Category: Alternative Football

Barring an unexpected development, the United Football League is set to return next year, marking four consecutive seasons of “offseason” professional gridiron action.

That’ll break the original United States Football League’s record of three competitive seasons (1983-85) which – truthfully – I thought would probably stand forever. With the World League of American Football leaving North America after two years and most other circuits going one-and-done, 11-on-11 spring/summer ball seemed like a fool’s errand for almost 40 years.

Yet, while it’s easy to look back on the late, great USFL as “the” groundbreaker when it comes to playing football during baseball season, that honor belongs to the Trans-American Football League.

Dave Dixon came up with the idea for a January through May circuit in 1965, but it was six years later before a league actually abandoned the fall. The TAFL, a rebranded version of the Texas Football League, decided to tee it up in 1971.

The news was announced in March of that year via a press release:

The greatest innovation in professional football for 1971 will have its beginning in the city of San Antonio. San Antonio, the home of the “winningest team in professional football,” will be the site of pro football’s first spring season football game. The opening day for the Trans-American Football League was first conceived in Chicago, Illinois, in 1970. The league as it was then proposed would consist of four divisions which would span the continental United States. In 1971, this idea will become a reality as four Texas cities join together to host pro football’s first spring schedule. These four teams will be known as the Southwest Division of the Trans-American League and they will make up the only operative division for the 1971 season. Because of the response by season ticket holders and advertisers alike, it is an excellent possibility that the other three divisions will be ready to operate in 1972.

The original concept was for the TAFL to play a fall schedule and be second only to the newly-merged National Football League and American Football League in quality. Aside from San Antonio – winners of four consecutive Texas Football League titles – there were to be franchises in Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Chicago and Hershey, Pennsylvania, with possible locales including Memphis, Birmingham, Tampa, and Columbus, Ohio.

A stock offering as well as a network TV deal were also in the works and by 1972, the league would feature as many as 16 teams.

In early 1971, however, plans were changing – dramatically.

Henry Hight, owner of the San Antonio Toros, said he planned to apply for a Canadian Football League franchise for 1972. Before then, however, his club would participate in a bold experiment.

“We’ve got a lot going on for us down in San Antonio,” Hight said in the January 13, 1971, edition of the North Bay Nugget. “We plan to play spring ball. We’ll go into camp March 1. With that one move, we’ll do away with all competition. Think of the stadiums we’ll have available. And the players – think of the players we’ll be able to use.

“Our season will end in June … NFL camps will open in July.”

The 1971 TAFL was a completely Texas-based circuit with only four teams, built on the hope that those clubs (the Dallas Rockets, Fort Worth Braves, Toros and Texarkana Titans) would somehow be so successful other owners from across the country would be clamoring for a spring pro football franchise.

For that to happen, the TAFL would need to be a huge box office success and garner national publicity despite being a minor league with no national TV contract.

Duncan McCauley, director of development for the TAFL, was excited about the prospects.

“I’m very enthusiastic about the possibilities and about the reception I think it will receive,” he said in an April 20, 1971 story in the San Antonio Express. “I’ve talked to hundreds of people and practically all of them are anticipating football at this time of year, and most of them have indicated they plan to attend as many games as possible.

“We’re offering the football fan his favorite sport at a time when he can enjoy getting out to see a live game without facing a conflict with his son or daughter who might be involved in a high school or college game or some of the activities that accompany them.”

Texarkana coach Durwood Merrill agreed.

“Although it’s strictly on a trial basis, it has already won the enthusiasm of fans and coaches,” Merrill told the Tyler Telegraph.

Alas, fans weren’t enthused.

At all.

Despite what was, by all accounts, quality play, fans didn’t exactly show up in droves. The largest crowd of the season came when 4,500 ticket buyers converged on North East Stadium to see San Antonio top Texarkana, 20-19, in the TAFL championship game on July 19.

Before the contest was played, team owners had already decided the spring schedule simply wasn’t working out.

“When the league went to a spring and summer schedule, it did so to get away from competition with dozens of high school, college and pro teams in the area, as well as get recognition for the teams and the league, plus allowing the better players in the league to move directly on to major league training camps in July,” San Antonio coach George Pasterchick told Austin American Statesman columnist George Breazeale a week before the title matchup. “But we knew then the key to it all was attendance – how many people would pay money to get in. And the attendance hasn’t been what we expected.”

By 1972 the TAFL was no more, with the San Antonio and Dallas franchises moving to the Southwest Professional Football League and a fall schedule. Hight did continue his CFL push, though, saying that potential owners in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Seattle and Las Vegas were ready to join San Antonio in an American Division.

Of course, it would be a couple of decades before the Canadian circuit ventured south of its border.

