Cincinnati Celts

The Cincinnati Celts (pronounced with a hard C) was the first professional football team to play in Cincinnati, Ohio. The team played in the unofficial "Ohio League" and the American Professional Football Association (renamed the National Football League in 1922). The Celts were a traveling team, playing all of their APFA games in other cities' stadia. In its only season in the APFA, 1921, the team had a record of 1–3. For the entire span of the team's existence, the Celts were coached by Mel Doherty, who was also the team's center.

History

Origins

The Celts were established in 1910 as a semi-pro team made up primarily of players from Miami University in nearby Oxford, Ohio. During the first 10 years of their existence, the team flourished while playing numerous semi-pro teams from Ohio. An early member of squad, George Roudebush, referred to the team as being run “by a bunch of wild Irishmen.” In 1914, Lou Partlow played for the Celts.

1916 Pine Village game

One of the greatest moment in the team's early existence came against a team from Pine Village, Indiana, in 1916. While Pine Village consisted of only 300 residents, it was the top team in Indiana before World War I, compiling a record of 12 undefeated seasons. In 117 games, the team had only one tie-game finish. Pine Village faced the Celts before a crowd of 2,500 people in nearby Lafayette. With Pine Village leading Cincinnati 6–2, the Celts were forced to punt. George Roudebush then lined up behind the punter. Under the rules of the time, anyone lining up behind the punter was eligible to recover the kick as a free ball. After the ball was kicked, Roudebush ran down the field. Pine Village, not wanting to touch the ball, was unaware that Roudebush was eligible to recover it. Roudebush recovered the ball in the Pine Village end zone, giving the Celts a 9–6 victory.

Celts

The Celts (/ˈkɛlts/, occasionally /ˈsɛlts/, see pronunciation of Celtic) were people in Iron Age and Medieval Europe who spoke Celtic languages and had cultural similarities, although the relationship between ethnic, linguistic and cultural factors in the Celtic world remains uncertain and controversial. The exact geographic spread of the ancient Celts is also disputed; in particular, the ways in which the Iron Age inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland should be regarded as Celts has become a subject of controversy.

The history of pre-Celtic Europe remains very uncertain. According to one theory, the common root of the Celtic languages, a language known as Proto-Celtic, arose in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe, which flourished from around 1200 BC. In addition, according to a theory proposed in the 19th century, the first people to adopt cultural characteristics regarded as Celtic were the people of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture in central Europe (c. 800–450 BC), named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria. Thus this area is sometimes called the 'Celtic homeland'. By or during the later La Tène period (c. 450 BC up to the Roman conquest), this Celtic culture was supposed to have expanded by diffusion or migration to the British Isles (Insular Celts), France and The Low Countries (Gauls), Bohemia, Poland and much of Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula (Celtiberians, Celtici, Lusitanians and Gallaeci) and northern Italy (Golaseccans and Cisalpine Gauls) and, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC, as far east as central Anatolia (Galatians).

Names of the Celts

The various names used since classical times for the people known today as the Celts are of disparate origins.

The name Κελτοί Keltoi and Celtae is used in Greek and Latin, respectively, as the name of a people of the La Tène horizon in the region of the upper Rhine and Danube during the 6th to 1st centuries BC in Greco-Roman ethnography. The etymology of this name and that of the Gauls Γαλάται Galatai / Galli is of uncertain etymology. The name of the Welsh, on the other hand, is taken from the designator used by the Germanic peoples for Celtic- and Latin-speaking peoples, *walha-, meaning foreign.

The linguistic sense of the name Celts, grouping all speakers of Celtic languages, is modern. In particular, aside from a 1st-century literary genealogy of Celtus the grandson of Bretannos by Heracles, there is no record of the term "Celt" being used in connection with the Insular Celts, the inhabitants of the British Isles during the Iron Age, prior to the 17th century.

Celts, Celtae

Celts (modern)

A modern Celtic identity emerged in Western Europe following the identification of the native peoples of the Atlantic fringe as Celts by Edward Lhuyd in the 18th century. Lhuyd and others equated the Celts described by Greco-Roman writers with the ancestors of the pre-Roman peoples of France, Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish and ancient British languages were thus Celtic languages. The descendants of these languages were the Brittonic (Breton, Cornish and Welsh variants) and Gaelic (Irish, Manx and Scottish variants) languages. These peoples were therefore modern Celts. Attempts were made to link their distinctive cultures to those of the ancient Celtic peoples.

The concept of modern Celtic identity evolved during the course of the 19th-century into the Celtic Revival. By the late 19th century it often took the form of ethnic nationalism, particularly within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, where the Irish Home Rule Movement resulted in the secession of the Irish Free State in 1922. There were also significant Welsh, Scottish and Breton nationalist movements, giving rise to the concept of Celtic nations. After World War II, the focus of the Celticity movement shifted to linguistic revival and protectionism, e.g. with the foundation of the Celtic League in 1961, dedicated to preserving the surviving Celtic languages.

Cincinnati

Cincinnati (/sɪnsᵻˈnæti/ sin-si-NAT-ee) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio that serves as county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the north side of the confluence of the Licking with the Ohio River. The latter forms the border between the states of Ohio and Kentucky. Cincinnati is the third-largest city in Ohio and the 65th-largest city in the United States with a population of 296,945 people at the 2010 census. The larger Cincinnati metropolitan area had a population of 2,214,954 in 2010, making it the 28th-largest Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in the United States and the largest centered in Ohio. The city is also part of the larger Cincinnati–Middletown–Wilmington Combined Statistical Area (CSA), which had a population of 2,172,191 in the 2010 census.

In the early 19th century, Cincinnati was an American boomtown in the heart of the country; it rivaled the larger coastal cities in size and wealth. Throughout much of the 19th century, it was listed among the top 10 U.S. cities by population, surpassed only by New Orleans and the older, established settlements of the Eastern Seaboard; at one point holding the position of sixth-largest city for a period spanning consecutive census reports from 1840 until 1860. It was by far the largest city in the west. Because it is the first major American city founded after the American Revolution as well as the first major inland city in the country, Cincinnati is sometimes thought of as the first purely "American" city.

Cincinnati (horse)

Cincinnati (ca. 1860–1878) was General Ulysses S. Grant's most famous horse during the American Civil War. He was the son of Lexington, the fastest four-mile Thoroughbred in the United States (time 7:19.75 minutes) and one of the greatest sires. Cincinnati was also the grandson of the great Boston, who sired Lexington.

At an early age, Grant emotionally bonded to horses. A shy, quiet child, he found joy in working with and riding them. Grant excelled in horsemanship at West Point, and at graduation, he put on an outstanding jumping display. Grant owned many horses in his lifetime, including one named Jeff Davis, so named because he acquired it during his Vicksburg Campaign from Jefferson Davis's Mississippi plantation.

Cincinnati was a gift from an admirer during the War. The horse was large (17 hands (68 inches, 173 cm)), handsome, and powerful, and he quickly became Grant's favorite. When Grant rode Cincinnati to negotiate Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, the animal became immortalized. Virtually all depictions of Grant in drawings, granite, and bronze, are astride Cincinnati including at the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, located on the Mall in Washington, D.C., at the base of Capitol Hill.

Sports in Cincinnati

Cincinnati, Ohio is home to seven major sports venues, two major league teams, eleven minor league teams, as well as hosts five college institutions with their own sports teams.

Venues

Major league teams