Atlantic Coast Football League (1964)
Continental Football League (1965-1966)
Tombstone
Born: February 2, 1964 – ACFL expansion franchise
Folded: Spring 1967
First Game: August 15, 1964 (L 24-13 @ Harrisburg Capitols)
Last Game: November 19, 1966 (W 13-7 vs. Norfolk Neptunes)
Atlantic Coast Football League Championships: None
Continental Football League Championships: None
Stadium
Marketing
Team Colors:
Cheerleaders: The Rebelettes
Ownership
Owners:
- 1964: Richmond Rebels Professional Football Club, Inc. (Walter Gentry Jr., et al.)
- 1964-1966: Richmond Sports Club, Inc. (Milton Markel, W. Gibson Harris, et al.)
Our Favorite Stuff
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
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 February 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.
Former Philadelphia Eagles All-Pro end Pete Pihos coached the Rebels in 1964 and 1965. Former L.A. Rams and Detroit Lions halfback Steve Sucic replaced Pihos for the Rebels’ final season in 1966.
Demise & Aftermath
The Rebels typically announced crowds between 5,000 and 10,000 per game at Richmond’s City Stadium. The team was beset by financial difficulties from the outset. The team’s original ownership group, headed by Walter Gentry Jr., went bankrupt just two months in the Rebels debut season.
Another consortium of local businessmen swiftly stepped in to rescue the team. But after losing a reported $400,000 over the next two-and-a-half seasons (Petersburg Progress-Index 4/29/1967), the Rebels owners abandoned the franchise in April 1967.
Richmond got a ramshackle new semi-pro football team, the Mustangs, later in 1967. The Mustangs soon morphed into the far more respectable Roadrunners and secured a spot in the Atlantic Coast Football League in 1968. The ACFL team served as a farm club to the NFL’s New Orleans Saints from 1968 to 1970, dropping the Roadrunners name in favor of ‘Saints’ for their final season in the fall of 1970.
Four years after the Rebels’ demise, former Head Coach Pete Pihos was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame for his playing accomplishments with the Philadelphia Eagles from 1947 to 1955.
Richmond Rebels Shop
In Memoriam
Head Coach Pete Pihos (Rebels ’64-’65) passed away on August 16, 2011 at age 87. New York Times obituary.
Quarterback Merv Holland (Rebels ’64-’65) died on September 6, 2015 at age 72.
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