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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...

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...

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 arch...

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 Charle...