Philadelphia Fox

Women’s Professional Basketball League (1979)

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Philadelphia Fox
1979 Logo T-Shirt

The Fox were Philadelphia’s very first women’s professional basketball team back in the fall of 1979. Unfortunately, Women’s Basketball League officials put the franchise on the floor carelessly with no proper owner or financial backstops. The team collapsed after only ten games, casting its pioneering players out of work just a few days before Christmas.  

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Background

The Philadelphia Fox were an exceptionally short-lived entry in the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL) in the fall of 1979.

The WBL debuted in December 1978. The loop was the first serious attempt at establishing a nationwide professional women’s sports league, although women were playing professionally in a pair of co-ed leagues at the time – World Team Tennis and the International Volleyball Association.  Eight franchises took part in the inaugural season in the winter of 1978-79, primarily in Midwestern cities, along with New York, New Jersey and Houston.  The Houston Angels won the first WBL championship in May 1979.

That summer, the WBL embarked on aggressive coast-to-coast expansion. The circuit grew to 14 members through the addition of clubs in Anaheim, Dallas, New Orleans, Saint Louis, San Francisco, Washington and Philadelphia.  The Philadelphia franchise took part in the WBL’s college draft on June 12th, 1979 although it appears that the expansion club did not yet have ownership at this stage.

Ownership Problems

The WBL’s 1979-80 expansion clubs came at a price tag of $100,000 per club, up from $50,000 for the league’s charter franchises a year before.  According to Karra Porter’s terrific 2006 book Mad Seasons: The Story of the First Women’s Professional Basketball League, the WBL finally found a buyer for the Philadelphia Fox on September 28, 1979, less than two months before tip off.  New York businessman Eric Kraus put down $20,000 of the $100,000 fee. The remaining balance was due only after the league itself secured an additional $250,000 in start-up financing.  The league never found the remaining investors and Kraus seemingly never put up the rest of the franchise fee.  Years later, WBL Commissioner Bill Byrne told Karra Porter that he financed the Fox’s operations, such as they were, on his personal credit cards.

On The Court

Recently retired NBA journeyman Dave Wohl served as Head Coach/General Manager of the Fox. The team featured two local Philadelphia products in guard Faye Lawrence of Temple and forward Chris Zabel of St. Joseph’s.

The club debuted on the road on November 17th, 1979 against the defending champion Houston Angels.  Six nights later, the Fox played their first home game at the antiquated Philadelphia Civic Center against the St. Louis Streak.  Few people noticed.  According to contemporary press accounts, the first three Fox home games at the Civic Center attracted fewer than 1,000 fans in total.

The End

On December 1st, 1979, the WBL formally revoked Kraus’ ownership and assumed operations of the Fox franchise.  Kraus, for his part, insisted he still owned the club.  Regardless, no one seemed to be putting in any money.  The WBL failed to meet the Fox payroll on December 15th. The league postponed the Fox’s December 20th road game in Milwaukee.  On December 21st, 1979, the WBL announced the midseason shutdown of the Philadelphia Fox along with the Washington Metros, another flailing expansion club with a roster full of unpaid players.

The Fox’s existence lasted just 10 contests over 32 days of the 1979-80 WBL season.  The team finished with a 2-8 record.  Fox players were placed into a dispersal draft among the league’s 12 remaining team on December 21st, 1979.   The debacle severely damaged the credibility of the WBL.  The WBL completed a third season in the winter and spring of 1980-81, which was also marred by the midseason shutdown of a club, before folding quietly in early 1982.

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mad seasons

The Story of the First Women’s Professional Basketball League, 1978-1981

by Karra Porter

As the popularity of women’s basketball burgeons, Karra Porter reminds us in Mad Seasons that today’s Women’s National Basketball Association, or WNBA, had its origins in a ragtag league twenty years earlier. Porter tells the story of the Women’s Professional Basketball League WBL, which pioneered a new era of women’s sports.

 

Karra Porter brings to life the pioneers of the WBL: “Machine Gun” Molly Bolin, who set lasting scoring records—then faced an historic custody battle because of her basketball career; Connie Kunzmann, a popular player whose murder rocked the league; Liz Silcott, whose remarkable talents masked deeper problems off the court; Ann Meyers, who went from an NBA tryout to the league she had rebuffed; Nancy Lieberman, whose flashy play and marketing savvy were unlike anything the women’s game had ever seen.

 

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Downloads

1979 Philadelphia Fox WBL Draft Selections

Links

Women’s Professional Basketball League Media Guides

Women’s Basketball League Programs

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