Good Seats Still Available

Good Seats Still Available

By Tim HanlonSportsHistory
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Good Seats Still Available episodes

  • 007: "Krazy" George Henderson & The Art of Pro Sports Cheerleading

    America's most famous professional sports cheerleader "Krazy" George Henderson (Still Krazy After All These Cheers) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss some of the wackiest adventures from his 40+ years of live performances – and how a self-described shy, mediocre schoolteacher ultimately followed his passion to a unique and storied career converting passive game-day attendees into cheering fanatics. Henderson (along with his signature drum!) recounts how a school field trip to an Oakland Seals NHL hockey game led to his first sustaining professional gig; describes how he and the NASL's San Jose Earthquakes changed the face of professional soccer in the mid-1970s; recalls how his success with the NFL's Houston Oilers almost led to banishment from performing at pro football games; and breaks down the chronology of the formative elements of his most famous in-stadium creation – The Wave.

    1 hr 14 min
  • 006: Columnist Paul Gardner & the Original North American Soccer League

    Legendary Soccer America columnist Paul Gardner (The Simplest Game: The Intelligent Fan's Guide to the World of Soccer; Soccer Talk: Paul Gardner on Soccer) joins Tim Hanlon to wax nostalgic on his unlikely journey from fledgling British pharmacist to America's most persistently influential soccer commentator. Gardner recounts the chaotic formation of the modern professional game in the U.S. during the 1960s; recalls how ambitious sports entrepreneurs like the International Soccer League's Bill Cox, and greedy corporate owners like the United Soccer Association's Madison Square Garden were quickly chagrined by the machinations of soccer's international governing body; describes how a complex Welsh-born, player-turned-NASL-commissioner curiously nudged him into national TV game commentating; remembers when he first recognized pro soccer had finally "arrived" in America (ironically, while out of the country); and suggests that a revised U.S. corporate tax code may have helped hasten the demise of an already-wobbly NASL as the 1980s beckoned

    1 hr 34 min
  • 005: Bobby Moffat & and the 1970s NASL Dallas Tornado

    Former Dallas Tornado defensive stalwart Bobby Moffat (The Basic Soccer Guide) joins Tim Hanlon to reminisce about life in the 1970s North American Soccer League, and how his commitment to nurturing the game's grass roots in the Metroplex became the envy of US soccer enthusiasts during a tenuous decade for the sport. Moffat recounts how not-so-glamorous off-the-field jobs helped him and most of his teammates make ends meet; how Dallas' 1971 marathon overtime-riddled championship season helped usher in needed tie-breaking into NASL games; how the Tornado became the last-minute exhibition foil for Pele's 1975 New York Cosmos national TV debut (despite having played a league match 1,800 miles away in San Antonio the night before); and why the NASL "lost the plot" when it came to capitalizing on the indoor game.

    58 min
  • 004: Author Matthew Algeo & the NFL's 1943 "Steagles"

    Author Matthew Algeo (Last Team Standing: How the Steelers and the Eagles – "The Steagles" – Saved Pro Football During World War II) joins Tim Hanlon all the way from Maputo, Mozambique to discuss the marriage of convenience that literally saved the National Football League from collapse in 1943. Algeo describes how a desperate Art Rooney scrambled to save his Pittsburgh Steelers franchise, depleted by wartime military call-ups; how a hastily assembled squad of ragtag draft rejects practiced football at night while maintaining defense jobs by day (including one player who worked on the eventual war-ending Manhattan Project); why the "Phil-Pitt Combine" wore Eagles colors and played more home games in Philadelphia than in Pittsburgh; and, in a PODCAST EXCLUSIVE, why the story of the Steagles just might soon be coming to a theatre near you.

    57 min
  • 003: Author Michael MacCambridge on Lamar Hunt & the American Football League

    Sports author/historian Michael MacCambridge (America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation; Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the legacy of Lamar Hunt – the most unlikely of sports executive pioneers – and the outsized role he played in modernizing 1960s pro football into the enduring American sports juggernaut it is today. MacCambridge recounts how a strong rebuff from the stodgy 1950s NFL establishment galvanized Hunt's determination to disrupt the football status quo, how the AFL's "Foolish Club" of owners persevered through staggering financial losses, how Kansas City mayor Harold Roe "Chief" Bartle wooed Hunt and his flailing Dallas Texans franchise to the City of Fountains, and the karmic irony of the AFL Chiefs' victory over Max Winter's NFL Minnesota Vikings in the final AFL-NFL Super Bowl (IV) in 1970.

    1 hr 21 min
  • 002: Sports Executive Andy Crossley & the WPS Boston Breakers

    Fellow defunct pro sports enthusiast (Fun While It Lasted) and former Boston Breakers General Manager, Andy Crossley, joins Tim Hanlon to discuss his rollicking ride on the Women's Professional Soccer league roller coaster in the late 2000s, and why the second major attempt at professionalizing the women's game in the U.S. fell apart after just three seasons. Crossley recounts why Harvard's archaic on-campus football stadium became the oddly natural choice for Breakers home games, the moment when he first recognized the WPS business model was doomed, how an Internet telephone entrepreneur's obsession with the U.S. Women's National team hastened the league's demise, and why he doesn't expect any Christmas cards from Hope Solo anytime soon.

    1 hr 40 min
  • 001: Documentarian Mark Greczmiel & the NHL's California Golden Seals

    TV producer Mark Greczmiel (E! True Hollywood Story) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss his labor-of-love documentary The California Golden Seals Story, and the colorful late 60s/early 70s National Hockey League franchise that inspired it. Greczmiel recounts the Seals' largely hapless record on the ice, tortuous ownership history (including a turn by tightfisted Oakland A's baseball impresario Charles O. Finley), unique approaches to gaining promotional "exposure," and why current fans of both the NHL's San Jose Sharks and Dallas Stars owe a debt of gratitude to a team remembered more for garish uniforms and white ice skates than their competitive hockey-playing prowess.

    1 hr 22 min

About Good Seats Still Available

From the publisher's feed

"Good Seats Still Available" is a curious little podcast devoted to the exploration of what used-to-be in professional sports. Each week, host Tim Hanlon interviews former players, owners,…

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