The United Football League was a professional American football minor league that operated between 1961 and 1964. It had eight teams, primarily based in the Midwestern United States. The league was founded in 1961 as a minor league alternative to the National Football League, and American Football League. Based in the Midwest, it drew many of its players from the Big Ten college conference. Among its more notable feats, it became the first football league to operate teams in both the United States and Canada when it launched the Quebec Rifles in 1964, and it revived the names of the Cleveland/Canton Bulldogs and Akron Pros, two early-era NFL teams. On the field, the Wheeling Ironmen (8-4) would take the Eastern Division by a game and a half over the Toledo Tornadoes (6-5-1). The Western Division was was a tie between the Grand Rapids Blazers and the
Indianapolis Warriors, with an identical 9-3 record. As a result, there would be a Western Division playoff to determine who would go on the face the Wheeling Ironmen in the 1962 UFL Championship game. Grand Rapids would go on to win 24-20 to take the Western Division crown. However, the Wheeling Ironmen would go to win 31-21 in front of a home crowd of 8,374 fans at Wheeling Stadium in Wheeling, West Virginia, on December 2, 1962.