September 2022 - Adamsonmedia.com

G League hits the target

When the NBA G League debuted in Birmingham last year, I was excited that I’d be able to go to Legacy Arena and enjoy a brand of basketball that was both high-quality and innovative.

A proving ground for players hoping to level up to the Association, the circuit is also a laboratory for rule experimentation. And if you know anything about me, you know I love seeing a rulebook get the mad scientist treatment.

**Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl**

In 2022-23, the NBA’s feeder system is making arguably its boldest tweak yet – and I’m all for it.

This season the league will use a Final Target Score during all regular season overtime games and the fourth quarter of each Winter Showcase contest in Las Vegas. The rules that were already in place create fun and fast competition, but this makes a good thing even better.

Some version of the “Elam Ending” is something I’ve hoped would come to the G League sooner than later. It’s been used three years running in the NBA All-Star Game and has grown in popularity thanks to The Basketball Tournament (TBT).

“It’s a new concept for me, something we will research from an analytical perspective as well as watch film of a few other leagues who have implemented it,” said Birmingham head coach T.J. Saint, entering his first season at the helm of the New Orleans Pelicans affiliate. “If you are down by a large margin once it goes to Elam, it can allow you to make a comeback and win the game without the clock being an inhibitor whereas in a normal game, the clock can really end any hope of a potential comeback.

“I definitely think it can add excitement for the fans with every game ending in a game-winning shot.”

In the TBT, the game clock is turned off after the first dead ball with under four minutes to play in the fourth quarter. Then eight points are added to the leading team’s tally to create a target score which, once reached, ends the game.

For all 31 G League Winter Showcase games, the fourth quarter will be untimed and the object is to tally the leading team’s score plus 25 points. So, if the Squadron advances to the Winter Showcase and leads an opponent 100-90 after three, the first team to score 125 wins.

Teams are separated into four regional pods during the Showcase Cup and play 16 games against each other. The clubs with the best winning percentage in each pod and the next four teams across the league with the best winning percentages advance to the Winter Showcase December 19-22.

Once the regular season (32 games for each team) gets underway on December 27, G League contests will feature traditional quarters. However, if a game is still knotted after 48 minutes, the first team to reach the tied score plus seven points in the extra period wins.

Malcolm Hill currently plays for the Chicago Bulls on a two-way contract with the Windy City Bulls, but was a member of the Squadron last season. During an early practice session, I was talking with him about the rule variations in the G League and asked him what he thought about the Elam Ending.

“It’s fun for sure, depending on who you’re asking.” he said. “Definitely for fans and a lot of players, but there are players like me who like to stick to the traditional things as far as the game clock. But it’s different and interesting.”

Target score aside, the developmental league will continue to play the “greatest hits” when it comes to rule revisions.

The One Free Throw Rule is back, meaning a lone foul shot is attempted in all free throw situations during the first 46 minutes of a game (traditional foul shot rules apply over the final two minutes of the fourth quarter). It’s worth the value of whatever the total number of free throws would be in an NBA game. In other words, if a player is fouled while attempting a 3-pointer and sinks his charity toss, he’s credited with three points.

Two infraction rules I’m glad to see return are the Transition Take Foul and Away-From-The-Play Foul.

The Transition Take Foul is called when a defender commits a foul without making a play on the ball; fouls an offensive player who has the ball or has just passed it away; or fouls during a transition scoring opportunity. The fouled team can pick any player on the floor to shoot one free throw and keep the ball at the “point of interruption.”

And the Away-From-The-Play Foul is defined as “any illegal contact by the defense which occurs either deliberately away from the immediate area of offensive action, prior to the ball being released on a throw-in, or both.” When this happens personal and team fouls are assessed, and one foul shot can be taken by any player in the game at the time of the foul. This decreases the likelihood of a team resorting to “Hack-a-Shaq.”

Other twists include the coach’s challenge and 14-second shot clock reset after offensive rebounds, which originated in the G League and were ultimately adopted by the NBA. (A complete list of rules can be found in the “NBA G League 101” section of gleague.nba.com).

The Squadron opens Showcase Cup play on Sunday, November 6, when the Lakeland Magic comes to Legacy Arena for a 5 p.m. tip.

Between the talent on the floor and the rules on the books, it should be a blast.

The beginning of the end

Officially, the Canadian Football League’s “American Experiment” ended on February 2, 1996. That was the day the league approved the relocation of the Baltimore Stallions to Montreal and disbanded the Birmingham Barracudas, Memphis Mad Dogs, Shreveport Pirates and San Antonio Texans.

As a Birmingham native, losing a hometown team was hardly a new experience for me; I had already witnessed my city say hello and goodbye to the Americans and Vulcans of the World Football League, Stallions of the original United States Football League, and Fire of the World League of American Football.

