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The history of women's professional basketball in the US pre-dates the modern-day WNBA by at least two decades, when inveterate pro sports entrepreneur Bill Byrne launched the Women's Professional Basketball League (WBL) in 1978.  Taking cultural cues from the Equal Rights Amendment movement, the adoption of Title IX, Billie Jean King's landmark victory in tennis' "Battle of the Sexes," and a surp...

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...

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...

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 F...

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 th...

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 f...

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-care...

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 Wo...

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 N...

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 h...

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 sports...

Penn State University professor emeritus Murry Nelson ( Abe Saperstein and the American Basketball League, 1960–1963: The Upstarts Who Shot for Three and Lost to the NBA ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the oft-forgotten second incarnation of the ABL – and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer who willed it into being.  In this hidden gem of an episode, Nelson describes:  How the master prom...

National Soccer Hall of Fame legend Rick Davis joins Tim Hanlon direct from his family-owned/operated Ellsworth Steak House in Ellsworth, KS for a revealing conversation about his pioneering career as one of America's first pro soccer superstars.  Among the many highlights, Davis discusses:  the circumstances that vaulted him from AYSO youth soccer in Claremont, CA to international fame with the N...

This week, Tim Hanlon buckles up for a wild ride through the tumultuous early years of the original Major Indoor Soccer League with sports PR veteran Michael Menchel, in our longest and most anecdote-filled episode yet!  Menchel takes us on a head-spinning audio journey across some of the most memorable (and forgettable) franchises in professional indoor soccer history – including stops in Long Is...

Syndicated morning radio personality Terry Hanson ( The Big Show with John Boy & Billy ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the formative years of his renaissance career in sports and media, across three of the original North American Soccer League's more memorable franchises.  Hanson waxes nostalgic about doling out "Americanized" first names to the Serbian-infused roster of 1976's Rochester Lancers; mo...

Religious studies professor-turned-baseball-historian Bill Young ( J.L Wilkinson & the Kansas City Monarchs: Trailblazers in Black Baseball ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the life and legacy of one of baseball's most overlooked and underappreciated executive figures.  Young recalls the photograph at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City that inspired him to pursue the telling of Wilkinso...

Author and Cleveland native Jim Sulecki ( The Cleveland Rams: The NFL Champs Who Left Too Soon ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss his Pro Football Researchers Association award-winning book about the oft-forgotten first decade of one of the National Football League's most enduring franchises.   Sulecki describes the Cleveland Rams' inauspicious first season in the shaky second incarnation of the Americ...

Long-time Kansas City Chiefs public relations director Bob Moore joins Tim Hanlon to recount his pre-NFL baptism-by-fire tenure as communications lead for the United States Football League's most successful franchise, the Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars.  Moore recalls the instant credibility boost of snagging General Manager Carl Peterson from the cross-town NFL Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagl...

Perennial NASL and MISL soccer all-star Clyde Best ( The Acid Test: The Autobiography of Clyde Best ) joins Tim Hanlon from his native Bermuda to discuss his 1970s/80s soccer adventures in the United States, emanating from his stellar, but challenging beginnings with England's First Division West Ham United.   Best recalls his first matches in a five-team 1969 NASL, when the Hammers spent the summ...

Award-winning ESPN 30 For 30 sports documentarian Mike Jacobs ( The High Five ; The Pittsburgh Drug Trials ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss his new film Bump & Spike , which recounts the curious tale of the 1970s International Volleyball League – the short-lived pro co-ed circuit hatched by Hollywood moguls, fueled by a basketball legend, and ultimately undermined by a combination of sketchy ownershi...

Emmy Award-winning TV producer and ESPN 30 For 30 sports documentarian Dan Forer ( Free Spirits ; Mike and the Mad Dog ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the curious two-year odyssey of the American Basketball Association's colorful Spirits of St. Louis franchise, whose impact still continues to haunt the modern-day NBA, forty years after the team's demise.  Forer describes the importance of mercurial...

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.  H...

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. du...

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...

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, d...