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Author and unwitting pro football historian Joe Ziemba ( When Football Was Football: The Chicago Cardinals and the Birth of the NFL ) help us set the record straight on the often-misunderstood history of the first incarnation of pro football's oldest continuous club – now know as the Arizona Cardinals. Arguably the least successful franchise in National Football League history, the Chicago version...

Veteran Missouri-area sportswriter Troy Treasure ( Icing on the Plains: The Rough Ride of Kansas City's NHL Scouts ) joins the podcast this week to delve into the mostly forgotten (and woeful) two-season saga of the 1974 National Hockey League expansion franchise now known as the New Jersey Devils. Along with the Washington Capitals, the Scouts were the last additions in the NHL's aggressive expan...

You can be forgiven if you never heard of the International Volleyball Association – the mid-1970s co-ed pro circuit that aimed to draft off the rising popularity of Olympic and beach volleyball during America's wildest sports decade – but the high-wattage media and entertainment moguls behind its creation at the time certainly cannot. The IVA was the brainchild of prolific Hollywood television an...

Marvin "Bad News" Barnes was considered a future Hall of Fame basketball player before he even graduated from college.  A standout at Providence (averaging 20.7 points and 17.9 rebounds a game, and leading the Friars to the NCAA Final Four in 1973), Barnes was a consensus 1974 All-American with the world at his fingertips. Although Barnes enjoyed two flamboyantly successful years in the American B...

We amp up the intellectual quotient this week with University of Illinois journalism professor emeritus Matt Ehrlich ( Kansas City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports Rivalry That Defined an Era ), who joins for a heady discussion around the most unlikely, yet intertwined of pro sports rivalries – and the turbulent 1960s from which it originated. Although Oakland, CA and Kansas City, MO are geographica...

We pick up where we left off in Episode 89 ( The NBA Buffalo Braves – With Tim Wendel ), with the continuing story of one of pro hoops' most forlorn franchises – today known as the Los Angeles Clippers. Author Mick Minas ( The Curse: The Colorful & Chaotic History of the LA Clippers ) joins the podcast from his home in Melbourne, Australia to help us go deep into the travails of a club labeled by...

By popular request, we begin our exploration of the enigmatic 1990s international experiment known (initially) as the World League of American Football with a deep dive into its first championship team – the London Monarchs – with author Alex Cassidy ( American Football's Forgotten Kings: The Rise and Fall of the London Monarchs ). Resurrected from an idea originated (but never launched) by the NF...

We "celebrate" the 2019 Miami Marlins' National League-worst 57-105 season with a look back to colorful 1950s-era Triple-A minor league franchise that laid the groundwork for South Florida's eventual ascension to the majors in 1993. Author and SABR historian Sam Zygner ( The Forgotten Marlins: A Tribute to the 1956-1960 Original Miami Marlins and Baseball Under the Palms: The History of Miami Mino...

Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame legend Dan Issel joins this week's 'cast to discuss his All-Star career in the American Basketball Association with two of the league's most (relatively) stable franchises – the Kentucky Colonels and the Denver Nuggets.  And a brief cup of coffee with one its shakiest, in between. After an outstanding, twice-named All-American collegiate career at the Univ...

Multi-talented singer-songwriter, photographer, and soon-to-be sports history documentarian Byron Motley joins the show this week to discuss his late father's colorful career as an umpire in baseball's legendary Negro Leagues – the subject of his 2007 collaborative oral history, Ruling Over Monarchs, Giants, and Stars . A child of Depression-era rural Alabama, a teenaged Bob Motley migrated north...

On August 20, 2019, the city of St. Louis, MO was officially awarded the 28th franchise in Major League Soccer, with an anticipated inaugural season beginning in 2022.  And while the club begins its efforts to get its team name, new downtown stadium and initial soccer operations in place, we take some time this week to reflect on the city's deep and rich soccer history – perhaps unmatched by any l...

The American Basketball Association was not founder Dennis Murphy's original intent.  Thwarted in his attempt to get the fast-growing city of Anaheim, CA (he was mayor of nearby Buena Park) into the fledgling American Football League during the mid-1960s, Murphy quickly pivoted his attention to basketball – reasoning that with only 12 teams in the staid, yet long-established National Basketball As...

