The Harrisburg Capitols were a minor league football outfit in Pennsylvania’s capital city during the mid/late 1960’s. The Capitols were members of the Atlantic Coast Football League. The ACFL was a bus league with clubs clustered in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. From 1966 to 1969 Harrisburg served as a farm club for the NFL’s Baltimore Colts and the team went by the name “Capitol-Colts” during the 1968 and 1969 seasons.
Continental Football League (1966-1969) Atlantic Coast Football League (1970) Born: 1966 – The Newark Bears relocate to Orlando, FL Folded: Postseason 1970 First Game: August
Minor league football is – and always has been – so far off the radar in this country that it’s impossible to speak of there being any iconic teams. The sport offers nothing like the Hershey Bears hockey team or Rochester Red Wings baseball club that have entertained locals for upwards of a century. To the extent that minor and semi-pro football at least has a cult favorite team – the sport’s answer to the Durham Bulls – it may well be Pennsylvania’s short-lived Pottstown Firebirds of the defunct Atlantic Coast Football League.
The Springfield Acorns were a short-lived pro football team in Western Massachusetts during the early 1960’s. The Acorns competed in the Atlantic Coast Football League, a minor league loop that featured teams from Maine to Georgia. The Acorns were notable for their quarterbacks. In 1963, rookie signal caller James Traficant took over the starting job at midseason. Another rookie, Dan Henning, replaced Traficant in 1964. Traficant went on to become a notorious U.S. Congressman from Ohio eventually felled by a federal prison sentence in 2002. Henning later served as an NFL head coach with the San Diego Chargers and Atlanta Falcons.
The Westchester Bulls were a minor league farm club of the NFL’s New York Giants in 1967 and 1968. The team played its home games out of Memorial Stadium in Mt. Vernon, New York. The Bulls moved to Long Island for the 1969 season.
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