Good Seats Still Available

At the dawn of the Roaring Twenties, the National Football League was a mere footnote in the American sports scene, when matchups were played on dirt fields by vagabond athletes who would beat up or punch out their opponents for fifty bucks a game. But one team during that era was different – the Oorang Indians. Founded by an ambitious dog breeder, comprised only of Native American players, and coached by a national multi-sport superstar (and charter pro football Hall of Famer), the Indians barnstormed their way through the NFL in 1922-23 – becoming an instant hit in virtually every city they played. NFL historian Chris Willis (Walter Lingo, Jim Thorpe, and the Oorang Indians: How a Dog Kennel Owner Created the NFL's Most Famous Traveling Team) joins Tim Hanlon to recount the story of this unique franchise and curious forgotten chapter of professional football history, including:

• How a publicity-hungry dog kennel owner named Walter Lingo convinced the country's greatest athlete Jim Thorpe to join him in hatching a pro football team in a league barely two years old;
• How tiny La Rue, Ohio (population: 747) became (and remains) the smallest town ever to house not only an NFL franchise, but any professional team in any league in the United States;
• How Lingo used the spectacle of the Olympic-famous Thorpe and his all Native-American squad to help advertise his kennel and sell his pure-bred Airedale Terriers;
• Why halftime entertainment was more important to Lingo than winning or losing on the field; and
• Why players like Long Time Sleep, Joe Little Twig, Baptiste Thunder, and Xavier Downwind never saw NFL action again after the Indians folded in 1924.

Thanks to Podfly and Audible for their sponsorship of this week's episode!

On January 20, 1968, a frenzied crowd of 52,693 packed the Houston Astrodome to witness the #2-ranked University of Houston Cougars nip the #1 (and previously undefeated) UCLA Bruins in a college basketball spectacle that legendarily became the sport's "Game of the Century." In addition to the record-sized gate, it was the first-ever college game to be televised nationally in prime time – and it was sports entrepreneur Eddie Einhorn's scrappy little independent network of affiliated stations called the TVS Television Network that brought it to millions of TV viewers. Calling all the shots from the production truck was veteran TV sports director Howard Zuckerman – who quickly became the backbone for the fledgling ad hoc network's subsequent coverage of not only college hoops, but also two of the most colorful pro sports leagues of the 1970s – the World Football League and the North American Soccer League. Zuckerman joins host Tim Hanlon to recount some of his most memorable (and forgettable) moments in TVS history, including:

• Surviving a power outage in the middle of the WFL's first-ever national telecast from Jacksonville;
• Managing a motley crew of rotating guest commentators for WFL broadcasts, including the likes of George Plimpton, Burt Reynolds and McLean Stevenson;
• Hastily reorienting weekly WFL production travel plans as teams suddenly relocated or folded;
• Faking on-field injuries during NASL telecasts to allow for ad hoc commercial breaks;
• The origins of the specially-composed TVS theme song and its orchestral big band sound; and
• Post-TVS work, including the Canadian Football League's Las Vegas Posse, and the worldwide music landmark event Live Aid.

Thank you Audible and Podfly for supporting this episode!

The Memphis Tigers professional football team of the late 1920s and early 1930s never played a down in the National Football League, but that didn't stop them from becoming one of the era's most successful clubs – including laying a legitimate claim as the sport's national champions in 1929. Author/historian Wylie McLallen (Tigers by the River: A True and Accurate Tale of the Early Days of Pro Football) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the story of the Tigers' exploits in the Depression Era world of "independent" gridiron competition – as well as the team's sizable role in helping shape the early years of organized American professional football, including:

• Becoming one of the first competitive pro squads to emerge from outside the sport's traditional Northeast and Midwest strongholds;
• Notching signature 1929 wins over the NFL's formidable Chicago Bears and previously undefeated champion Green Bay Packers;
• Declining an offer to subsequently join the NFL in 1930, as team owners struggled to keep the team financially alive;
• Leveraging their on-field success into forming a challenger (and decidedly Southern) "American Football League" in 1934; and
• Succumbing to macroeconomic realities in 1935, but enduring for future generations as the officially designated nickname for the University of Memphis' athletic teams.

