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Author John Eisenberg ( Ten-Gallon War: The NFL's Cowboys, the AFL's Texans, and the Feud for Dallas's Pro Football Future ) returns, this time to guide us through the fascinating formative years of the National Football League – and the five now-legendary figures responsible for nurturing its development through tumultuous times and an often-uncertain future into what is now America's most popula...

The Buffalo Braves were one of three NBA expansion franchises (along with the Portland Trail Blazers and Cleveland Cavaliers) that began play in the 1970–71 season.  Originally owned by a wobbly investment firm with few ties to Buffalo, the Braves eventually found a local backer in Freezer Queen founder Paul Snyder – who, by the end of the first season, had inherited a team that was neither good (...

On January 12, 1969, the American Football League champion New York Jets stunned the sports world when they beat their heavily favored NFL title-winning counterparts the Baltimore Colts to win the third annual "AFL–NFL World Championship Game" – today remembered as version III of the "Super Bowl." The key to the Jets' ultimate success, of course, was superstar quarterback Joe Namath – whose talent...

It was, unwittingly, the center of the New York professional sports universe in 1975. The official home of both Major League Baseball's Mets and AFL-then-NFL football's Jets since 1964, Shea Stadium was always a busy venue.  But when the football Giants and baseball Yankees found themselves displaced by extensive renovations to their shared Bronx home of Yankee Stadium, Shea instantly became Mecca...

By the end of the 1958 NFL season – one punctuated by an iconic, nationally televised "Greatest Game Ever Played" championship – interest in professional football had risen to unprecedented levels across the country, capturing enough attention to seriously challenge baseball for America's chief sporting interest.  Nowhere was the ground more fertile than in the state of Texas, where college and ev...

When it debuted to the public on April 9, 1965 (with an exhibition Major League Baseball game featuring the newly-renamed Houston Astros and Mickey Mantle's New York Yankees), the Astrodome – audaciously dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World" by its builders – immediately captured the attention of the sports, entertainment and architectural worlds.   It was a Texas-sized vision of the future – a...

The third incarnation of the Baltimore Colts – the second as an official member of the NFL – produced some of the most memorable and dominant teams to ever play the pro game.  Winners of impressive back-to-back NFL titles over the New York Giants in both 1958 (the December 28th Yankee Stadium sudden-death overtime final regarded as the mythic "Greatest Game Ever Played") and 1959, the Colts and he...

Career journalist and baseball history author Bill Felber ( A Game of Brawl: The Orioles, the Beaneaters, and the Battle for the 1897 Pennant ) joins the big show to discuss the most cut-throat pennant race in American baseball history – a multi-level study in contrast that also symbolically set the course of how the modern-day game would ultimately be played. On one side was the original incarnat...

In a nearly 20-year playing career across the 1960s American Football League and 1970s NFL, defensive end Ron McDole ( The Dancing Bear: My Eighteen Years in the Trenches of the AFL and NFL ) experienced pro football's modern-day coming-of-age from inside his old-school, two-bar helmet.  From 1961-1978, McDole played in over 250 professional games, including championship runs with the AFL Buffalo...

Richard Neil Graham ( Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks: A Rocking History of Roller Hockey International ) joins the big show to delve into the 1990s summertime indoor league started by inveterate sports entrepreneur (and defunct sports patron saint) Dennis Murphy – designed to profit from major arena owners' desire for summer events, minor league players looking for extra work, and a budding nati...

After barely surviving World War II, the National Football League of the late 1940s was not only on tenuous financial footing, but also facing an existential threat from an ambitious new challenger with deep-pocketed owners ready take advantage of America's growing interest in professional football, a newfound surplus of playing talent, and a tantalizing return to economic prosperity.  While the A...

On September 21, 2013, a crowd of 14,689 Brooklyn hockey fans cheered when the NHL's New York Islanders played a pre-season exhibition against the New Jersey Devils in the sleekly modern Barclays Center – the first-ever contest of its kind in New York's most populous borough, and one that set into motion the eventual relocation of the team from Long Island to Kings County. What few in the stands r...

Multiple New York Times bestselling sports book author Jeff Pearlman ( Gunslinger ; Boys Will Be Boys ; The Bad Guys Won! ; Sweetness ) joins the pod this week to promote his latest literary treasure – a deeply personal devotional about the wild and ultimately misbegotten United States Football League. Crafted from over four hundred interviews and borne of a childhood fascination/obsession, Footba...

