C. C. Pyle

Pyle was the owner of the Virginia and the Park theaters in Champaign, Illinois — home of the Illinois Fighting Illini football team.[3] An avid football fan, Pyle spotted star Illini halfback Red Grange seated in the back row of the Virginia theater in the fall of 1924, Grange's junior year, and send an usher down to bring him to the office so that he could meet him.[3] Pyle gave Grange a complimentary season pass to the Virginia and Park theaters, which was frequently used, keeping the pair in contact for the duration of Grange's stay at the university.[3]

Grange later recalled that at the time "I did not have the slightest idea of playing professional football and intended to get into some commercial business and I know that at the time Pyle wasn't thinking about the National League. In fact he didn't know anything about it, having been in the theatrical game all his life."[3]

Well into Grange's senior season, during which the running back emerged as a national sports hero, Pyle began to see Grange as a potential commercial asset.[3] "Pyle sensed that maybe some money might be made by showing me off like a sword swallower and he asked me what I intended to do upon leaving school." He and Grange came to a handshake agreement on an agent–client relationship and he made his way to Chicago to meet with George Halas and Dutch Sternaman, owners of the National Football League's Chicago Bears.[3] Arrangements were made for Grange to join the Bears after his final game with the Illinois collegiate team.[3]

After Grange's becoming a star for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL), Pyle founded the first New York Yankees football team. When Pyle's application for the Yankees joining the NFL was rejected, he announced the formation of the first American Football League in 1926. The league lasted one season before folding.

In 1926, Pyle signed Lenglen and several of the best tennis players in the world to start the first professional tennis tour, which traveled throughout the U.S. and Canada.[4] Two years later, he inaugurated the first Trans-American Footrace, known as the Bunion Derby, an ambitious, 3455-mile-long foot race from Los Angeles, California, to Chicago, Illinois, to New York.[5][6] While the 1928 race was not a financial success, Pyle organized a 1929 "return" along essentially the same route, but from New York to Los Angeles.

After managing the "Ripley's Believe It or Not" exhibit in the Chicago World's Fair, Pyle married comedian Elvia Allman Tourtellotte in 1937. He became president of the Radio Transcription Company, a position that he held until his death of a heart attack in Los Angeles, February 3, 1939.[4]

A play based on his life, C.C. Pyle and the Bunion Derby, was written by Tony Award winner Michael Cristofer and directed by Paul Newman.