Scott Adamson, Author at Adamsonmedia.com

A merger that was a mirage

If you read my book The Home Team: My Bromance With Off-Brand Football, you’ll find 18 pages devoted to the American Football Association, and specifically the Alabama Vulcans (1979) and Alabama Magic (1982). From a talent standpoint the AFA had several quality teams during its seven-year run, but they were often overshadowed by shoestring budgets and amateurish business practices.

Between the two seasons that saw Birmingham host franchises, however, was the 1981 campaign – one that began with high hopes and flirted with a deal designed to turn the AFA into something of a “mid-major” circuit.

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The summer league entered 1981 with 10 franchises; the Austin Texans, Carolina (Charlotte) Chargers, Chicago Fire, Jacksonville Firebirds, Orlando Americans, San Antonio Charros, Shreveport Steamer, Texas (Dallas) Wranglers, Virginia (Roanoke) Hunters, and West Virginia (Charleston) Rockets. With former NFL quarterback Billy Kilmer as commissioner and a three-year contract with the syndicated Mizlou Television Network in hand, it appeared the summer league was poised to be a legitimate second-tier pro football organization. But man, did things fall apart quickly.

A week before the season started Mizlou canceled its contract due to an inability to sell enough advertising in local markets, and Carolina’s franchise folded after four games. Midway through the season the AFA appeared doomed until Roger Gill shared some potential game-changing news.

Gill, former AFA commissioner and owner of the Charros, said on July 6 that the AFA was going to merge with the International Football League. The IFL had been attempting to line up owners and franchises for more than a year, and originally fashioned itself as a competitor to the NFL with hopes of starting play in 1982. By 1981, however, it was ready to scale back its expectations.

“They are committed to going with us,” Gill said in a story published in the Orlando Sentinel. “There is no question. They are as anxious to get on board with us as we are with them.”

The IFL eyed franchises in Mexico City, Los Angeles, Honolulu, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Monterrey, Portland, New York, Washington and Baltimore.

“We’ve met four or five times, and Billy Kilmer has met with them much more than that,” Gill told the paper. “They have made a lot more concessions than we have. We convinced them not to try to rob the NFL, though certain franchises may try to some degree.

“They feel there needs to be a minimum salary, and we conceded to the possibility of that.”

According to Gill the new league would receive money from Mexican TV since the potential owner of a Mexico City franchise owned a Mexican broadcasting network. And the hope was that American cable companies would want on board since the new league would have teams in major media markets.

“The whole deal is predicated on money from Mexican TV and cable TV,” Gill said. “We believe the scope will enhance the TV. There is no future in pro athletics without compensation through TV. Without it, we cannot expect to make money. Nobody in the AFA will make money this year. It’s just a matter of how much we’ll lose.”

Thing is, mergers between two leagues is next to impossible when only one league exists, and the IFL never got past the planning stage.

By the time the 1981 AFA campaign was in the books, Kilmer had resigned, a total of three franchises folded, and the league continued to toil away in virtual anonymity – and without a football business partner.

The AFA returned in 1982, but midway through its season the formation of the United States Football League was announced, shoving it even deeper into obscurity.

The American Football Association breathed its last in 1983. The final game came on July 23 at Memorial Stadium in Charlotte with the Carolina Storm blanking the San Antonio Bulls, 39-0, in the American Bowl.

The contest was played in front of 4,426 fans, and without a national television audience looking on. But once it was over the Storm – coached by outgoing boss Steve Patton (who guided the Alabama Magic in 1982) – was set to join yet another version of the International Football League in 1984.

I think you already know how that story ended.

The forgotten USFL

Remember the United States Football League?

Well, of course you do. Who can forget it?

I still get chills when I think about the day Anaheim, Cincinnati, Washington and Philadelphia were named flagship franchises of the 12-team league. Clubs had big budgets and were prepared to empty the bank in an effort to sign the best players in football. Heck, the draft took place in November while the college football season was still underway, which was downright bodacious.

