The Denver Spurs started in the Western Hockey League in 1968. When that circuit folded, they joined the Central Hockey League in 1974. The following year, they joined the World Hockey Association, but moved to Ottawa halfway through the season.
The Victoria Steelers were a British Columbia-based minor league football team active during the late 1960’s. The club started out as a semi-pro outfit in the Pacific Football League in 1966. At the end of 1966, the Continental Football League launched a West Coast expansion and the Steelers stepped up to fully professional status in 1967. The club relocated to Spokane, Washington prior to the 1968 season.
The Cleveland Buckeyes started as the Cincinnati-Cleveland Buckeyes in 1942, before settling permanently in Northern Ohio in 1943. The club won two league titles as well as a Negro World Series championship.
In the professional sports franchise arms race of the 1970s, there were many casualties, particularly in the world of hockey. One of those was the expansion Kansas City Scouts.
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 New Jersey Stallions are a long-time youth club soccer program operating out of Clifton, New Jersey. But during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s the organization also operated men’s – and, briefly, women’s – pro & amateur teams in the United Soccer Leagues. The Stallions debuted in 1996 and the Lady Stallions women’s club joined the USL in 2003. Following the 2004 season, the Stallions shuttered both their men’s and women’s USL adult clubs.
This short-lived Arena Football League franchise was named after the Hooters restaurant chain. Owner Dave Lageschulte was one the early franchisees of the Hooters wings-and-boobs empire and developed the chain’s many South Florida restaurants. The team signed former Miami Dolphins stars Jim Jensen and Mark Duper and former U. of Miami Hurricanes notables Leonard Conley and Bryan Fortay in an effort to appeal to local fans.
A detailed history of the Miami Floridians, later just The Floridians, the former Minnesota Muskies that played four seasons in the Sunshine State before folding.
The history of the Ottawa Rough Riders Canadian football team stretches back to 1876 with the formation of an amateur rugby side known as the Ottawa Football Club. The team folded in 1996 after 120 years.
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