The Las Vegas Thunder were a six-year entry in the International Hockey League during that organization’s gold rush era of nationwide expansion in the mid-1990’s. Minor league baseball investors Hank Stickney and his son Ken paid a $2.0 million expansion fee for the Thunder in 1993. The Stickneys also owned the Las Vegas Stars Class AAA baseball team.
The Memphis Showboats were a popular entry that drew strong crowds to the Liberty Bowl in the springtime United States Football League in 1984 and 1985. The Showboats are best remembered today for persuading University of Tennessee star defensive end Reggie White to sign with the USFL rather than enter the 1984 NFL draft. After two seasons with Memphis, White joined the NFL in 1985. He is one of four Pro Football Hall-of-Famer players to begin his career in the USFL, alongside Jim Kelly, Steve Young and Gary Zimmerman.
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.
The Orlando Sundogs were a pro soccer team that endured a single grim campaign in the USISL A-League during the summer of 1997. The A-League was the 2nd Division of men’s pro soccer in the U.S. at the time, one level below Major League Soccer. The Sundogs’ troubles were many, but a big one was their choice of stadium: the 64,000 Citrus Bowl, a former World Cup (1994) and Olympic (1996) stadium. The ‘Dogs averaged an invisible 1,278 fans per match in the gargantuan bowl.
The Colorado Crush were Denver’s entry in the Arena Football League for six seasons between 2003 and 2008. This was Denver’s second go round with the Arena League, following the earlier Denver Dynamite that played at McNichols Arena between 1987 and 1991. The Crush played at Pepsi Arena, the city’s NBA/NHL palace that had replaced McNichols in 1999, and were owned by a trio of local sports titans: Broncos owner Pat Bowlen, Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway, and Nuggets/Avalanche owner Stan Kroenke. The Crush’s finest hour came at the end of the 2005 season, when they defeated the Georgia Force 51-48 in Arena Bowl XIX.
A detailed history of the New Orleans Buccaneers (1967-1970) a founding member of the ABA that played three seasons in the Big Easy and later moved to Memphis.
The Sacramento Gold Miners were the first U.S.-based franchise admitted into the Canadian Football League during the CFL’s short-lived American expansion adventure from 1993 to 1995. The Gold Miners weren’t a brand new operation though. Owner Fred Anderson’s team previously played in the NFL-sponsored World League of American Football (WLAF) as the Sacramento Surge in 1991 and 1992. After NFL owners pulled the plug on the WLAF in September 1992, Anderson applied for entry to the CFL. The team retained its color scheme, Head Coach Kay Stephenson and a number of players from the WLAF era, but changed its name upon joining the CFL.