As for spring pro football, well, that experiment wasn’t attempted again until the birth of the USFL in 1983.

You know, if I had only been able to stay in Norfolk, Virginia, just a few days longer, the Atlantic Coast Football League – and the Norfolk Neptunes – could’ve been my introduction to alternative pro football.

Yep … the team that began life as the Springfield (Massachusetts) Acorns in 1963 in the original Atlantic Coast Football League, moved to Norfolk when the franchise joined the Continental Football League in 1966, and played its final two seasons in the new ACFL, was my first offbrand crush.

In the summer of 1971, my parents took me to Virginia to visit my brother, who was serving at Naval Station Norfolk. It was the first time I’d ever traveled through the sky, which was cool except for the fact that I suffered from airplane ear.

And, it was my first time to snarfle dry roasted peanuts, which I’d never had before until the flight attendant passed some out as a snack. I gave them rave reviews, so much so that when we landed at Norfolk International Airport, she gifted me with a whole bag of them.

I like to think she was charmed by my black horn-rimmed glasses and Lucky Tiger hair tonic.

Except for spending a few days with my brother and sister-in-law, those would’ve likely been the two main highlights of the trip.

However, we arrived on a Saturday night and on Sunday morning, I found myself thumbing through the Virginian-Pilot newspaper. I was already a sports nut at age 10, and loved poring over those industrial-sized Sunday sports sections.

Two things jumped out at me as I perused the paper. One, Joe Namath suffered torn ligaments in his left knee during an exhibition game against the Detroit Lions the night before, which broke my heart. I was a huge New York Jets fan, and had some major hero worship when it came to Joe Willie.

And two – and this is where I finally circle back to the plot of this story – I learned the Neptunes defeated the Augusta Eagles, 89-0, at Foreman Field the night before.

They led 28-0 at the end of the first quarter, 42-0 at halftime, and 63-0 at the end of three. The winners never punted and rolled up 554 yards of total offense, with 395 coming on the ground.

Nine players scored touchdowns, with Ron Holliday, Herb Nauss and Bob Fultz tallying two TDs apiece.

Now, until I read that article, I had no clue that there was a professional football team in Norfolk, or that there was a league called the ACFL. (I certainly knew nothing of the Eagles, who were members of the Dixie Football League).

But 89-0 … that blew my mind.

So, I started asking Don, my brother, about the team, and he told me they had been around for quite a few years. In 1971 they had a new coach named Ron Waller, and played in the best American gridiron league outside the NFL.

Another factoid that stayed with me is that their roster featured a defensive player named Otis Sistrunk, a former Marine who never played college football.
I was fascinated, and Don ran out of answers before I ran out of questions. While I literally did not know the club existed the day before, they were now my third favorite pro football team behind the Jets and Los Angeles Rams.

The Neptunes played another exhibition the following week against the Columbia All-Stars (winning 61-0), but that contest was on a Sunday and we had headed back home to Birmingham the Friday before.

However, Don told me, maybe if I came back in 1972, he’d take me to Foreman Field to see a game.

When we returned home, I maintained Neptune Fever even after the NFL and college season shifted into high gear. Every time I talked to Don on the phone, the first thing I asked was how the team was doing.

Turns out, they did quite well; the Neptunes finished with a 10-3 record and defeated the Hartford Knights, 24-13, to win the ACFL championship.

A guy named Jim “King” Corcoran – who joined the team after being cut by the Philadelphia Eagles – led the way, throwing two touchdown passes to Holliday to help Norfolk lay claim to minor league football’s top prize.

I couldn’t wait to return to the Commonwealth the next summer and watch them from the bleachers.

Sadly, I’d never get the chance; the team and league folded at the end of the 1971 season.

Thanks to the World Football League in 1974, though, I finally got my chance to witness alt-football live and in person. And both Waller and Corcoran were a part of the WFL as head coach and QB, respectively, of the Philadelphia Bell. In fact, 12 former Norfolk players found roster spots on the WFL’s Philadelphia entry.

Sistrunk went on to have a solid career with the Oakland Raiders, and several other guys off the 1971 squad spent some time in the NFL.

More than a half century later – whenever I go down a sports research rabbit hole and come across the Norfolk Neptunes – I always smile.

Maybe I never saw them play, but I still consider myself one of their biggest fans.

Had my dream come true, we’d be celebrating the start of the 50^th season of the World Football League on July 10.

All of the “Original 12” teams would be in Wednesday Night Football action – the Birmingham Americans, Chicago Fire, Detroit Wheels, Florida Blazers, the Hawaiians, Houston Texans, Jacksonville Sharks, Memphis Southmen, New York Stars, Philadelphia Bell, Portland Storm and Southern California Sun.

