($ million today). This price is less than the $225,000 ($ million today) the Detroit Lions had previously sold for, but the Lions had won an NFL championship. The transaction was completed and announced on the same day that the Chicago Bears pummeled the Washington Redskins by a score of 73–0 in the most lopsided NFL championship game of all time. Rooney immediately took half of the windfall and invested it in a 50% interest in the Philadelphia Eagles, which were owned by his friend, Bert Bell. It was Bell who had conducted all of the negotiations with Thompson leading up to the sale of the Steelers. Thompson had earlier offered to purchase Bell's franchise. In an unusual twist Rooney, Bell and Thompson pooled the rosters of the two squads and conducted essentially a mini-draft to distribute the talent. The 51 players which were signed to the Steelers and Eagles at the end of the 1940 season were shuffled between the two teams. In this transaction, the Rooney/Bell team added eleven players from the Steelers: ends George Platukis, Walt Kichefski and John Klumb; tackles Clark Goff and Ted Doyle; guards Carl Nery and Jack Sanders; and backs Boyd Brumbaugh, John Noppenberg, George Kiick and Rocco Pirro. In exchange, Thompson's team gained seven players: ends Joe Carter and Herschel Ramsey, tackles Phil Ragazzo and Clem Woltman, guard Ted Schmitt, and backs Joe Bukant and Foster Watkins, all of whom had played for Bell's 1940 Eagles the prior year. Thompson hired Greasy Neale, whom Rooney had earlier pursued to coach the Pirates, to conduct this player swap as well as to assist him with the draft which took place the day after the deal with Rooney was finalized. Once he was released from his contract with Yale, Neale became head coach of Thompson's team. In January 1941, Thompson renamed his new squad the Iron Men. Despite the fact he now was half-owner of the Eagles, Rooney had no intention of leaving Pittsburgh. It was thought that Thompson preferred to move his new team to be nearer his New York home, perhaps to Boston, which had been without an NFL team since the Redskins relocated to Washington in 1937. If Thompson had moved the team away from Pittsburgh, Rooney and Bell hatched a plan that would have seen their team split its home games between the two Pennsylvania cities. However, the other league