Pro football was actually born on August 31, 1895. A team from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, played against a squad from nearby Jeanette. A fellow named John Brailler (who later became a dentist) was paid 10 dollars to quarterback the Latrobe team. It has never been established how much the other players were paid.
Latrobe won, 12-0.
From The Giant Book of More Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
https://www.profootballhof.com/football-history/birth-of-pro-football/
Turns out that Brailler is now listed as the 7th person to be paid to play football. As more documentation has come in over the years, his status–and the game he played in–have dropped in the “who was first” rankings.