Wait … you thought I was going to talk about something else? Not today, sports fans.

Sandwiched between Dave Dixon’s original 1965 idea for a United States Football League (a January through May circuit played in warm weather cities) and his realized USFL in 1983 (spring football played in major and mid-major markets) was the 1966 version that was more talk than action. Billing itself as a third major league to rival the NFL and AFL, it made a big – if brief – splash.

On June 29, 1966, former Notre Dame head football coach Frank Leahy announced the formation of the United States Football League, which had already secured $24 million in funding to lure established superstars and top college players. The news came just three weeks after the NFL and AFL went public with news of their full merger, effective in 1970.

“We’re willing and adequately prepared to spend money for outstanding players – and can go half a million dollars to get any of them,” Leahy told the Associated Press.

Leahy said the organization of the USFL began on February 4, 1966, when a group he headed was unable to secure an AFL expansion franchise. (Dixon, by the way, used his USFL idea as leverage to help New Orleans get an NFL team).

“We will start signing college players early in November, and we’ll go after everyone,” said Leahy, who would serve as chairman of the USFL. “Our seven incorporators have a great deal of money, and I would say that we are equipped to pay anything we want to get anyone we want.”

The other investors in the league were Norman F. Hecht, Bruce A. Werlhof, Harry Kagen, A.M. Cetrulo, Chester Brewer and Clayton J. Faulkner.

Aside from Anaheim, Washington, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, eight other cities were to be announced later in the summer and the inaugural season would be played beginning in the fall of 1967.

“We have applicants from nine other cities with more than one applicant for franchises from some of them,” Leahy said. “I’ll announce six of them on July 20, three more on August 15, and the final three on September 1.”

Players would also be offered stock options.

“The boy who comes to us and makes the first team will be given a better stock option plan than the boy who sits on the bench,” Leahy said. “And the boy who makes the all-league team will get an even better one.”

One problem, however, was the lack of a major television contract. Leahy said he expected the USFL to land a lucrative deal after it established itself – likely in three years – but in the interim it would syndicate films of games for TV.

Following the initial announcement the next big reveal came on July 20, the day Leahy was supposed to introduce the league’s six newest teams. That didn’t happen, but he did report that negotiations were nearly complete to secure Comiskey Park as home to a Chicago franchise.

However, that was about the last bit of positive news to come out of the league.

On August 30, 1966, Leahy’s son, Frank Leahy Jr., said his father had resigned from the USFL because the merger of the NFL and AFL had killed its chances of success.

“We had the money,” Leahy Jr. told AP. “But we couldn’t get stadium leases. We needed first-class arenas, but they weren’t available.”

A day later Hecht, one of the original investors, said the USFL was alive and well and already had franchises in place in Washington, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Jose, Akron, Pittsburgh and either Atlanta or Memphis. But the league, in fact, was not at all well.

It never made it to the starting gate for the 1967 season, and by spring of that year one of its founding teams – Akron – withdrew its application for USFL membership so it could join the second-tier Continental Football League. Hecht then insisted the league would regroup and be ready to go by 1968.

A quick look back at the calendar shows the USFL was not ready to go in 1968, and it would be 14 more years before an organization with that acronym – and major league aspirations – would introduce itself to the world. The NFL had already taken an “if you can’t beat ‘em, let ‘em join you” stance with the AFL, and officials had to be relieved they wouldn’t have to go to war with yet another rival in 1967. It’s too bad this version of the USFL couldn’t have taken the field, though. Competition is no fun for owners, but it’s great for fans.

Return to Lawson Field

As I get older, I find myself trying to carefully negotiate the bridge that connects my past with my present. The fun part, of course, is looking back and realizing sometimes I can still see where my journey started – and where it’s headed.

I’m a sports fan so teams, leagues, times and dates serve as logical links, and every once in a while I can impress myself by recalling a score from a football game I saw 50 years ago.

