The league changed its name once again in 1939 as it bares itself of any pretense of being a regional league. After one year of being the American Football League, the league became the American Professional Football Association, ironically the original name of the professional football league that became the National Football League. The name of the league was not the only change for the season: the Dayton Rosies became the Dayton Bombers; the Nashville Rebels left the league after only one year of competition; and Wisconsin's Kenosha Cardinals and three familiar teams joined the loop for the upcoming season. The Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Bulldogs were members of the second AFL in 1937, with Los Angeles winning the championship with an undefeated, untied record. The Bengals and the Columbus Bullies became charter members of the successor to this league, the "third AFL" in 1940, with the Bullies winning the championship in both years of its existence. The Bulldogs became a charter franchise of the Pacific Coast League in 1940. The Cincinnati Bengals were wooed by the league on at least three occasions before they finally agreed to join for the 1939 season. The Bengals were offered an opportunity to join the former Midwest Football League in 1938 (as a natural rival for the Cincinnati Models/Blades, and when the Blades stopped playing, the AFL asked the Bengals if they could take over the Blades' remaining games in the 1938 Blades' AFL schedule. Citing scheduling conflicts, the Bengals refused the invitation. As the 1939 season wound down, the league anticipated change as Los Angeles left the loop to help form the football version of the Pacific Coast League. With the subsequent awarding of a new franchise to Milwaukee, the league announced plans to compete with the National Football League as the Green Bay Packers protested the intrusion into their territory. In July 1940, the league's ambitious plans for the upcoming season were derailed. A group of businessmen based on the American East Coast started to form their own American Football League, adding franchises in Boston, New York, and Buffalo to APFA members Cincinnati, Columbus, and Milwaukee. The action split the two-year-old league and mortally wounded it. After Louisville and Dayton both decided not to field teams for the 1940 season, only three teams (Chicago, Kenosha, and St. Louis) remained. The APFA subsequently called it a day. Kenosha and St. Louis applied to the new AFL for membership and were eventually rejected. They (and the Chicago Indians) rejoined the ranks of independent professional football teams in 1940, ironically often playing the teams that left the APFA in the first place. For two games in 1941, Kenosha loaned three players to the AFL's Buffalo Tigers. On the field, the Columbus Bullies (9-2-0) would finish with a slight edge over the second place Los Angeles Bulldogs (4-1-0) to win the
championship by a percentage point difference of only .018. Since there were no playoffs in 1939, the Columbus Bullies would lay claim to the 1939 APFA Championship.