Charleston Rockets (1964-1968)

United Football League (1964)
Continental Football League (1965-1968)

Our Favorite Stuff

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Charleston Rockets
Logo T-Shirt

We love this Space Race-era pop art logo from West Virginia’s minor league gridiron gang of the 1960’s. Crowds of 5,000 – 10,000 weren’t unusual during the Rockets heyday at Laidley Field, which included a perfect 14-0 season in 1965.

This design is also available as a Hooded or Crewneck Sweatshirt, or as a Women’s V-neck or Tank Top today at Old School Shirts!

 

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Background

The Charleston Rockets were a minor league football team based in West Virginia during the 1960’s. The team originally formed in 1964 as an expansion club in the United Football League (UFL). The eight-team UFL featured teams in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Quebec City, plus an in-state rival for the Rockets, the Wheeling Ironmen.

The Rockets enjoyed a solid debut in the UFL in 1964 under head coach Perry Moss. Charleston’s 11-3 record included a perfect 7-0 slate at home at Laidley Field. Despite finishing with the second best record in the 8-team UFL, the Rockets missed the playoffs by virtue of finishing one game behind the division champion Canton Bulldogs in the league’s Western Division.

Into the Continental League

The UFL splintered and folded following the 1964 season. The two West Virginia clubs, Charleston and the Wheeling Ironmen, joined the Quebec Rifles (moved to Toronto) and the Indianapolis Warriors (shifted to Fort Wayne) to form the new Continental Football League in February 1965, along with a group of defectors from the Atlantic Coast Football League.

The Continental League kicked off with ten clubs in August 1965 with a geography ranging from Toronto in the north down to Richmond, Virginia and west across the Rust Belt to Indiana.

Perry Moss returned to lead the club for a second season and his Rockets were unstoppable during that fall of 1965. Charleston roared through the Continental League regular season with a perfect 14-0 record. On November 28th, 1965 the Rockets easily dismantled the Toronto Rifles 24-7 at Laidley Field in the Continental League championship game before 7,100 fans.

One key player from the 1965 Rockets championship squad was 23-year old defensive lineman Coy Bacon out of Jackson State University in Mississippi. Bacon would become one of the Continental League’s great success stories, finally working his way into the NFL at age 26 with the Los Angeles Rams in 1968. Bacon developed into one of the NFL’s top pass rushers of the 1970’s, earning three 2nd Team All-Pro nods with the Cincinnati Bengals.

Final Seasons

Moss and Bacon both departed after the Rockets’ 1965 championship season. The team remained competitive in 1966 posting a 10-4 record. On September 18th of that year, Perry Moss returned to Laidley Field with his new team, the Orlando Panthers. In an overtime thriller before a crowd of 10,106 Moss dealt the Rockets their first ever loss at Laidley Field, 27-24.

Strong as the Rockets were on the field, the team lost money in all five seasons of operation and the strain began to show. The team suffered a losing season (6-8) in 1967 and the club’s community stockholders put forward a motion to dissolve the team in April 1968. Fred Haddad, a co-founder of Charleston’s Heck discount store chain, rescued the Rockets at the 11th hour, securing a fifth and final season in 1968. But Haddad withdrew his support in January 1969 resulting in the club’s final closure.

The Continental League itself followed the Rockets to the grave the following year.

Aftermath

Coy Bacon was the last member of the Charleston Rockets active in professional football when he played his final snaps in 1983 as a member of the Washington Federals of the United States Football League.

Perry Moss continued his distinguished coaching career, becoming offensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears from 1970 to 1973. He enjoyed a successful second act as one early coaching pioneers in the new sport of Arena Football during the late 1980’s and 1990’s, taking three different teams to the Arena Bowl title game.

Laidley Field played host to a revived version of the Rockets from 1980-1982, then known as the West Virginia Rockets of the minor league American Football Association.

Charleston Rockets Shop

Our Favorite Stuff

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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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In Memoriam

Team owner Fred Haddad (Rockets ’69) died on January 13, 2003 at age 81. Haddad was a co-founder in 1959 of the Heck’s discount department store in Charleston. Heck’s eventually grew to a retailing giant with 170 stores across the Rust Belt and Mid-Atlantic states by the 1980’s.

Defensive lineman Coy Bacon (Rockets ’65) passed away at age 66 on December 22nd, 2008. New York Times obituary.

Head Coach Ken Carpenter (Rockets ’66), a first round draft choice of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns in 1950, passed on January 28th, 2011 at the age of 84.

Head Coach Perry Moss(Rockets ’64-’65), who directed the Rockets to the 1965 Continental League title, died on August 7th, 2014. Moss was 88 years old.

Downloads

10-2-1965 Charleston Rockets Roster

Links

Continental Football League Media Guides

Continental Football League Programs

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