Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy

The Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy was the trophy awarded to the champions of the National Football League (NFL) from 1934 through 1969. The trophy was named after Ed Thorp, a noted referee, rules expert, sporting goods dealer, and friend to many of the early NFL owners. Thorp died in June 1934, and a large, traveling trophy was made later that year. It was to be passed along from champion to champion each season with each championship team's name inscribed on it.

Unlike the modern day Lombardi trophies, the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy did not become the possession of the winning team, but instead spent a year with the winning team before being passed on to the next year’s champion, much like the Grey Cup in the Canadian Football League or the Stanley Cup in the National Hockey League. In addition to their year with the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy, though, teams were also awarded a smaller replica of the trophy, which they were allowed to keep.

A prevailing theory of what happened was that the Minnesota Vikings, who were thought to be the last to win the Trophy in 1969, somehow lost it when the league switched over to the Lombardi Trophy the following year. The Vikings after winning the Thorp Trophy went on to face the American Football League champion the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFL-NFL World Championship Game (which is more commonly referred to as Super Bowl IV). The spirit of Ed Thorp was also rumoured to have cursed the Vikings, since they lost the trophy that was named in his honor. To date, the team has lost four Super Bowls.

A similar incident occurred to the first trophy that was awarded to the NFL Champions, the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup. In 1920, after the Akron Pros were awarded the league championship, that trophy also went missing (like the Thorp trophy, it too was initially to be passed down to each successive champion). The Washington Redskins replica of the Thorp Trophy is on display at FedExField.

In 2015, the Thorp Trophy was found to have been in the possession of the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame Inc. instead of with the Vikings. After some research, it was discovered by various teams that, contrary to original belief, there had only been six of the individual trophies awarded to teams for their victories, with five of them coming during Joe Carr's life, and a sixth not long after his death: Those of the 1934 and 1938 New York Giants, the 1935 Detroit Lions, the 1937 Washington Redskins, and the 1936 and 1939 Green Bay Packers, along with one trophy given out to the 1961 Green Bay Packers that was not part of the original pattern, being differently shaped than the ones originally presented.

What is thought to have happened is that, due to the fact that few owners and teams were interested in the traveling trophy idea, the Packers kept the trophy after the 1939 NFL season. However, it is unknown how it ended up in the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame Inc. as that is a separate organization from the Green Bay Packers that was formed in the 1970's. It is interesting it note, however, that the original Ed Thorp trophy has all the winners engraved on it from the 1934 New York Giants to the 1951 Los Angeles Rams, until it runs out of room. This implies that someone was monitoring the victors of the league every season.