Arizona Wranglers

United States Football League (1984-1985)

Background

The Arizona Wranglers were one of the USFL’s charter members. The franchise was originally awarded to Alex Spanos, who planned to place the team in Los Angeles. However, he bailed out after securing a minority interest in the San Diego Chargers. 

The owners of the new league’s Bay Area franchise, which would become the Oakland Invaders, real estate executives Jim Joseph and Tad Taube, flipped a coin to decide who would become the new owner of the Los Angeles franchise. Joseph won the toss and got the USFL rights to L.A. selling his stake in the Bay Area team to Taube in the process.

Around the same time, the owners of the USFL’s San Diego franchise, cable magnates Bill Daniels and Daniel Harmon, were having trouble securing a lease at Jack Murphy Stadium and finally gave up. The USFL brass felt the duo, with their vast cable TV experience, would be perfect to run the Los Angeles franchise and compelled Joseph to surrender the rights to the L.A. market paving the way for Daniels and Harmon to establish the Los Angeles Express.

Joseph acquiesced but stayed in the league establishing a team in Phoenix and naming it the Arizona Wranglers. He stuck to the plan outlined by USFL founder Don Dixon and aggressively marketed the team in the Copper State. 

Joseph, nonetheless, lost millions of dollars on the franchise, which wasn’t unexpected. However, he was a little surprised by the lack of enthusiasm for the team in Phoenix.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ted Diethrich, who owned the Chicago Blitz, was looking for a way to be closer to his home and business interests in his hometown of Phoenix. The Blitz, successful on the field, was a disaster at the gate. Indeed, one of the city’s previous rebel teams, the Chicago Fire of the World Football League (1974), had out-drawn them at Solider Field.  

Diethrich and Joesph then engineered a deal in which the Blitz was sold to a surgeon buddy of Diethrich’s named James Hoffman. Joseph then sold the Wranglers to Diethrich, who turned around and swapped operations with Hoffman, including head coach and team chairman George Allen and his staff, players, and front-office personnel. Diethrich wanted to take the Blitz name to Phoenix as well, but Hoffman put the kibosh on that. 

The “old” Blitz continued their winning ways as the “new” Wranglers, with two-time Coach of the Year and Washington D.C. football legend Allen leading Arizona to a 12-9 record and a Western Division crown in 1984. However, they lost the 1984 championship game to the Philadelphia Stars.

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