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As Johnny Manziel's pro football comeback journey wraps up a promising pre-season with the Canadian Football League's Hamilton Tiger-Cats, we take a moment this week to reminisce on the approaching 25th anniversary of the CFL's bold, but ultimately ill-fated attempt to bring its exciting brand of pigskin south of the border in 1993. When the NFL put the brakes on its two-year World League of Ameri...

It wasn't easy being a soccer fan in the United States in the 1980s.  While the 24-team North American American Soccer League ushered in the decade with an air of stability and momentum (the NASL even sold a pennant labeling the game the "Sport of the 80's"), it wasn't long before big-time American pro soccer was dangerously on the ropes (the NASL shrank to just nine franchises by 1984) – and then...

In late 1913, the newly formed Federal League of Base Ball Clubs – more simply known as the "Federal League" – declared itself a third major professional baseball league in competition with the established circuits of organized baseball, the National and American Leagues. Led by inveterate baseball promoter John T. Powers, and backed by some of America's wealthiest merchants and industrialists, th...

It's been 21 years since the National Hockey League's Hartford Whalers abruptly bolted for the (supposedly) greener pastures of North Carolina and a rechristened life as the Carolina Hurricanes, but don't tell that to superfans Peter Hindle and Jerry Erwin – the self-professed "Whaler Guys" – who have made it their personal mission since 2011 to keep the memory of the franchise they love alive,  a...

If someone ever decides to build an American sports promotion Hall of Fame, the inaugural class will undoubtedly be led by this week's special guest, Doug Verb.  In a career spanning more than 40 years in professional sports management, Verb's remarkable career has included spearheading marketing, promotion, publicity, and television for some of the most innovative and memorable leagues and franch...

By the summer of 1959, the absence of two former National League franchises from what was once a vibrant New York City major league baseball scene was obvious – and even the remaining/dominant Yankees couldn't fully make up for it.  Nor could that season's World Series championship run of the now-Los Angeles Dodgers – a bittersweet victory for jilted fans of the team's Brooklyn era.  Fiercely dete...

With a career spanning more than four decades, the National Soccer Hall of Fame's 2017 Colin Jose Media Award-winner Jim Trecker has been part of the American sports media relations landscape since the late 1960's.  After a chance part-time undergrad job in Columbia University's modest sports information department, Trecker traded his initial career ambitions in French language education for what...

Internationally acclaimed multi-media artist/illustrator/designer Wayland Moore joins the podcast from his studio in suburban Atlanta to discuss his nearly six-decade career as one of America's most recognizable commercial artists – including some of his most notable works in the realm of professional sports.   Designer of such iconic team logos such as pro soccer's Atlanta Chiefs (National Profes...

Upton Bell grew up at the knee of the National Football League's second-ever commissioner – his father, the legendary Bert Bell – who not only saved professional football from financial ruin in the aftermath of World War II, but also became one of its greatest innovators.  Originator of the iconic phrase "on any given Sunday," the senior Bell created lasting contributions to the NFL, such as the f...

With Major League Baseball finally back in full swing, we dial the Wayback Machine all the way back to the year 1890, when the professional version of America's Pastime was still nascent, its business model was largely unproven, and the players of the day seethed at their team owners' increasingly restrictive operating practices – to the point of dramatic and open revolt that ultimately set the co...

Our first-ever (and long-overdue) exploration of the sport of professional lacrosse begins with a conversation with one of the godfathers of the modern indoor game, Russ Cline – founder (along with partner and fellow Kansas City sports promoter Chris Fritz) of 1987's seminal four-team Eagle Pro Box Lacrosse League (soon renamed the Major Indoor Lacrosse League) – and the progenitor of today's vibr...

Baseball historian Bob Luke ( The Most Famous Woman in Baseball: Effa Manley and the Negro Leagues ) joins host Tim Hanlon to delve into the intriguing story of the first (and still only) woman to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame – and the second Negro National League's Newark Eagles franchise she successfully co-owned (with husband Abe) and general managed from 1936-48.   A stu...

