Continental Football League (1967)
Tombstone
Born: 1967 – COFL expansion franchise
Folded: August 30, 1967
First Game: August 26, 1967 (L 37-13 vs. Seattle Rangers)
Last Game: August 26, 1967 (L 37-13 vs. Seattle Rangers)
Continental Football League Championships: None
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Ownership
Owner: Shelby Calhoun
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Continental Football League
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Variously described as everything from “semi-pro” football to the “third Major League” behind the NFL and AFL during the late 1960’s, the Continental Football briefly established a sprawling network of pro football clubs that stretched from Florida to Mexico City to British Columbia. The Continental League helped launch the careers of Hall-of-Famers Bill Walsh and Ken Stabler and other NFL stars of the 1970’s including Otis Sistrunk, Bob Kuechenberg and Coy Bacon.
Our friends at Old School Shirts make the only Continental League shirt we’ve found and like all of their retro Americana tees, it’s soft and fits great!
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Background
This doomed, obscure minor league football outfit played just one regular season game in the Continental Football League (1965-1969) in the summer of 1967 before going out of business. The Long Beach Admirals were one of seven clubs that formed the new seven-team Western Division of the CoFL as the league expanded to the West Coast for the first time in 1967.
The Admirals played a pair of road exhibitions in mid-August in preparation for the regular season home opener at Long Beach’s Veterans Memorial Stadium on August 26, 1967. When only 950 paying customers showed up for the opener, General Manager Bob Spitler panicked and declared the team couldn’t make a go of it in Long Beach. The Admirals petitioned Western Division officials to relocate immediately to Portland, Oregon. But the league wasn’t about to let a plum market like Portland go to an operation as rickety as the Admirals. Instead, they kicked the Admirals out of the league on August 30, 1967.
Spitler made some noises about moving to Portland anyway and playing an independent schedule, but the team was never heard from again.
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5 Responses
I was one of the 950 at that game. No memorabilia though.
Yeah – I don’t expect to ever have any Admirals memorabilia or documents to accompany this post. Unfortunately.
AC
How many “One-Game Wonders” have you found?
It’s one thing to fold before playing a game. But playing just one? That takes an unusual set of circumstances.
The Admirals are the first team I tagged with the “One-Game Wonder” tag. I can think of at least one other off the top of my head. There was an expansion team in the American Professional Soccer League in 1994 called the Houston Force. They played one game and folded. The league wiped the game off the records as well.
If anyone has a copy of the 1967 Long Beach Admirals team photo and team media guide, I would like to borrow them to copy for the free website. http://www.boosterclubcfl.com