But I’ve also always been fascinated by venues, and one of the first things I did when I moved back to Birmingham was revisit my old haunts. I drove by an empty Legion Field, where I saw my first college football game, and later visited Rickwood Field – the nation’s oldest pro baseball ballpark but a place I remember best as being the site of the first youth football game I ever participated in. I can still almost taste the infield dirt I swallowed when I helped churn it up while blocking (or at least trying to block) on a kickoff return.

Then there’s the building formerly known as the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center Coliseum, now called Legacy Arena and currently being renovated as one of the jewels of the Uptown entertainment district. It’s where I watched my first college basketball game as well as my first professional hockey game (and saw my first concert – Boston with Sammy Hagar opening).

But during my two months back in the Magic City one stop had been absent from my nostalgia tour – Lawson Field.

In truth the city-owned facility, designed primarily for high school football, hadn’t crossed my mind much in the last, oh, 40-something years. I did a little research and discovered that before last Saturday I hadn’t been there since November 9, 1979. That was the night I watched my alma mater, the Huffman Vikings, edge the Hueytown Golden Gophers, 14-13. Back then Lawson Field was the home stadium for a handful of Birmingham high schools and a great cheap date locale because tickets to a prep game were a dollar. So for the low, low price of $2 you could take your sweetie to the ballgame and kill two and half hours on a Friday night before going “parking.”

Alas, once my high school days were done, there was no compelling reason to go back to the stadium. Once I entered college my Fridays were otherwise occupied, and as the years passed Lawson Field simply became a thing of my past.

It briefly returned to my radar thanks to a Dixie Football League game between the Birmingham Suns and Panama City Pirates played there in October, 1982. I had no interest in the semi-pro league – didn’t even know it existed, to be honest – but read about a Birmingham player accidentally shooting his coach in the leg when he pulled a pistol and fired it toward the ground in an effort to break up a postgame fight at Lawson Field.

I really don’t know why a player was packing heat on the sidelines, but often wonder if it inspired that ridiculous opening scene in “The Last Boy Scout” when a running back shoots three players trying to tackle him.

At any rate, I moved on with my life and Lawson Field moved on with its nightlife, continuing to host high school football, the Birmingham Steel Magnolias of the Women’s Football Association, the Alabama Warriors of the Premier South Football League, and serving as the practice facility for the Birmingham Steeldogs of AF2. The memories made over those years at the 7,500-seat stadium were not memories made by me, and I never felt like I was missing out on anything.

But jump to September 11, 2021, and the stadium (built in 1968) gave me something to remember 42 years since I last visited it: I watched FC Birmingham top Legacy Heroes FC, 1-0, in a Pioneer Premier League soccer match.

It was the first live sporting event I’d been to since coming home and I enjoyed it, but I was also surprised at how familiar Lawson Field seemed to me.

The gravel parking lot – complete with a ditch you have to carefully drive over to get to your makeshift spot – appeared largely unchanged from 1979. So did the concession building, press box and stands on both the home and visitors’ side.

Obviously the aluminum bleachers have been replaced, but technology hasn’t changed aluminum bleachers much over the decades, so the experience was the same.

The large grass hills on either side of the home stands were still unspoiled by construction. During a packed high school game they served as playgrounds and nature slides for kids who were more interested in playing than watching older kids play ball.

I spent the first half sitting on the home side and the second from the vantage point of the visitors, and both were a comfortable fit. I fought the urge to slide down the hill because at my age that would’ve been ridiculous and possibly deadly.

The biggest changes were the playing surface itself, which is now artificial turf, and the nice, rubberized track circling around it. I did notice that one of the goalposts had wonky uprights, so that might be something for maintenance to look into going forward.

The bottom line is that if FC Birmingham didn’t call Lawson Field home, my 42-year streak of staying away would still be intact. But since they do, the time between my last visit and next won’t be nearly as long. Turns out the journey I started on this particular bridge isn’t over just yet.