The early days of the National Football League were nothing if not reminiscent of the Wild West. Players with little prior fame found their way onto the rosters of the nascent league’s franchises, even those whose names barely registered in their own college team’s annals.
This is the story of three such Wildcats.
Alvin Jolley, a Wyandotte tribesman from Onaga, Kansas, lettered in one season with the then-Aggies, the war-shortened 1918 campaign. He then transferred to Marietta College in Ohio, and finished his college career at Tulsa.
That one year in Manhattan, however, qualifies Jolley for a singular honor; he is officially the first K-State letterman to play in the NFL.