rivals were the Pitcairn Quakers

Pitcairn Quakers

The Pitcairn Quakers were a professional football team from Pitcairn, Pennsylvania. The team played as an independent from 1904 until 1920 and featured the best players in the community as well as some famous college-level players. A few of those players, were college All-Americans. At one time the...

, another strong team from the Pittsburgh-area

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

. In 1919 the Olympics had won the first game of the two-game series, 3-0 and had employed the entire Cleveland Indians team just for that game. However Pitcairn would win the second game due to a last minute field goal

Field goal (football)

A field goal in American football and Canadian football is a goal that may be scored during general play . Field goals may be scored by a placekick or the now practically extinct drop kick.The drop kick fell out of favor in 1934 when the shape of the ball was changed...

by Paul Rupp.