The New Orleans Pelicans were a One-Year Wonder that competed in Minor League Baseball’s Class AAA American Association during the summer of 1977. The Pels served as the top farm club of the National League’s St. Louis Cardinals. After one summer in the Superdome, the ball club moved away to Springfield, Illinois prior to the 1978 season.
The NBA’s Utah Jazz began life as the New Orleans Jazz expansion franchise in 1974. New Orleans’ elite player was former LSU star Pete Maravich, but the Jazz never managed to surround Pistol Pete with enough complimentary talent to break through. The Jazz failed to post a winning record or make the playoffs during their five seasons in the Big Easy from 1974 to 1979. The franchise moved to Salt Lake City in the spring of 1979.
The New Orleans Nets were a six-person, co-ed professional tennis team that played out of the Superdome for the final season of the original World Team Tennis (WTT) league during the summer of 1978. The team also used the name “Sunbelt Nets”. The Nets roster included NBA star John Lucas, playing WTT during his summer break from the Houston Rockets and Lucas’ mixed-doubles partner, Dr. Renee Richards. Richards was a 43-year old trans woman whose efforts to play in the women’s field at the 1976 and 1977 U.S. Open tournaments became a cultural flashpoint during the late 1970’s.
Two-year Arena Football entry that set up shop at the Superdome in 1991 and 1992. Even among Arena Football diehards, the New Orleans Night are an obscure and rarely mentioned franchise. To the extent they are remembered at all, it is often for sporting garish Zubaz stripes on their uniforms as part of a 1991 promotional campaign with the flash-in-the-pan athletic apparel manufacturer.
The New Orleans Breakers were a relatively popular entry in the United States Football League during the spring of 1984. The team gained national attention by signing teenage Marcus Dupree to a $6 million contract after the ex-University of Oklahoma star dropped out of college. The Breakers got off to a hot start 5-0 start in league play that spring and brought in crowds of over 30,000 to the Superdome. But the USFL’s sudden lurch to move to a fall season in 1986 doomed the franchise in the Big Easy.
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