Fort Worth Cavalry

Arena Football League (1994)

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Fort Worth Cavalry
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Monday Night Football at the Tarrant County Convention Center! Yes, a box office-killing slate of of Monday night games helped take the charge out of the Fort Worth Cavalry in 1994. This obscure Arena Football franchise only played six home games in Texas before vanishing into the abyss. 

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Background

The Fort Worth Cavalry were a failed Arena Football League franchise now residing in our One-Year Wonders file.  After one star-crossed season in Fort Worth, the team crossed the border into Mexico just in time for that country’s late 1994 financial meltdown and vanished without a trace.

The Cavalry started out in December 1993 as an AFL expansion franchise owned by minor league baseball investor Woody Kern.  The Cavalry replaced the AFL’s recently folded Dallas Texans (1990-1993) in the Dallas/Ft. Worth market.  Sales were sluggish from the outset, thanks in part to unfavorable dates at the Tarrant County Convention Center. The team played five of its six home dates on Monday nights.  The Cavalry’s home debut on May 23, 1994 against the Milwaukee Mustangs drew a bleak announced crowd of 2,852 spectators.

The team attracted some negative press in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when a group of fans at the home opener complained about the Cavalry’s prominent sponsorship and signage promoting Club Legends, a “totally nude” gentleman’s club.

The Cavalry featured a couple of ex-NFL journeymen. Kyle Mackey was the Miami Dolphins’ starting quarterback during the 1987 NFL players’ strike. Former Texas Christian All-American Kelley Blackwell played a full season for the Chicago Bears in 1992. The team backed into the playoffs with a 5-7 record. The Orlando Predators eliminated the Cavalry in the first round.  That road playoff loss on August 19, 1994 turned out to be the franchise’s final game.

Failed Move To Mexico

In September 1994, Woody Kern purchased the Arena Football League’s flagship franchise, the Tampa Bay Storm, and off-loaded the lowly Cavalry to Doug Logan and Mexico/Illinois event promotion company OCESA.  Logan had some history with the Arena League. He was the former manager of the Rockford MetroCentre in Illinois, where he helped to promote the Arena Football League’s first “test game” in 1986, a year before the league formally debuted.

Logan and OCESA planned to move the Cavalry to Mexico City’s 17,800-seat Palacio de los Deportes for the 1995 season as part of a minor league entertainment package that would also include a Continental Basketball Association franchise. The CBA club, known as the Mexico City Aztecas, actually got off the ground and managed to play a single season. But the Mexican peso crashed in December 1994, plunging the country into financial crisis. OCESA pulled out of its Mexican boondoggle by the middle of 1995. The Arena Football franchise vanished without further mention.

Arena Football returned to the Dallas/Ft. Worth region in 2002 with the formation of the Dallas Desperados (2002-2008), owned by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

Fort Worth Cavalry Shop

Fort Worth Cavalry Video

Fort Worth Cavalry vs. Milwaukee Mustangs at Tarrant County Convention Center.  May 23, 1994.

In Memoriam

Cavalry owner Woody Kern died on January 7, 2014. Kern was 66 years old. Tampa Bay Times obituary.

Links

Arena Football League Media Guides

Arena Football League Programs

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