Home of the Oorang Indians, NFL’s Most Colorful Franchise. The Oorang Indian football team was founded by LaRue native Walter Lingo, owner of the Oorang Airedale Dog Kennels. The team, comprised of Native American Indians, played in the National Football League (NFL) Ohio Historical Society www.ohiohistory.org
Historic American Indian Tribes of Ohio 26
in 1922-23. The star player and coach was Jim Thorpe (1887-1953), a Sac and Fox Indian. Thorpe gained international fame as a two-time gold medal winner (decathlon and pentathlon) in the 1912 Olympics and was acclaimed as the “World’s Greatest Athlete.” The team gave LaRue the distinction of being the smallest community ever to have an NFL franchise.