The Carolina Cougars played in the American Basketball Association (ABA) from 1969 to 1974. The team was established as the Houston Mavericks and spent two seasons in Texas before being purchased by North Carolina syndicate. The team was sold and moved to Missouri and became the Spirits of St. Louis in 1974.
This springtime pro football team from the United States Football League was notable for pulling one of the craziest and most self-destructive trades in pro sports history. Thanks to some ownership shenanigans, the Blitz swapped basically their entire (superb) roster and coaching staff for the threadbare roster of the wretched Arizona Wranglers prior to the USFL’s second season. Despite the chaos, the Blitz featured not one but two future Hall-of-Fame head coaches during their brief two-year existence.
The Kanas City Monarchs are perhaps the best known Negro Leagues baseball team of all time. They played from the inception of the first Negro league in 1920 until finishing up as a barnstorming team in 1965.
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 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.
Reno 1868 FC was a 2nd Division pro soccer club affiliated on the technical side with the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer and operated on the business side by the front office staff of Minor League Baseball’s Reno Aces of the Pacific Coast League. 1868 played out of Greater Nevada Field, the Aces’ 9,000-seat baseball stadium, from 2017 through 2020.
The New York CityHawks enjoyed a brief two-year fling in the Arena Football League. The team performed quite poorly both on the field and at the box office. The team finished 2-12 in 1997 and 3-11 in 1998. The CityHawks marked the Arena Football League’s second failed attempt to establish a franchise in the nation’s biggest media market. An earlier AFL franchise – the New York Knights – played a single summer at the Garden in 1988 before vanishing. Read more…
The Oakland Oaks were charter members of the American Basketball Association (ABA) and were introduced, along with the rest of the new league, on February 2, 1967. The franchise’s initial investors were league co-founder Dennis Murphy, along with Los Angeles-based insurance executive S. Kenneth Davidson. The latter pulled in entertainer Pat Boone, an avid basketball fan.
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.
*Like our new look? Next up: site speed. You can help with a tip for our Speed Fund today. Thank you!