The failure of the WFL and USFL franchises broke my heart (the loss of the WLAF team didn’t really faze me, if I’m being honest) but man, seeing the CFL team go under was a gut-punch I didn’t expect.

When Birmingham was granted a CFL franchise, I genuinely thought my city was finally in a league to stay and, therefore, had a team to last. Jack Pardee was a big-time coach, and he was hired to run the show. And with Matt Dunigan throwing to Marcus Grant and Jason Phillips and a defense featuring guys like Andre Strode and Anthony Drawhorn, the Cudas were sure to be contenders right out of the gate.

Because I was in love with the “longer, faster, wider” game, I just assumed all my local gridiron loving brothers and sisters would feel the same way.

Sadly, I assumed incorrectly.

And that brings me to September 17, 1995, the day I realized the Magic City was about to add another tombstone to its football graveyard. It was just the twelfth game of an 18-game regular season, but the contest between the Barracudas and Ottawa Rough Riders marked the beginning of the end.

Why?

After drawing 31,185 fans to its home opener in July and averaging 24,843 fans per game through five dates at Legion Field, the vast majority of fans decided they were no longer interested in CFL football.

Despite the Barracudas sitting at 6-5 and battling for a playoff spot, only 5,289 folks showed up to see them improve to 7-5 with a 40-9 trouncing of Ottawa.

“I was told from the start that our biggest challenge was going to be when the college football season started,” Cudas owner Art Williams told the Birmingham Post-Herald. “We’re obviously seeing that. We had a disappointing crowd … we have to do better the next three games.”

The game started at 12:30 p.m. CDT, which put it in direct competition with televised National Football League games. In the Birmingham market that day, the Atlanta Falcons vs. the New Orleans Saints and Oakland Raiders vs. Kansas City Chiefs were brodcast starting at 11:30 a.m.

I guess I was naïve enough to think that since Birmingham didn’t have an NFL team, even NFL fans who lived here would show up for the pro team we had. I knew playing on Saturdays in the fall would be suicidal but honestly believed the Barracudas would always be able to count on 20,000-25,000 regular paying customers on Sundays.

Instead, once American football season began, the CFL became an afterthought. Hell, it wasn’t even that – it was barely thought of at all.

Making matters worse, Williams and some of the other owners of American teams were hoping to turn to CFL into something quite different from what it was.

“There’s a lot of things about the CFL I admire and respect,” Williams said. “But the way it’s being played today, it’s not working in the U.S.”

Williams suggested changing the league’s name, “Americanizing” the rules, and competing against the NFL for local marquee players. He even hinted that the U.S. teams might break away from the CFL and form their own league.

“I think the NFL is very vulnerable right now to another league,” he said. “It could happen.”

It’s never a good sign when an owner is already plotting an exit strategy two-thirds of the way through his first season in a new league. And the threat of losing the franchise didn’t inspire fans to initiate any “Save the Barracudas” measures.

While the crowd against Ottawa proved to be the season low, none of the remaining home games did much better. Ticket sales numbered 6,314 for Shreveport; 6,859 for San Antonio; and 8,910 for Edmonton.

Birmingham’s season home average of 17,625 was still better than the Texans (15,855), Pirates (14,359) and Mad Dogs (13,691), but Memphis was the only other club to draw under 10,000 for a home game – that coming on September 24 when the Dogs beat the Cudas, 28-19, before 7,830 fans at the Liberty Bowl.

By the time Birmingham was blown out by San Antonio, 52-9, in a first-round playoff game on November 5, Williams had already announced the franchise would not be returning to the CFL in 1996 but hoped it would be part of a new alternative league.

“My first preference is to get a contract with CBS, sign a few marquee players and play in the spring at Legion Field,” Williams, who said he expected to lose as much as $10 million on his pro football venture, told the Post-Herald. “The only thing that’s certain is we won’t be back in Birmingham in the CFL in the fall.”

And that – as they say – was all she wrote.

Birmingham’s only franchise in an established, major North American football league was of the one-and-done variety, and made me rather cynical about my city’s long-term pro football prospects in the future.

Since then, the Ham has been home to three spring league teams. I tried to like the 2001 XFL Bolts but didn’t; rooted for the 2019 Alliance of American Football Iron up until the league went cleats up before completing its only season; and was a casual fan of the 2022 USFL Stallions, who won the league championship and – with a second season planned – have a chance to grow on me.

But the Birmingham Barracudas? I believed they were built to last.

Instead, they were built to last only a single season.

The other Dallas Texans

**Giles E. Miller** **and his wife, Betty,** **join NFL** **Commissioner** **Bert Bell in January, 1952, as** **the purchase of the** **Dallas NFL franchise** **is completed.**

Ask someone if they remember the Dallas Texans, and they’ll likely tell you they were one of the charter members of the American Football League.

They’d be right.

But eight years before that team hit the gridiron, the NFL had its own versions of Dallas Texans.

