Continental Football League (1969)
Tombstone
Born: 1969 – CoFL expansion franchise
Folded: September 21, 1969
First Game: August 30, 1969 (W 34-33 vs. Oklahoma Thunderbirds)
Last Game: September 18, 1969 (W 17-3 @ Dallas Rockets)
CoFL Championships: None
Stadium
University City (52,000)
Marketing
Team Colors: Gold & White
Ownership
Owner: Red McCombs
Background
The Mexico Golden Aztecs were intended to be the first professional American football team in Mexico City in the summer/fall of 1969. The Aztecs were the first venture into professional sports by 42-year old San Antonio car dealer B.J. “Red” McCombs, who would go on to become one of the wealthiest men in the United States and to own franchises in the National Basketball Association and National Football League.
But back in the spring of 1969, McCombs was struggling with his cross-border adventure in the Continental Football League. The Aztecs hoped to play in the big Olympic Stadium in Mexico’s capital city, but municipal authorities insisted that general admission tickets be set at a price of 38 cents apiece. That was too low to sustain a pro football team, so the Aztecs reluctantly moved to Monterrey’s 52,000-seat University City stadium.
Demise
The Aztecs played a series of exhibition games in Monterrey in July and August. Big crowds for the first couple of games soon plummeted. After fewer than 5,000 showed up for the regular season home opener in Monterrey, the Golden Aztecs left town and attempted once again to negotiate a lease for Olympic Stadium in Mexico City. But lease negotiations came to a standstill again over the issue of ticket prices and the Aztecs became homeless. The league considered moving the club to Victoria or Corpus Christi in Texas or operating the club as a league-administered travel team, but ultimately decided to fold the club on September 21st, 1969 just five games into the season. The Golden Aztecs had a record of 2-3 at the time the team disbanded.
After this early pro sports boondoggle, McCombs would go on to a long run as an owner in the ABA (San Antonio Spurs), NBA (Denver Nuggets and Spurs again) and NFL (Minnesota Vikings).
Mexico Golden Aztecs Shop
Our Favorite Stuff
Continental Football League
Logo T-Shirt
Variously described as everything from “semi-pro” football to the “third Major League” behind the NFL and AFL during the late 1960’s, the Continental Football briefly established a sprawling network of pro football clubs that stretched from Florida to Mexico City to British Columbia. The Continental League helped launch the careers of Hall-of-Famers Bill Walsh and Ken Stabler and other NFL stars of the 1970’s including Otis Sistrunk, Bob Kuechenberg and Coy Bacon.
Our friends at Old School Shirts make the only Continental League shirt we’ve found and like all of their retro Americana tees, it’s soft and fits great!
When you make a purchase through an affiliate link like this one, Fun While It Lasted earns an affiliate commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support!
Downloads
1969 Texas Football League Standard Player Contract
1969 Texas Football League Standard Players Contract
Links
“A Golden Opportunity“, Harry Swartout, The Narrative, December 2017. A podcast retrospective on the Golden Aztecs.
##
6 Responses
The Shreveport Trojans must have been an interesting team.
Apparently Shreveport was a semi-pro team that was just brought over the border as an exhibition season punching bag. The Continental League was pretty decent football, so it appears to have been a mismatch to say the least.
In 1969 I was a summer school student at Monterrey Tech. My friends and I attended the game vs. Las Vegas. Must have been 30,000 who were in the stands.The fans were really into American football.
I played for Shreveport in that game and we were pretty rag-tag. Completely overmatched, we were scored against in every way possible…and one we had never heard of, a “free kick” after a fair catch. Our quarterback, an ex Louisiana Tech star refused to play in the second half and as I recall, we finished the game using our ball-boy (a high school JV player) at QB. We were so beat up that our equipment manager/trainer, a peg-legged mail carrier in real life, played defensive end late in the game. We had to play in their away-game jerseys because they said our regular game jerseys weren’t good enough. We changed our name at least twice that season and never had a home game. We played against the San Antonio Toros, Ft Worth Braves, Dallas Tin Stars (mostly sheriffs and policemen), another Dallas group (Cowboys minor leaguers I think), a team from Butler Alabama and a team from Beaumont, TX. As bad as it was, I had a blast; we weren’t paid to play…but we were playing football, sort of.
Hi Ben, That sounds fun do you have any other stories from that time or bits of memobilia?