Spokane Shockers

Continental Football League (1968-1969)

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Continental Football League
Logo T-Shirt

 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 short-lived minor league football team called Spokane’s Joe Albi Stadium home for two seasons in the autumn of 1968 and 1969.  The Spokane Shockers served as a developmental team for the Oakland Raiders in 1969 and, less formally, in 1968 as well.

Pro Debut of Ken Stabler

The team is best remembered today as the remote outpost where Raiders legend Ken Stabler began his professional career with a pair of appearances late in the fall of 1968.  Stabler, Oakland’s 2nd round draft pick out of the University of Alabama that spring, had a balky knee and would spend the entire 1968 season on the Raiders’ taxi squad except for those two games in Spokane.  The Snake wouldn’t start a game in the NFL until 1971 or win the Raiders’ starting job until he was 28 years old in 1973. But in 1977 he led the Raiders to victory in Super Bowl XI. Stabler was elected posthumously to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016.

The Shockers were owned by a broad group of approximately 40 community stockholders. Each put up $2,000 to help bring the former Victoria (B.C.) Steelers of the Continental Football League to the Lilac City in early 1968.  Richard J. O’Neill of Moloney & O’Neill insurance was the President of the board.  Former University of Washington star Don McKeta was the driving force behind bringing the team to Spokane and served as Head Coach and General Manager during the 1968 season.

The End

The Shockers had a 3-9 record in 1968 and McKeta was replaced by Hugh “Bones” Taylor in 1969.  The team improved marginally to 5-9 in 1969, then went out of business along with the rest of the Continental Football League at the end of that season.

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SNAKE

The Legendary Life of Ken Stabler

By Mike Freeman

 

Mike Freeman’s 2016 tome is the first in-depth biography- excluding Stabler’s own 1986 auto-biography –  of one of the most talented and infamous legends of the 1970’s NFL.

Ken “The Snake” Stabler was the embodiment of the original Men in Black—the freewheeling, hard-hitting Oakland Raiders. The league’s first swashbuckling pass thrower, famous for come-from-behind drives late in the game, Stabler led the Raiders to their first Super Bowl championship. In an era dominated by gentleman quarterbacks like Roger Staubach and Bob Griese, this 1974 NFL MVP and 1977 Super Bowl champion was an iconoclast who partied as hard as he played and lived life unapologetically on his own—not the NFL’s—terms.

 

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In Memoriam

Quarterback Ken Stabler (Shockers ’68) passed away on July 8, 2015 following a battle with colon cancer. Snake was 69 years old. New York Times obituary.

Downloads

8-30-1969 Spokane Shockers Roster

Links

Continental Football League Media Guides

Continental Football League Programs

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