The Chicago Cougars were charter members of the WHA in 1972. The team played three seasons in the Windy City before folding in 1975. They are perhaps best remembered as the team that was displaced by Peter Pan.
Professional Football League of America (1967) Continental Football League (1968-1969) Born: 1967 Folded: Postseason 1969 First Game: Last Game: PFLA Championships: CoFL Championships: None Milton Frank Stadium Team Colors: Owner: Background Cool minor league football program (above right), purchased from an antique book dealer in Maryland this week. This 1967 championship
The Seattle Steelheads were members of the West Coast Negro Baseball Association (WCNBA) in that circuit’s only season, 1946. The team was actually the Harlem Globetrotters baseball club and returned to barnstorming when the WCNBA ceased operations.
The New York Americans hockey team played in the National Hocky League from 1925 until 1941. Just before the start of the 1941-42 season, they were renamed the Brooklyn Americans in name only, still playing their games in Manhattan, at Madison Square Garden. They folded in 1942.
Today we look at the original Portland Beavers baseball team of 1906-1972, the first and most enduring of three clubs to play under the Bevos name in the storied Pacific Coast League. When the team finally moved away to Spokane, Washington in early 1973, Portland became the last of the original six PCL cities of 1903 to lose its minor league baseball franchise. The second version of the Beavers would return to Portland’s Civic Stadium in 1978.
Throughout the 1990’s and into the early 2000’s, Milwaukee, Wisconsin was one of the most stable pro soccer scenes in the U.S. In late 2002, Milwaukee boasted both the reigning 2nd Division outdoor champions, the 10-year old Rampage, and the country’s longest running indoor soccer franchise, the Wave, about to enter their 19th season of competition. But in January 2003 the Rampage went out of business, foregoing the opportunity to defend their 2002 A-League title. The ownership of the Milwaukee Wave quickly stepped into the void, forming an expansion team known as Wave United to replace the Rampage in the outdoor A-League during the summer of 2003.
The Tennessee Valley Vipers was the name used by a pair of Huntsville, Alabama-based Arena Football franchises that played ten seasons between 2000 and 2010. The team was known as the Alabama Vipers during their final season. In their finest hour, the Vipers won the 2008 Arena Cup as champions of Arena Football 2, after the team’s barely used back-up quarterback Tony Colsten engineered a shocking road upset of the league’s best team.
The Virginia Squires of the American Basketball Association (ABA) began as the Oakland Oaks. After two seasons they were sold and moved to Washington, D.C., for one year, before moving to the Tidewater region of Eastern Virginia. They folded in 1976, just a month shy of the NBA-ABA merger.
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.
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