EPISODE 330: The 4th Annual(-ish) Year-End Holiday Roundtable Spectacular!

We press the rewind button on a most interesting 2023, and peer ahead into the uncharted waters of 2024 with our fourth-annual(-ish) Holiday Roundtable Spectacular - featuring three of our favorite fellow defunct sports enthusiasts: Andy Crossley (Fun While It Lasted & Episode 2); Paul Reeths (OurSportsCentral.com, StatsCrew.com & Episode 46); and Steve Holroyd (Crossecheck, Philly Classics & Episodes 92, 109, 149, 188 & 248).

Takes of varying temperatures fly as we review some of the most curious events of the past year, debate who and what might be next to wobble into obscurity, and conjecture about future scenarios for the next generation of defunct and otherwise forgotten pro sports teams and leagues - including:

• USFL 2.0 + XFL 3.0 = TBD 2024

• Oakland A's to Las Vegas (maybe)

• Major League Cricket

• Savannah Bananas

• MiLB ownership consolidation

• Premier Lacrosse League: from tour to teams

• Professional Box Lacrosse Association (RIP)

• Women's pro volleyball

• MLS vs. US Soccer

• NBA, NHL & MLB expansion/relocation rumors

• NWSL expansion & TV deal

• Women's hockey 3.0: PWHL

PLUS, we speculate on the dubious reincarnation of the Arena Football League!

EPISODE 250: Arena Football's New York Dragons - With Gregg Sarra

We reminisce about the original Arena Football League and its curious dalliances with the New York metropolitan area, with veteran Newsday sports writer/columnist Gregg Sarra - who not only regularly covered franchises like the 1997-98 New York CityHawks and the Long Island-based New York Dragons (2001-08), but also even played an actual game with one of them - and lived to tell (and write) about it.

After beat-reporting two woeful seasons' worth of CityHawks games at the "World's Most Famous Arena" (Madison Square Garden had hastily lobbied the league for its own expansion club when it got wind of a team coming to the nearby New Jersey Meadowlands: the Red Dogs) - Sarra was both surprised and giddy when he heard yet another team would be coming to the market - this time to his hometown Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

The Dragons were actually the relocated Iowa Barnstormers (1995-2000) - a smaller-market sensation owned by league founder (and episodes 43 & 44 guest) Jim Foster - who sold the franchise to New York Islanders NHL owner Charles Wang, with the blessing of an AFL management eager to finally succeed in the nation's largest media market.

On April 8, 2001, Sarra got the literal "inside story" of the new club - when, at Wang's suggestion, he suited up for and saw last-minute action in the Dragons' first-ever home preseason match - a Plimptonian participatory experience that gave his Newsday readers a true sense of what the indoor game was all about.

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Paper Dragon: A Reporter Learns What It’s Like to Get in the Arena with the Pros - And Finds He’s Got the Write Stuff - read article here

EPISODE 242: Pittsburgh's Civic Arena ("The Igloo") - With Dave Finoli

Our "tour" of lost pro sports venues continues with another stop in the Keystone State, this time for a loving look back at the life and times of Pittsburgh's legendary Civic Arena - aka "The Igloo" - with Steel City native Dave Finoli (editor, "Pittsburgh's Civic Arena: Stories from the Igloo").

Originally constructed in 1961 for the city's Civic Light Opera, the Arena was an ahead-of-its-time architectural marvel - distinctively adorned by a massive 3,000-ton retractable steel-roof dome that was world's first of its kind - making not just an attractive venue for music and entertainment, but big-time sports of all kinds.

Over time, the Igloo became synonymous with its longest-running tenant - the NHL's Penguins - who became the building's main occupant as an expansion franchise in 1967, and saw three (of its total five) Stanley Cup title runs.

But, of course, we remember the other teams that also called the Civic Arena home - including: basketball's Rens, Pipers & Condors; World Team Tennis' Triangles; soccer's Spirit & Stingers; arena football's Gladiators; lacrosse's Bulls & CrosseFire; and even roller hockey's oft-forgotten Phantoms.

And don't forget Dr. J's Pisces too!

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EPISODE 144: Year-End Holiday Spectacular – With Paul Reeths & Andy Crossley

We put the wraps on an event-filled 2019 with our first-annual holiday roundtable spectacular featuring the return of fellow defunct sports enthusiasts Paul Reeths (OurSportsCentral.com, StatsCrew.com & Episode 46) and Andy Crossley (Fun While It Lasted & Episode 2) – for a spirited discussion about the past, present and potential future of “forgotten” pro sports teams and leagues.

It’s a no-holds-barred look back on some of the year’s most notable events and discoveries, including:

• The short rise and quick demise of the Alliance of American Football;

• Major League Soccer’s (unsustainable?) expansion to thirty teams;

• The folding of the Arena Football League – again;

• Major League Baseball’s minor league contraction plan; AND

• Raiders NFL football moves on from Oakland for good.

