
Raleigh IceCaps
The Raleigh IceCaps were a hockey team that played in North Carolina’s capital as members of the East Coast Hockey League from 1991 to 1998.

The Raleigh IceCaps were a hockey team that played in North Carolina’s capital as members of the East Coast Hockey League from 1991 to 1998.

United States Football League (1984) Born: July 7, 1983 – USFL expansion franchise Died: December 5, 1984 – Merged with Arizona Wranglers First Game: February 26, 1984 (W 7-3 vs. Pittsburgh Maulers) Last Game: June 24, 1984 (L 23-0 @ San Antonio Gunslingers) USFL Championships: None Stadium: Skelly Stadium Team Colors:

The Baltimore Elite Giants got their start in Nashville, before moving to Columbus, Ohio for one year, then to Washington, D.C. They moved down the road in Baltimore in 1938 and played there until 1950, before spending their final season back in Tennessee.

The original Winnipeg Jets were charter members of the WHA in 1972. They moved to the NHL in 1979, along with three other WHA squads. In 1995, they were sold and moved to Phoenix for the 1996-97 hockey season. The name was revived when the Atlanta Thrashers moved to Manitoba in 2011 and assumed the Jets name but not their history.

The Atlantic City Surf were one of the six original franchises in the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. The Atlantic League was (and remains) the most ambitious league to arise out of the independent baseball boom of the 1990’s. The Surf played at the Sandcastle, a 5,900-seat ballpark built on the grounds of Atlantic City’s municipal airport, Bader Field. The stadium was built with $11.5 million in Casino Reinvestment Development Authority funds and $3 million in taxpayer bonds.

This doomed 2nd division men’s club was part of the disastrous Lehigh Valley Multi-Purpose Stadium project, intended to bring minor league baseball and pro soccer to the Easton/Allentown region of Pennsylvania during the late 1990’s. The Steam would be the region’s first outdoor pro soccer team since the Pennsylvania Stoners, who played out of Allentown and Bethlehem, folded in 1984. When the stadium project failed to come to fruition, the Steam embarked on a single, futile season in the USL A-League during the summer of 1999, cobbling together a schedule of “home” matches in various sites around Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The Steam officially disbanded in December 1999.

The Dallas Texans were the first of four Arena Football League teams to set up shop in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. The Texans earned a trip to Arena Bowl IV in their first season of play in 1990. Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Ernie Stautner was the Texans’ head coach in 1990 and would win the league’s Coach-of-the-Year award (and then never coach indoor football again).

The American Basketball Association (ABA) was formed in 1967 as a competitor to the established National Basketball Association (NBA). It started with 11 teams, and within a few years was angling for a merger with the older league. In 1976, the NBA took in four ABA teams, while three other surviving teams disbanded.

Yes, strange as it sounds, but the small, poverty-stricken city of Shreveport, Louisiana once had its very own Canadian Football League franchise: the Shreveport Pirates. The Pirates’ shambolic leadership made a series of head-scratching personnel moves, including the signings of troubled over-the-hill NFL stars Dexter Manley and Mark Duper, and fired the team’s first head coach before taking a regular season snap. Meanwhile the team staggered to a two-year record of 8-28 in the CFL before going out of business at the end of the 1995 season.