In this week's episode, we skate back to the National Hockey League's 1967 "Great Expansion," when the league ambitiously doubled in size from its "Original Six" to incorporate a half-dozen new franchises – including the seemingly most obvious and overdue market of all: the hockey-mad state of Minnesota and its cultural epicenter, Minneapolis-St. Paul.  With a skilled management team led by amateu...

We conclude our conversation with WFL researcher Mark Speck ( WIFFLE: The Wild, Zany and Sometimes Hilariously True Story of the World Football League ; World Football League Encyclopedia ; . . .And a Dollar Short: The Empty Promises, Broken Dreams, and Somewhat-Less-Than-Comic Misadventures of the 1974 Florida Blazers ), as we find the league limping its way through an inaugural 1974 campaign tha...

Perhaps no defunct league in modern-day professional sports history endured a more ignominious storyline and spectacular demise than that of the World Football League – a uniquely disastrous attempt to establish a summer-into-autumn rival to the National Football League during the mid-1970's. Brimming with confidence from his co-founding exploits with two previous (and at the time, still very-much...

While the Detroit Tigers hold the record as the oldest continuous one-name, one-city franchise in the American League (debuting as one of the league's "Classic Eight" charter clubs in 1901), they were not the first team to play major league baseball in the Motor City.  That distinction actually goes to the Detroit Wolverines of the late 19th-century National League, which took to the field for the...

By many accounts, the North American Soccer League was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon in the history of the world game – and, during its 1970s heyday (although it began shakily in 1968 and ended in shambles after the 1984 season) – a league years ahead of its time.  More than just Pelé and the star-studded, bigger-than-life New York Cosmos, the NASL lured international soccer's biggest names like Joha...

Four-time American Basketball Association All-Star Bob Netolicky and former Indianapolis Star sportswriter Robin Miller join host Tim Hanlon to share some of their most memorable (and heretofore untold) first-person accounts of playing and traveling with the thrice-ABA-champion Indiana Pacers – and promote their upcoming book We Changed the Game , penned in partnership with original team co-founde...

The history of professional soccer in the United States is richer and far more complex than today's generation of Major League Soccer fans might realize.  Multiple ethnically-infused pro leagues existed as far back as the early 1900s – but when the American Soccer Association collapsed in Depression-Era 1933, it wasn't until the mid-1960s when the next serious attempt to bring full-fledged, top-fl...

For the first time since Episode #11 , we return to the brief, but unforgettable streak of pro football lightning known as the United States Football League, with the author of its definitive history, Paul Reeths ( The United States Football League, 1982-1986 ).  The brainchild of New Orleans plywood manufacturer/car dealer/World Championship Tennis co-founder/Superdome director/art-and-antiques d...

Veteran sportswriter Mark Montieth ( Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis ) returns to the podcast ( Episode #41 ) to help complete the story of the Indiana Pacers' nine-year sojourn through the American Basketball Association – including its shaky transition into a merger-expanded NBA in 1976.   Arguably the most stable and successful franchise in the ABA's short bu...

We conclude our two-part journey into the early history of the Arena Football League with founder and inventor Jim Foster, who recounts some of the most notable events of the league's formative years – including a memorable 1987 "demonstration season" featuring: The February debut "Showcase Game" in suburban Chicago's Rosemont Horizon between the hometown Bruisers and the Miami Vise – highlights o...

As the new year beckons, the fate of the Arena Football League – one of America's most innovative modern-day professional sports concepts – hangs in the balance.  With only four teams (the mutually-owned Washington Valor and Baltimore Brigade, defending champion Philadelphia Soul, and a still-unnamed Albany, NY squad) confirmed for the upcoming 2018 season, the AFL will play with exactly the same...

We usher in the holidays and round out our debut season with the inimitable Pat Boone – an American entertainment legend and inveterate business entrepreneur, with a life-long passion for the sport of basketball.  In a career spanning over six decades (and counting!), the incomparable Boone has just about done it all in the fields of music, film, television, and stage, as well as the pursuit of a...

We usher in the holidays and round out our debut season with the inimitable Pat Boone – an American entertainment legend and inveterate business entrepreneur, with a life-long passion for the sport of basketball.  In a career spanning over six decades (and counting!), the incomparable Boone has just about done it all in the fields of music, film, television, and stage, as well as the pursuit of a...