I realize most of you are experiencing a tingling sensation in your special regions since this is the first full Saturday of a new college football season. But for all of my fellow alt-football nerds, today is also a day to raise a glass and pour one out for the Chicago Winds. And while you’re at it, maybe do the same for the World Football League.
On this date 50 years ago the Winds played their final game, and three days later the franchise folded. This caused even the most optimistic WFL fans to realize the end was nigh for the struggling circuit. (The league went cleats up on October 22).
First, some background …
After a disastrous 1974 season – one dripping in red ink and resulting in two teams folding and two more relocating – the original WFL actually folded. It was replaced by New League Inc., doing business as the World Football League.
The 1975 reboot began with 11 franchises – the Birmingham Vulcans, Charlotte Hornets, Winds, The Hawaiians, Jacksonville Express, Memphis Southmen, Philadelphia Bell, Portland Thunder, San Antonio Wings, Shreveport Steamer and Southern California Sun.
The WFL was missing the top media market – New York – so it was vitally important that Chicago, Philadelphia and the Anaheim-based Sun provide a “major league” boost.
But Chicago was iffy from the get-go.
According to the Associated Press, when the franchise was formed (replacing the 1974 Chicago Fire) “certain partnership documents and other ownership arrangements” were not completed. Two of the Winds’ backers placed their investments ($175,000) with the league, pending clarification and finalization of ownership documents.
WFL commissioner Chris Hemmeter had devised a strict financial plan for the league, one that required minimum capital requirements for members. And his “Hemmeter Plan” was designed to make sure teams made payroll. Players would earn one percent of gate receipts while “stars” requiring greater compensation had to be paid through money placed in an escrow account.
Chicago’s ownership group reached an agreement with the WFL to supply enough money to assure a full season’s operation, so the Winds were admitted in the hopes they could be the bellwether franchise.
They could not.
In March of 1975, there was talk that the Southmen’s Big Three – Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and Paul Warfield – might be sent to Chicago from Memphis owner John Bassett in an effort to “save the league.”
That never happened.
And in April, the Winds took their biggest swing when they tried to lure Joe Namath away from the New York Jets. But whether or not the man who helped boost the American Football League to prominence could do the same to the WFL became a moot point after Namath opted to stay in the NFL.
Babe Parilli was coach and general manager of the team up until late July, then he was released to make room for Abe Gibron and Leo Cahill.
Cahill had served as GM of the Southmen before heading north to his native Chicago.
Gibron was fired a year earlier by the Chicago Bears after going 11-30-1 over three seasons, but was brought in to assume the same role with the city’s WFL club.
“I can only promise it will be an aggressive team both physically and mentally,” Gibron told AP.
The franchise did manage to sign John Gilliam away from the Minnesota Vikings, and hoped the battery of quarterback Pete Beathard to Gilliam would put wins on the ledger and butts in the seats.
It did neither.
Chicago opened with two games on the road – a 10-0 loss to Birmingham and 38-18 drubbing at the hands of Shreveport.
The Winds’ home debut at Soldier Field drew a crowd of 3,501, who watched the hosts log a 25-18 overtime victory over Portland.
Game four was a 28-17 loss at the Hawaiians, and on August 30, 1975, the Winds traveled to Memphis.
The Southmen won big, 31-7, but that was the least of the Winds’ woes.
Remember that thing about clarification and finalization of ownership documents?
“There were continuous delays regarding those documents and other representations which they had made that were not fully clarified,” Hemmeter said on September 2 after learning the two original investors pulled out. “That brought the Winds below minimum capitalization requirements. We agreed from day one that kind of violation would not be tolerated.”
So, just three days after falling to 1-4, the Winds were done.
Hemmeter suggested the move to drop to 10 franchises would actually help the WFL.
“From a business standpoint, it is certainly a more responsible act to shut down a potential problem than to allow the potential for future problems to exist,” he said in an AP interview. “We are not willing to gamble on the future of the league.”
In reality, though, the WFL had no future.
There was no national TV contract, and attendance was terrible in most markets. Philadelphia averaged just 3,500 per game, with its final home contest drawing 1,293. Portland was bringing in less than 8,000 customers per home date.
Even Birmingham, whose WFL champion Americans averaged nearly 40,000 per home date in 1974, dipped to 24,100 in 1975.
While the league managed to hang on for another seven weeks after the Winds’ demise, Chicago’s exit was a harbinger of the World Football League’s doom.
“There wasn’t any single overriding factor in the decision,” Hemmeter said in a prepared statement announcing the end of the WFL. “When you go into any business venture, you realize there’s an upside potential and downside risk. As responsible people, we realized the risk had become too great.”
