June 28, 1929 – Boston Man Reelected Soccer League President

Former Dartmouth College football star Bill Cunningham named president of American Soccer League. League also adds a new team: “… an all-Jewish team, to be known as the Hakoah of New York, is being organized by Nat Agar, formerly of the Brooklyn Wanderers. Fourteen stars of Continental Europe are being imported for the team,” according to a wire service report.

Other teams in the ASL included Boston, Brooklyn, Fall River, Providence, Pawtucket, Philadelphia and the New York Nationals.

The Dartmouth bio of Elijah W. “Bill” Cunningham notes he was from Blossom Prairie, Texas, via Dallas. Cunningham was a second team All-America center in 1920, then became SMU’s first football coach, also playing piano in a movie house. For four decades he was a “renowned columnist and radio commentator … one of the ‘larger than life’ personalities of his day.” Cunningham’s first articles appeared in The Boston Globe in 1919, and he worked as a columnist for the Boston Post and Boston Herald. The ASL named Cunningham president in 1926, moving league offices from New York to Room 54, Journal Building, Boston. “Cunningham pledged his administration to soccer in order that the game ‘with a real appeal for the masses’ may become the true national pastime,” according to a Boston Globe story.

TODAY IN NEW ENGLAND SOCCER HISTORY