Jacksonville Tea Men (1980-1984)

North American Soccer League (1980-1982)
American Soccer League (1983)
United Soccer League (1984)

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Jacksonville Tea Men T-Shirt

When the owners of Lipton Tea bought a North American Soccer League expansion franchise for Boston in 1978, the Tea Men name offered a cute double meaning. Boston Tea Party and all. By the time the Tea Men won a lower division championship in 1983, the club was in Jacksonville and Lipton no longer owned it. And yet the name endured in all of its obsolete, incoherent glory.

Also available as a Hooded Sweatshirt and in Women’s V-Neck and Tank Top styles at Old School Shirts!

 

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Background

The Jacksonville Tea Men was a pro soccer outfit that played both outdoor and indoor soccer in north Florida during the early 1980’s.  The franchise originated in New England in 1978 as an expansion team in the North American Soccer League, which was the top flight league in America at the time.  In the Tea Men’s final years in Jacksonville, the club dropped down to lower division leagues in an effort to stem multi-million dollar financial losses.

The “Tea Men” identity was a tie-in to the franchise’s original owner, the Lipton Tea company.  And it was also a play on New England’s revolutionary war history with the Boston Tea Party.  The name made little sense following the club’s move to Florida, but was retained anyway.

Move to Jacksonville

Jacksonville interests lured the Tea Men south in November 1980 with a pledge of 14,000 season tickets for the 1981 outdoor season, but the promise never materialized.  The Associated Press reported that the Tea Men sold fewer than 4,500 season tickets after arriving in Florida.  By the end of 1981, Lipton’s patience with the NASL was nearly exhausted.  The league had blown its national television contract with ABC and was now shedding franchises at an alarming rate.  Lipton lost a reported $7M on the club between 1978 and 1981, including $1.7M  during the first ten months in Jacksonville.  In September 1981, the Tea Men were on the verge of folding before Lipton posted the required $150,000 bond with the league to stay in for the indoor season.

The Tea Men averaged a relatively strong 6,375 fans for indoor soccer at the Coliseum that winter.  A group of local businessmen led by attorney Earl Hadlow struck a deal to lease the club from Lipton and operate it for the 1982 outdoor season.  The momentum died when the team moved outdoors, however.  On the field, the Tea Men regressed from the 18-14 playoff club of 1981 to a last-place 11-21 finish in 1982.  Fan support dwindled as well.  The Tea Men drew only 7,160 fans on average to the 68,000-seat Gator Bowl in 1982, second worst in the 14-team NASL.  Hadlow’s group ran out of money during the season and returned the Tea Men to Lipton, who immediately began looking to unload the club once and for all. Deals were announced to sell the club to investors in Milwaukee, then Detroit.  Both fell through.

Into the Lower Divisions

In early 1983, local businessman Ingo Krieg rescued the Tea Men yet again and entered them in the lower level American Soccer League.  The nonsensical Tea Men name endured, despite the fact that Lipton had finally pulled out entirely.  The ASL had a long and rather weird history dating back to the Great Depression.  Similar to the NASL, the ASL had gone on an expansion spree in the mid-1970’s, convinced that soccer’s moment had arrived.  By the time Krieg and the Tea Men arrived on the scene in 1983, the ASL was in its death throes.  Rebounding from 1982’s on-field disappointment, the Tea Men won the final ASL championship in 1983.

Dissatisfied with his partners in the ASL, Krieg mounted an insurrection in early 1984, peeling away the Dallas and Detroit franchises to form the United Soccer League in the spring of 1984.  The Tea Men posted an 11-13 record and missed the playoffs.  After countless near death experiences, the Tea Men folded once and for all after the 1984 campaign.

Voices

“One of the reasons for the demise of the indoor league was the refusal of NASL League officials to consider more indoor games and to allow full field dasher board advertising. The additional revenue and tha full year contracts for players could have taken us out of the red within two years…..No vision for the indoor-outdoor mix at that time.”

– Dick Kravitz, General Manager 1980-82 (FWiL website comment 2011)

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Rock n' Roll Soccer

The Short Life and Fast Times of the North American Soccer League

by Ian Plenderleith

The North American Soccer League – at its peak in the late 1970s – presented soccer as performance, played by men with a bent for flair, hair and glamour. More than just Pelé and the New York Cosmos, it lured the biggest names of the world game like Johan Cruyff, Franz Beckenbauer, Eusebio, Gerd Müller and George Best to play the sport as it was meant to be played-without inhibition, to please the fans.

The first complete look at the ambitious, star-studded NASL, Rock ‘n’ Roll Soccer reveals how this precursor to modern soccer laid the foundations for the sport’s tremendous popularity in America today. 

 

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Downloads

April 10, 1982 Jacksonville Tea Men vs. New York Cosmos Game Notes

August 25, 1983 – Zivaljevic Spurs Jacksonville To Title ASL Press Release

6-1-1984 Tea Men vs. Houston Dynamos Roster

2011 FWiL Interview with former Tea Men owner Ingo Krieg

Links

North American Soccer League Media Guides

North American Soccer League Programs

American Soccer League Media Guides

American Soccer League Programs

United Soccer League Media Guides (1984-1985)

United Soccer League Programs (1984-1985)

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