We love our friends at Audible and Podfly – and you should too!

Fox Sports soccer rules analyst and newly minted National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee Dr. Joe Machnik has done just about everything across the American soccer landscape in his 60+ year career. As a player, coach, referee, administrator, match commissioner, and soccer camp (No.1 Soccer Camps) pioneer, "Dr. Joe" has had a direct hand in helping achieving some of the sport's major milestones in the US at virtually every level – amateur, collegiate, professional, and international. Entwined within that legacy were memorable stops in oft-forgotten places like the original Major Indoor Soccer League, the scrappy American Indoor Soccer Association, and the chaotic early days of Major League Soccer – all of which host Tim Hanlon obsessively grills Machnik on in this episode, including his:

• Instrumental role in crafting and codifying the professional indoor soccer rulebook for the MISL;
• Championing of the MISL's novel move to hire full-time professional referees;
• Indisputable memory of the 1981 MISL All-Star Game at New York's Madison Square Garden, and its role in helping birth Arena Football;
• Coaching travails with the once-mighty New York Arrows, depleted by major player trades and an ownership change;
• Frequent bus rides in the decidedly minor league AISA; and
• Fortuitous friendship with an AISA arena owner in Rockford, IL that led to a pivotal role in stabilizing the launch of Major League Soccer.

Thanks to Audible and Podfly for their support of the podcast!

Before the modern-day New York Jets of today's NFL – before Joe Namath, before the infamous "Heidi Game," before the guaranteed Super Bowl III victory – there were the New York Titans. A charter member of the upstart American Football League in 1960, the underfunded Titans played for three seasons to meager crowds in Upper Manhattan's decrepit Polo Grounds, flirting with bankruptcy and collapse from virtually day one. Author/historian Bill Ryczek (Crash of the Titans: The Early Years of the New York Jets and the AFL) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the Jets' ignominious beginnings as the Titans, including notable performances by:

• Owner Harry Wismer, the volatile sportscaster with a talent for hustling, a penchant for drinking, and a habit of bouncing paychecks;
• Head coach Sammy Baugh, the prescient hall-of-fame player who refused to show up for a press conference announcing his signing until he was paid his full salary in advance – and in cash;
• Successor (and first-time) head coach Clyde "Bulldog" Turner, who inherited a dispirited squad weary of uncertain finances, inadequate publicity, and front office instability;
• AFL commissioner Joe Foss, the constant Wismer foe, whose tolerance was tested until ultimately pushed to seize control of the franchise; and
• William Shea, the New York attorney whose dream for a Continental League baseball franchise in a newly-constructed Flushing Stadium materialized too late to save Wismer's foundering Titans, but eventually catalyzed the re-born Jets.

This week's episode is sponsored by Audible and Podfly!

Award-winning British documentarian Daniel Gordon (Hillsborough; 9.79*; The Game of Their Lives) joins Tim Hanlon from London to discuss his new ESPN Films 30 for 30 feature George Best: All By Himself – and the enigmatic soccer star whose life story it depicts. Gordon reveals:

• Why he was attracted to the story of George Best, despite others' previous attempts to tell it;
• How Best's early-career interviews with the British media while at Manchester United became a hauntingly predictive narrative device for the film;
• Why the vibrantly ascendant mid-1970s North American Soccer League became an attractive alternative to Best's post-ManU European wanderings;
• How the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of the NASL itself became a metaphor for Best's life and career – including the irony of his Budweiser-sponsored NASL "Goal of the Year" in 1981; and
• The complex legacy Best left behind, despite his later-life admonitions to "remember the football."

This week's episode is sponsored by Audible!