When quizzed on the historical origins of the National Hockey League, most fans reflexively default to the hagiographic construct known as the "Original Six" – the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers, Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Detroit Red Wings – as the seminal franchise lineup from which the modern-day NHL was ultimately built. In fact, the league traces its off...

We continue our march towards the upcoming 50th anniversary reunion of the North American Soccer League (as part the rechristening of the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Frisco, TX on October 19-21, 2018), with one of the coaching pioneers from the league's heyday, Gordon Jago ( A Soccer Pioneer: The Autobiography of Gordon Jago ). After a sparkling youth career with England's Charlton Athletic an...

Buckle up for our sophomore excursion into the legendary World Hockey Association, as we chat with the passionate founder and meticulous curator of the short-lived but influential league's official Hall of Fame, Tim Gassen.  Physically ensconced inside the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, MN, as well as an expansive online digital presence, the WHA Hall of Fame is the undisputed histo...

Famed Soccer America columnist Paul Gardner summed up this week's Hall of Fame guest in his May 2015 commentary: "The debt owed by American soccer to Clive Toye is a vast one. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say, flatly, that without Toye's blind faith in the sport in the 1970s, pro soccer in the USA would have withered and died. Yes, Phil Woosnam and Lamar Hunt and Bob Hermann were there...

Professional baseball was barely into its adolescence in 1884 when a hard-playing, hard-drinking minor league club out of tiny Wilmington, Delaware―the Quicksteps―got the opportunity of a lifetime. Led by prototypical early era stars like loud-voiced outfielder/team captain Tommy "Oyster" Burns (aka the "Wilmington Growler," who sold shellfish in the off-season), and Canadian-born curveball pionee...

When you're the oldest continuously operating franchise in baseball (or in all of American professional sports, for that matter), you're bound to have some stories – and the proverbial dusty boxes of history sitting in the attic of the Atlanta Braves' SunTrust Park are certainly full of them.  This week, we rope in noted baseball historian Charlie Alexander ( The Miracle Braves, 1914-1916 ) to del...

We conclude our conversation with National Soccer Hall of Fame coach Al Miller, who shares a wide array of additional recollections, anecdotes, musings, and insights from a legendary career across US outdoor and indoor soccer, including: An historic February 11, 1974 indoor game at Philadelphia's Spectrum between Miller's NASL champion Atoms and Moscow's Red Army – generally acknowledged as the tr...

In February 1973, the suddenly ascendant North American Soccer League hurriedly awarded a new franchise to Philadelphia construction magnate Thomas McCloskey, despite the league's fast-approaching season start date of May 1st.  The result of some Super Bowl VII arm-twisting by Kansas City Chiefs (and NASL Dallas Tornado) owner Lamar Hunt after helping McCloskey secure last-minute tickets, the team...

Fresh off of kicking pro basketball's establishment in the teeth with the launch of the upstart American Basketball Association in 1967, inveterate sports entrepreneurs Dennis Murphy (see also: World Team Tennis, Roller Hockey International) and Gary Davidson (World Football League) turned their attention to an even riper target of opportunity in 1971 – the monopolistic and monochromatic 12-team N...

At the beginning of the 20th century, the professional game of baseball had already taken on much of its modern shape – where pitching and managerial strategy dominated, and "manufactured" offense meant taught and tense contests, albeit often with limited scoring.  Stretching roughly from 1901-19, the period dubbed the "Deadball Era" by baseball historians saw teams play in expansive ball parks th...

Our World Cup fever has yet to break, and we spend this week reveling in some of the heretofore unexplored (at least on this podcast) nooks and crannies of modern-day American pro soccer history with one of its most unsung front office heroes.  In a career spanning over four decades, sports PR and event management executive Thom Meredith has proverbially "seen it all" across some of US sports' mos...

Fox Sports soccer play-by-play broadcaster extraordinaire JP Dellacamera joins the podcast this week to discuss a pioneering career in sports announcing spanning over 30 years – including calling this year's 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia – his ninth consecutive men's quadrennial assignment since Mexico '86. Widely acknowledged as the original voice of US Soccer, Dellacamera's calls have become syn...