As well as some predictions on what might transpire in 2020, as:

• The second coming of Vince McMahon’s XFL kicks off in February;

• Baseball celebrates the Negro Leagues’ 100th anniversary;

• Las Vegas takes its biggest sports gamble yet with the Raiders;

• The MLS Players’ Association flexes its pre-season bargaining muscles;

• The Chargers and Clippers grapple with second-fiddle status in LA; AND

• Mark Cuban’s Professional Futsal League . . . well, your guess is as good as ours!

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EPISODE #61: Sports Promoter Doug Verb

If someone ever decides to build an American sports promotion Hall of Fame, the inaugural class will undoubtedly be led by this week’s special guest, Doug Verb.  In a career spanning more than 40 years in professional sports management, Verb’s remarkable career has included spearheading marketing, promotion, publicity, and television for some of the most innovative and memorable leagues and franchises of the modern era. 

One of the founding executives of both the pioneering Major Indoor Soccer League (along with sports entrepreneurs Earl Foreman, Ed Tepper, and previous podcast guest Dr. Joe Machnik), and the frenetic Arena Football League (with the sport’s inventor [and past two-part guest] Jim Foster), Verb additionally  served as president of pro soccer’s legendary Chicago Sting from 1982-86 – which, incredibly, drifted between playing in two separate leagues during his tenure (for one year, simultaneously) – the outdoor North American Soccer League and the indoor MISL. 

In our longest and more anecdote-filled episode to date, Verb vividly recounts the highs and lows of launching new teams, leagues and even sports themselves from whole cloth – with nary an operational blueprint or career roadmap to be found.  Buckle up for a wild ride through the woeful 1976 NASL Philadelphia Atoms, the “Rocket Red” pinball-like MISL, soccer for all seasons in the Windy City, and birthing indoor football. 

PLUS:  Kiddie City to the rescue; Earl Foreman’s “Brother-in-Law Effect;” getting paid in soybeans; and the curious one-game history of the Liberty Basketball Association! 

AND:  Verb reveals plans for a first-ever Major Indoor Soccer League reunion later this year in Las Vegas!

Thanks Podfly, Audible and SportsHistoryCollectibles.com for supporting the podcast!

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MISL apparel from Throwback Max - buy here

Chicago Sting apparel from Ultras - buy here

                                    

EPISODE #44: Arena Football League Founder Jim Foster - Part Two

We conclude our two-part journey into the early history of the Arena Football League with founder and inventor Jim Foster, who recounts some of the most notable events of the league’s formative years – including a memorable 1987 “demonstration season” featuring:

• The February debut “Showcase Game” in suburban Chicago’s Rosemont Horizon between the hometown Bruisers and the Miami Vise – highlights of which later dominated ESPN’s SportsCenter;  
• A return to the Horizon for the first-ever nationally televised league match four months later (after a non-televised inaugural game the night before in Pittsburgh) – an overtime thriller that left fans, ESPN broadcasters, and league officials scrambling for the newly-written rule book;
• The league’s first “Arena Bowl” championship game (won by the visiting Denver Dynamite) in front of a sold-out Pittsburgh Civic Center and a live national TV audience; AND
• US patent filings (officially granted in the spring of 1990) protecting the original rules, play and configuration of arena football – and precluding potential competition (like 1989’s almost-World Indoor Football League) from stealing the concept.

Plus: the early dynasty of the Mike Illitch’s Detroit Drive; the holier-than-thou genius of coaching legend Tim Marcum; Des Moines gets a team; what happens when a ball gets stuck in the goalpost during the run of play; and can today's Arena Football League be saved?

Thanks to Audible, SportsHistoryCollectibles.com and Podfly for their support of this week’s show!

EPISODE #43: Arena Football League Founder Jim Foster

As the new year beckons, the fate of the Arena Football League – one of America’s most innovative modern-day professional sports concepts – hangs in the balance.  With only four teams (the mutually-owned Washington Valor and Baltimore Brigade, defending champion Philadelphia Soul, and a still-unnamed Albany, NY squad) confirmed for the upcoming 2018 season, the AFL will play with exactly the same number of franchises that comprised its inaugural “demonstration” season back in 1987 – and a mere fraction of the 19 clubs that competed during its heyday in the early-to-mid 2000s.

Much has happened to the league and the sport during those 30+ years, of course – and few doubt that the unique (and once-patented) excitement of arena football won’t eventually find a sustainable business model and a return to long-term stability. 

In the interim, however, we delve into how it all began, with the first of our two-part interview with Iowa native Jim Foster – the inventor of arena football and the founder of the original Arena Football League – who takes host Tim Hanlon on rollicking excursion across the uncharted sports terrain of the 1970s and 80s that led to both the birth of a sport and the launch of a professional league, including: 

• Exporting professional American football to Europe decades before the NFL;
• Discovering fans’ year-long appetite for pro football via the USFL;
• Scribbling parameters for “indoor football” on a manila envelope while attending the 1981 MISL All-Star Game;
• Tinkering on a shoestring with facilities, equipment, rules, and approaches to TV broadcast coverage;
• Tapping into the nostalgia and cost economics of two-way players, as well as the fan appeal of “run-and-shoot” offensive action; AND
• Defending the notion of centrally-controlled league ownership from franchise-hungry charter owners.

This week’s episode is sponsored by SportsHistoryCollectibles.com , Audible and Podfly.