Author/historian David Jordan (The Athletics of Philadelphia: Connie Mack's White Elephants; The A's: A Baseball History) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the first incarnation of one of Major League Baseball's most enigmatic franchises. Jordan discusses how the Philadelphia As:

• Helped launch the American League as a charter franchise in 1901;
• Dominated the majors with six league pennants, three World Series titles and two 100+ win seasons in its first 15 years;
• Were dismantled by long-time manager Connie Mack in the 1914 off-season after losing (or throwing?) the Fall Classic to the "Miracle" Boston Braves;
• Posted the worst-ever record (36-117; .235) in baseball history two years later, and finished last every season thereafter until 1922;
• Rose from the ashes to again become baseball's most dynastic team in the late 1920s/early 1930s – rivaling that of the vaunted New York Yankees; and
• Succumbed to Depression-era economic realities that slowly drained the team's talent and challenged management's finances enough to push the team to ultimately relocate to greener pastures in 1954.

We thank our friends at Audible for helping sponsor this week's episode!

Award-winning Cleveland Plain Dealer sports columnist Bill Livingston (George Steinbrenner's Pipe Dream: The ABL Champion Cleveland Pipers) joins Tim Hanlon to delve deeper into the history of the ill-fated 1960s American Basketball League – this time through the lens of one of its (and ultimately, one of pro sports') most combustible figures. Livingston describes how Pipers owner (and future New York Yankees "Boss") George Steinbrenner:

• Retooled a local Cleveland industrial amateur team into a fledgling pro club with NBA ambitions;

• Traded a player at halftime of a league game, and fired his collegiate hall-of-fame coach in mid-season – and still won a championship;

• Convinced a risk-averse college star named Jerry Lucas to spurn surefire NBA stardom with the Cincinnati Royals for partial ownership/oversight of an ambitious, yet financially wobbly ABL franchise; and

• Outmaneuvered a similarly-aspirant Abe Saperstein in the race to secure a coveted NBA franchise, only to hasten the demise of the ABL and the financial viability of the Pipers in the process.

Thank you Audible for sponsoring this week's episode!

National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee and three-time ABC-TV "Superstars" champion Kyle Rote, Jr. joins Tim Hanlon from his home in Memphis for an in-depth and wide-ranging conversation about his trailblazing journey as America's first true native-born professional soccer star.

Along the way, Rote, Jr. reveals:

• How a fortuitous heart-to-heart with his famous football star-father helped convince him to choose soccer over football for his pro career;
• How a standout Rookie of the Year season with the 1973 Dallas Tornado helped thrust him into the North American Soccer League's national marketing spotlight;
• The remarkable impact of winning a made-for-TV athletic competition against the biggest stars of the "traditional" sports world;
• The unique relationship he developed with the New York Cosmos' international legend Pelé, and the public relations narrative the NASL built around them;
• How lucrative marketing endorsements made up for embarrassingly low-paying player contracts;
• The serendipitous story of how he helped rescue an MISL team from the "hell" of Hartford; and
• The unmistakable higher power that continually guided him through the ups and downs of professional athletics – both on the field and off.

This week's episode is brought to you by our friends at Audible!

Pro Football Researchers' Association president Ken Crippen (The Original Buffalo Bills: A History of the All-America Football Conference Team; The All-America Football Conference: Players, Coaches, Records, Games & Awards) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the upstart pro football circuit that gave the war-weary NFL a formidable challenge in the late 1940s. Crippen describes:

• How a newspaper sportswriter from Chicago convinced big money investors spurned by the NFL to start a directly competitive alternative league;
• The NFL's public attempts to minimize the credibility, yet private efforts to contain the success of the AAFC;
• The head-to-head battles between the leagues to dominate pro football in markets like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Cleveland;
• The immediate dominance and innovative approach of Paul Brown's Cleveland Browns, who many felt were the best team across both leagues;
• Why the Browns, San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Colts were ultimately absorbed by the NFL, but the Buffalo Bills weren't; and
• The controversy among football historians around why the AAFC's game records are still not "official" in the eyes of the NFL, despite being recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Thank you Audible for sponsoring this week's episode!