The Greensboro Generals were a long-running minor league outfit that was one of the first pro hockey teams to establish a following in the American South. The Generals formed as an Eastern Hockey League expansion franchise in 1959, the same year that the city of Greensboro, North Carolina opened up the 7,000-seater Greensboro Coliseum. Read more…
The Memphis Southmen, known colloquially as the “Grizzlies”, were a short-lived member of the World Football League (WFL) that played at the Liberty Bowl for parts of two seasons in 1974 and 1975. In an era when the NFL offered no free agency, the threat of jumping to the WFL offered a brief window of leverage for NFL stars seeking better contracts. The Southmen garnered national headlines (and the cover of Sports Illustrated) when they successfully lured the trio of Larry Csonka, Paul Warfield and Jim Kiick away from the Miami Dolphins for the 1975 season. All three stars suited up for Memphis that fall, but by that time the WFL was already on its last legs. The league disbanded that October without completing its regular season schedule.
Doomed, totally forgotten minor league basketball effort that flamed out in Baltimore after a couple of months in early 1979. Team onwer Fred Keller hired ABA and NBA veteran Larry Cannon to coach the team. Cannon, the #5 overall pick in the 1969 NBA draft, got the team off to a 9-5 start. But that wasn’t good enough for Keller, who fired him in December and took the coaching reigns himself. Read more…
The 1975 Portland Thunder were the Rose City’s second and final go-round with the World Football League, a ramshackle mid-70’s start-up that briefly sought to challenge the NFL for top collegiate and veteran stars. The Thunder followed on the feels of the Portland Storm, who played in WFL’s debut season of 1974 before tax problems and bounced checks drove the team out of business. Like the Storm before them, the similarly-named Thunder dressed in green & blue and played at Civic Stadium. The Thunder had a record of 4-7 when the WFL went out of business midway through its second campaign in October 1975.
The Tulsa Mustangs were a minor-league football outfit that last for only 5 games of a planned 16-game schedule in the American Football Association in 1979. The team had a 1-4 record at the time they folded in midseason. The AFA was a southern U.S. minor league that stretched from Jacksonville to San Antonio and as far north as Louisville during the 1979 season. Read more…
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