The Bulldogs were among the charter members of the American Professional Football Association — the organization that became the NFL in 1922 — and Thorpe served as its first president.

His football career lasted until 1928, when he was forty years old or forty-one, depending on the birth year dispute.

He played for more than a dozen different teams across a career that spanned the entire formative period of professional football in the United States.

He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in its inaugural class in 1963, alongside players whose names became foundational to the sport’s history.

The football career meant that Thorpe remained a visible public figure through the 1920s, at a time when his Olympic titles had been stripped and his baseball career was winding down.