Prolific Chicago Tribune sportswriter Mike Conklin ( Goal Fever! ; Transfer U. ) joins the podcast to help us go deep into the story of the North American Soccer League's twice-champion Chicago Sting – a club he covered extensively and exclusively from its little-noticed launch in late 1974 all the way through its breakthrough Soccer Bowl '81 title. The personal passion project of prominent Chicag...

UK sportswriter Tom Scholes ( Stateside Soccer: The Definitive History of Soccer in the United States ) joins host Tim Hanlon to discuss the surprisingly long, colorfully vibrant and regularly misunderstood history of the world's most popular sport in America. While even the most erudite of the game's international scholars mistakenly (though understandably) define the US pro game's epicenter as t...

After extraordinary listener response to our Episode #118 with David Levine a few months back, we bounce-pass our way back to the endlessly intriguing Continental Basketball Association for this week's conversation – this time with a focus on the league's travails during the 1990s, courtesy of the Fort Wayne (IN) Fury and its former radio voice/media relations director Rob Brown. More than forty y...

Before embarking on his incredible 29-year (and counting) run as play-by-play lead for NHL hockey's San Jose Sharks, NBC Sports California sportscaster Randy Hahn was first known to 1980s pro soccer audiences as the versatile radio and TV voice behind the short-lived Edmonton Drillers of the North American Soccer League as well as the dynastic San Diego Sockers of both the NASL and the Major Indoo...

Sportswriter Ron Synder ( The Baltimore Stallions: The Brief, Brilliant History of the CFL Champion Franchise ) joins to delve into the story of the mostly-forgotten team that revitalized Baltimore's pro football history and viability. When the National Football League's Baltimore Colts secretively absconded to Indianapolis in the wee hours of March 29, 1984, three decades of pro football history...

We amp up the intellectual quotient this week with Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger ( Ballpark: Baseball in the American City ), as we delve into the inextricably historical bond between the rise of America's favorite pastime and the evolution of the American city. From the first "saloons in the open air" of the late-1800s, such as Brooklyn, NY's Union Grounds; to the  or...

Brooklyn College women's soccer head coach and former NASL (Memphis Rogues, New England Tea Men) and ASL (New Jersey Americans) pro player Patrick Horne ( Black Pioneers of the North American Soccer League ) joins the podcast to help shine a light on the largely unrecognized contributions of black players to both the success of North America's first major foray into pro soccer, and the growth of t...

It's been nearly two years since our first look at baseball's still-revered Milwaukee Braves, and this week – courtesy of author/historian Patrick Steele ( Home of the Braves: The Battle for Baseball in Milwaukee ) – we finally get the chance to go deeper into the team that, in its brief 13-season run: never posted a losing season, won two National League pennants, and, in 1957, brought "Cream Cit...

As the 2019 version of the Portland Timbers celebrates its 10th season in Major League Soccer, we spin the WABAC Machine dial back 44 years earlier to 1975 – when the club's original namesake became an overnight sensation (figuratively and literally) in the then-20-team North American Soccer League.  The last of the NASL's five newly announced sides for that season (along with Chicago, San Antonio...

We veer back this week into the still-unfolding mess that is (or was) the Alliance of American Football with ESPN.com "NFL Nation" reporter Michael Rothstein – who, along with ESPN Senior Writer Seth Wickersham – has been chronicling the demise of the once-promising league ( Inside the Short, Unhappy Life of the Alliance of American Football ), dating back to its curious pre-season earlier this wi...

Author and former SPORT magazine writer David Levine ( Life on the Rim: A Year in the Continental Basketball Association ) joins the 'cast to give us our first taste of the quirky minor league basketball circuit that began as a Pennsylvania-based regional outfit in 1946 (predating the NBA's formation by two months), and meandered through a myriad of death-defying iterations until whimpering into o...

University of Mary Washington research librarian and baseball historian Jack Bales ( Before They Were the Cubs: The Early Years of Chicago's First Professional Baseball Team ) joins the podcast to help us dig into the surprisingly rich history of Major League Baseball's long-time North Side Chicago franchise well prior to 1903, when they formally adopted their now-signature nickname.  While even s...

This week, we offer a refresher course in the history of forgotten pro sports leagues with veteran newspaper editor, current long-form author and fellow defunct sports enthusiast Stephen Provost – whose recent book A Whole Different League is an essential primer for anyone seeking an entrée into the genre. Provost serves up a smorgasbord of highlights gleaned from his personal memories of and rese...