To commemorate World Bowl 1, the Americans and Blazers would be competing in the marquee game of the evening, playing before a packed house at Jack Gotta Memorial Stadium. George Mira, who was MVP in Birmingham’s 22-21 victory over Florida half a century earlier, would have the honors of the ceremonial coin flip.

And the 36-team circuit (it absorbed the Canadian Football League in 1993) would be well-represented across the globe by franchises such as the Tokyo Kaiju, London Fog, Mexico City Empire and Paris Towers.

Sure, things would’ve changed since 1974. Some of the clubs’ logos would be modernized; there would be no single-bar facemasks; and television coverage from networks such as NBC, the BBC and the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, along with the WFL-Xtra streaming service, would be far superior to what was offered by TVS in Year One.

But the action point would remain – as well as seven-point touchdowns, one offensive back allowed in motion toward the line of scrimmage, the elimination of fair catches, a receiver needing only one foot in bounds for a reception, mustard-yellow game balls and colorful uniforms.

Ah, if only.

There are those who will never understand the fascination people like us have with the WFL. Shoot, I’m not even sure I understand it.

It lasted less than two years. And if you want to get technical about it, the 1974 WFL folded after a season and was replaced by New League Incorporated (doing business as the WFL), which collapsed before completing the 1975 campaign.

At the time, it was the sports financial disaster to end all sports financial disasters.

So why do we still talk about it – and love it?

Because it was new and it was different and it was fun.

For fans in NFL cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit, Houston and Philly, I’m sure it was mostly a novelty. They were major league cities that had an embarrassment of riches when it came to major league sports.

But for folks who lived in locales such as Birmingham, Orlando and Jacksonville, it brought us big-time football for the first time.

I mean, when I showed up at Legion Field to watch the Americans and Sun tangle in 90-degree weather, it wasn’t like I was cheering for (or against) guys I’d never heard of. The teams were a mixture of NFL veterans and college hotshots.

Running back Charlie Harraway had played the previous eight seasons in the NFL – and played well – before jumping to the Americans. And his counterpart with the Sun, Kermit Johnson, was fresh from a consensus All-American season at UCLA.

And before the league had even held a scrimmage, Larry Csonka, Paul Warfield and Jim Kiick had been convinced to leave the Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins for a 1975 deal with the Southmen.

So yeah … the WFL was a pretty big deal.

I was fortunate enough to make a living writing sports, and it allowed me to cover everything from the NFL to the College Football Playoff. But you wanna hear something funny?

None of those games stick in my mind like random WFL contests.

Not a one.

Aside from being in the stadium for Birmingham’s 11-7 win over Southern Cal in the league lid-lifter, I distinctly remember July 11, 1974, and watching the Stars-Sharks game on TV with my dad.

Normally a Thursday night in the summer meant I’d be up the street at a friend’s house shooting hoops in his driveway or listening to music in his basement.

But that game – the inaugural telecast on TVS – was an event.

As a New York Jets fan, I cheered for the players who had traded in Shea Stadium for Downing Stadium and were now rocking the yellow and black of the Big Apple’s WFL Team.

And Jacksonville? Loved the black shark logo on the silver helmets.

There were nearly 60,000 fans in the Gator Bowl, and they got to witness the home team take a 14-7 victory.

I recall Memphis hosting Portland in Week 2, giving me a chance to scout the Southmen before they came to Birmingham on July 24.

And when the Stars traveled to Philadelphia to take on the Bell in the July 25 Game of the Week, QB King Corcoran was talking about how he thought the Philadelphia uniforms were “pretty” during a quick pregame interview.

It was must-see TV before the phrase was coined, and I thought I was seeing the start of something wonderful – and everlasting.

At this point I guess I’m supposed to go into all the depressing details about the World Football League’s demise. But I’m not going to, not on the 50^th anniversary of its launch.

In fact, I’m celebrating its legacy because the NFL owes a great debt to the WFL.

The new league sparked a major increase in player salaries, which of course have since reached astronomical numbers.

And the WFL moved goal posts to the back of the end zone, kicked the ball off from the 30, and made tweaks to incentivize more soring, prompting the NFL to adopt more offense-friendly rules.

In short, the World Football League mattered, even if its official lifespan lasted only from October 2, 1973, to October 22, 1975.

And because it mattered, there are people like me who’ll spend Wednesday wearing our finest WFL T-shirts, reminiscing about what was and what might have been.

And I’m not saying I’m gonna drive over to Legion Field on July 10 and make a toast to the league’s Golden Anniversary, but … well, actually, I am saying that.

In my heart, the WFL  lives on … forever.