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.
The Richmond Rebels were a financially distressed minor league football operation that wobbled through three seasons of play during the mid-1960’s. The Rebels formed in 1964 as an expansion team in the semi-pro Atlantic Coast Football League. The ACFL was a 14-team loop in 1964 with teams stretched the length of the Eastern seaboard from Atlanta to Portland, Maine. In 1965, the Rebels joined with three other ACFL clubs to split off from that league and join the new and more ambitious Continental Football League for the 1965 season.
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 Philadelphia Blazers were charter members of the World Hockey Association (WHA). However, after one season in the City of Brotherly Love, they moved to Vancouver.
The second incarnation of the Seattle Rainiers played in the Northwest League from 1972 through 1976. They were displaced when MLB’s Seattle Mainers arrived in 1977.
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 New Jersey Gladiators were an Arena Football League promotion that competed for two poorly attended seasons at the old Continental Airlines Arena in the Meadowlands in 2001 and 2002. The franchise was previously known as the Red Dogs from 1997 thru 2000, named thru a sponsorship with the briefly popular beer brand of the late 1990’s.
The Los Angeles Stars basketball team was a short-lived effort by the American Basketball Association to plant its flag in L.A. during the early years of its rivalry with the National Basketball Association. The Stars labored in the shadows of the NBA’s Lakers and never established a substantial following. Coached by Hall-of-Famer (and future Lakers coach) Bill Sharman, the Stars did enjoy a thrilling Cinderella playoff run at the end of their second and final season in L.A.
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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