A success story, it was not.

While the AFL Texans ultimately moved to Kansas City and now boast a pair of Super Bowl titles, the NFL Texans struggled through a one-and-done 1952 season – and finished the year as a road team.

The franchise actually had a long history before arriving in Dallas; its lineage can be traced back to the Dayton Triangles of 1920. But after the NFL originals morphed into the Brooklyn Dodgers (1930-43), they were rebranded as the Brooklyn Tigers (1944), merged with the Boston Yanks (1945), moved to New York in 1949 and became the New York Bulldogs, and then remarketed as the New York Yanks in 1950.

They couldn’t make a go of it in the Big Apple and were sold back to the league, opening the door for Dallas textile millionaire Giles E. Miller to buy them on January 29, 1952. Part of the deal meant that Miller paid $100,000 to relocate the Yanks franchise and underwrote an agreement to pay off that club’s $200,000 in debts. Miller’s brother, Connell Miller, and 12 other Dallas businessmen were part of the ownership group.

According to the Associated Press, the team was expected to be called the Texas Rangers but Giles Miller christened the franchise Dallas Texans instead. Saying he was a “rabid football fan,” Giles Miller admitted owning a team was a new experience for him and “I’ll need plenty of advice.”

However, the smiles displayed at the opening press conference didn’t last long.

Not only were the Texans – who finished 1-9-2 a year earlier as the Yanks – unable to figure out how to win games under coach Jimmy Phelan, they never managed to win the hearts of Dallas fans. Their largest crowd at the Cotton Bowl was 17,499, which came in an opening day loss to the New York Giants.

But while starting the season with nine consecutive losses, they played only four games in Dallas. On November 14, the league took control of the team again, with NFL Commissioner Bert Bell releasing a lengthy statement on the matter:

I have determined that the Dallas Texans Football Club, Inc., is guilty of acts detrimental to the National Football League, namely a refusal to continue to operate the club and field a team throughout the balance of the 1952 season. The franchise of the Dallas Texans’ Football Club, Inc., is hereby canceled and forfeited and the player contracts, including the reserve player list, are hereby taken over by the National Football League acting on behalf of the remaining clubs in the league. The National Football League, acting for its remaining members and for the benefit of the players employed by the Dallas club, will continue to field the team with the approval of the Dallas club, under the name of Dallas Texans, for the balance of the 1952 playing season.

The club spent the rest of its 12-game slate as a road team, winning its only game in Akron with a 27-23 upset of the Chicago Bears. The traveling Texans closed out an 1-11 season with a 41-6 thrashing at the hands of the Detroit Lions at Briggs Stadium in Detroit.

So, what went wrong?

Pretty much everything.

Although they featured sensational running back Buddy Young (who would later have his number retired by the Baltimore Colts) and all-purpose standout George Taliaferro (the first African-American drafted by the NFL and a member of the College Football Hall of Fame), the Texans were overmatched game in and game out. They were last in the 12-team league in scoring offense, 11^th in overall offense, 11^th in passing offense, 10^th in rushing offense, and last in both team defense and rushing defense.

And the fact that Dallas was a segregated city and made sure to stay that way on game day did the team no favors at the box office.

Rhett Miller, grandson of Giles Miller (and lead singer of alt-country band Old 97’s), wrote about the situation in the January 12, 2015, edition of Sports Illustrated:

In the opening game, Taliaferro connected with Young for the new team’s first touchdown. (It came after the Texans’ defense forced a New York Giants fumble by, of all people, Tom Landry.) Despite initial enthusiasm within Dallas’s African-American community for the team’s two black stars, very few black fans were on hand to see Young score. Cotton Bowl officials had coerced Pop (Giles Miller) into denying black fans access to the $3.60 grandstand seats, allowing them access only to the $1.80 end zone areas. The first preseason game was marred by overcrowding in these sections, and much of the local black community boycotted subsequent games.

Art Donovan, a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee as a defensive tackle who gained additional fame in later life as a popular talk show guest, was also a member of the Texans. He said by the time the squad left Dallas behind, players just wanted to make it to the end of the season.

“Hershey, Pennsylvania, was our headquarters for the last four games of the season, and the league paid our salary,” Donovan said during an NFL Films interview. “When we were in Hershey, we were running out the string. We didn’t have any bed check, we were trying to get the season over … it was a disaster.

“We practiced maybe for about an hour and we used to play volleyball with the football over the crossbar. That was a big thing, and the best thing in Hershey was the night life. Man, we stood Hershey on its ear.”

In the end, the remnants of the Texans would provide the bones to build the Colts; the 1953 Baltimore team is considered an expansion franchise, but owner Carroll Rosenbloom was awarded the assets of the Texans and retained many of their players.

Thus, the ill-fated Dallas Texans hold the distinction of being the last NFL franchise to fold.