Tag: Gator Bowl

1983 Jacksonville Tea Men Soccer

Jacksonville Tea Men (1980-1984)

June 6, 2015

Jacksonville’s first professional soccer team was the oddly named “Tea Men”. The Teas arrived in 1981, starting out in the top flight North American Soccer League and the 80,000-seat Gator Bowl before gradually self-relegating to cheaper, lower division leagues and minor league baseball’s Wolfson Park by their final season in 1984. The strange moniker carried over from the team’s previous home in New England (Boston), where the Tea Men name had a double meaning, referring both to the Boston Tea Party protest of 1773 and the team’s original corporate owner, the Lipton Tea Company. The Teas were champions of the American Soccer League in 1983.

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Jacksonville Robins Football

Jacksonville Robins

March 20, 2015

The Jacksonville Robins were a minor league football club that played at the Gator Bowl for four seasons from 1962 through 1965. The Robins won the championship of the eight-team Southern Football League in 1963. The club’s rosters featured a number of former Florida State Seminoles, including quarterback Ed Trancygier, running backs Happy Fick and Fred Pickard and tight end/kicker Possum Lee. The team changed its named to the Jacksonville Jaguars in 1966 and disbanded less than a year later.

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Jacksonville Bulls United States Football League

Jacksonville Bulls

April 6, 2013

When it comes to the United States Football League, the 1980’s spring football adventure that still enjoys a sizable cult following today, you might say the Jacksonville Bulls are the team that time forgot.  The Bulls, for example, barely merit a mention in director Mike Tollin’s definitive and affectionate Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL? documentary for ESPN’s 30-for-30 film series. So let me make a brief case for why the Jacksonville Bulls deserve a lot more love from retro football fetishists.

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1975 Jacksonville Express program from the World Football League

Jacksonville Express

January 28, 2013

The Jacksonville Express was a franchise that existed for part of one season in the World Football League during the summer and autumn of 1975.  The WFL was an under-funded effort to challenge the NFL head-to-head in the fall, along the lines of the AFL-NFL rivalry of the 1960’s. Jacksonville was one of the league’s original cities in 1974, but the Jacksonville Sharks club went kaput midway through the season. The WFL took another crack at Jacksonville in 1975 with the formation of the Express. But this time the entire league folded halfway through the regular season on October 22nd. The Express had a 6-5 record when their season was cut short.

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Illustrations of owner Fran Monaco and Head Coach Bud Asher on the cover of the 1974 Jacksonville Sharks media guide from the World Football League

Jacksonville Sharks (1974)

January 20, 2013

The Jacksonville Sharks were a high profile flop in the World Football League.  The poorly financed club is remembered primarily for going out of business in the middle of the league’s first season in October 1974. The Sharks debut on July 11, 1974 seemed promising.  A huge announced crowd of 59,112 showed up at the Gator Bowl to watch the Sharks defeat the New York Stars 14-7. The next Sharks home game on July 24th drew over 46,000.  But word soon got out that many of the tickets were freebies. By September, crowds dwindled to fewer than 20,000 per game.

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