Let’s start with the name.  The Montreal Manic – or Le Manic de Montreal for its Francophone supporters – was not named after a mental health disorder characterized by mood swings, unpredictability and frenzied activity.  That would be a sensible assumption – this was, after all, the franchise formerly known as the Philadelphia Fury.  But in fact the Montreal Manic soccer club took its name from something far stranger…the Manic-1 hyrdoelectric dam at the mouth of Quebec’s Manicouagan River.

The Manic formed in October/November 1983 when Molson Breweries – owners of the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens – bought into the struggling North American Soccer League for a reported price of just over $2 million dollars.  For their two million bucks, Molson got arguably the worst franchise in the league – the three-year old Philadelphia Fury.  The Fury were coming off a 10-22 last place finish in 1980 and their paltry average attendance of 4,465 was the worst in the league.  (The famed New York Cosmos, by comparison, averaged 42,754 in 1980).

Molson’s investment was a godsend for the shrinking NASL, which was entering into a painful correction after a period of reckless expansion in the late 1970′s.  The league peaked at 24 teams in 1980, but just one day before Molson officials announced the team’s arrival in Montreal, the NASL’s Houston, Rochester and Washington clubs folded.  The loss of the Washington Diplomats was particularly galling – the Dips had rich owners, a world superstar in Johan Cruyff of Holland, and had just hosted Soccer Bowl ’80 at RFK Stadium before nearly 50,000 fans.  Dips attendance rose by nearly 60% in 1980, but it wasn’t good enough for Sonny Werblin and his Madison Square Garden Corporation, who lost an estimated $5 million on the team over two seasons.  ABC was also unhappy with its puny TV ratings for the NASL and announced it would not broadcast any games in the final year of its contract in 1981 except for the Soccer Bowl championship.

The Manic retained Fury Head Coach Eddie Firmani, the winningest coach in league history despite 1980′s last place finish.  Firmani was the only coach to lead two different clubs to the Soccer Bowl title, winning with the Tampa Bay Rowdies (1975) and twice with the Cosmos (1977 and 1978).  Other Fury holdovers  included the American goalkeeper Bob Rigby (who would start all 32 games for Montreal in 1981), defenders Andy Lynch and Bob Vosmaer, and midfielder Fran O’Brien and Andy Parkinson.

The Manic added rookie scoring star Thompson Usiyan through the college draft and picked up English striker Gordon Hill who led the club with 16 goals and 12 assists in 1981.  The club would also acquire long-time NASL scoring star Alan Willey in a mid-season trade with the Minnesota Kicks.

The Manic debuted at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium on April 18th, 1981.  A crowd of 27,060 watched Andy Parkinson score two goals to lead the Manic to a 2-1 victory over the Toronto Blizzard.  Enthusiasm for the team built throughout the summer.  38,667 turned out to see the NASL’s biggest draw – the Cosmos – on June 2nd.  A crowd of 40,000+ showed up for the Cosmos’ return visit in late July and the Manic drew a season-high of 50,755 to the regular season finale on August 18th.

The Manic eeked into the 1981 NASL playoffs with a 15-17 record and the crowds got even stronger.  46,682 came out to cheer the Manic in a 1st round match against the Los Angeles Aztecs on August 24th.  The Manic drew a club record 58,542 for the opening game of the quarterfinals against the Chicago Sting on September 2, 1981 and rewarded the hometown fans with a 3-2 victory.  But the Sting would win the next two games in Chicago to eliminate the Manic.  For the season, the club drew 379,263 fans for 16 home dates for an average of 23,703 per game, second only to the Cosmos in the 21-team league.

A 1981 profile in Sports Illustrated, which featured a comic scene of ex-pat Italian waiters fawning over a table of Manic players in a Montreal restaurant, captured the melting pot appeal of the Manic during the team’s early days.  Nevertheless, the Manic front office’s attitude towards non-French speaking fans was shockingly dismissive, particularly for a cosmopolitan city that hosted the Olympics just five years earlier:

“We haven’t spent a cent on the ethnics,” a team spokesman told SI.  “They can yap and yell that they know the sport from back in Italy or Romania, but we want to build something special for us Quebecois.”

From November 1981 to February 1982 the Manic played in the NASL’s wintertime indoor soccer league, making their home at the Montreal Forum.  The indoor game proved popular in Montreal as well, with peak attendance coming on January 29th, 1982 when 13,125 fans turned out at the Forum to watch the Manic defeat the Cosmos 11-6.

The Manic returned outdoors in April 1982 and embarked on what would be the best season of their short history.  Star English striker Gordon Hill was vocally unhappy with Canada’s tax system and demanded a trade during the indoor season.  The Manic accomodated him shortly into the outdoor campaign, trading him to the Chicago Sting for defender Frantz Mathieu, who would go onto to make the NASL All-Star Team for Montreal.  Alan Willey picked up the scoring slack, netting 15 goals.  Victor Nogueira took over the bulk of the goalkeeping duties from Bob Rigby.  The Manic finished 19-13, but fell to the Ft. Lauderdale Strikers in the first round of the playoffs.

1982 attendance dipped imperceptibly to an average of 21,438, second best to the Cosmos for the second straight year.

The turning point for the Manic franchise came in February 1983.  NASL President Howard Samuels championed the creation of an expansion team in Washington, D.C. for the 1983 season known as Team America.  The concept was that Team America would be a club version of the U.S. National Team, featuring all of the best young American players from around the NASL.  Playing as a club side in the NASL would help the U.S. team develop with a goal of qualifying for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.  Seizing on the idea, Samuels, Molson Chairman Morgan McCammon and the Canadian Soccer Association announced that the Manic would transform itself into Team Canada by the 1984 season, gradually trading away its foreign players and replacing them with top Canadians from around the NASL.

The concept went horribly awry for both teams.  Many of the NASL’s top Americans refused to leave their existing clubs to join an expansion team with uncertain prospects.  (The club ended up finishing last in the NASL in 1983 and folding.). Montreal was in a much tougher situation – a winning, established club with a passionate fan base being publicly instructed by the league’s President to dismantle itself.

Unsurprisingly, the Montreal fan base revolted.  Season ticket sales for the 1983 season dropped by more than 50% from 1982 levels.  Overall attendance collapsed to 9,910 per game, tenth out of the NASL twelve clubs in 1983, after two seasons of trailing only the New York Cosmos.  Win or lose, the Manic were a lame duck team and local fans saw no reason to support them.

The Manic earned a playoff berth on the final day of the 1983 season, despite a 12-18 record and a last place finish in the NASL’s Eastern Division.  The team then proceeded to shock the 22-8 New York Cosmos, sweeping a best-of-three series.  The Manic’s upset victory snapped a string of four consecutive Soccer Bowl appearances for the Cosmos.  The decisive Game Two at Olympic Stadium drew 20,726 to Olympic Stadium.  It was the less than the 1982 average, but nevertheless marked the largest crowd of the season in Montreal.  The Manic bowed in the semi-final round to the eventual champion Tulsa Roughnecks.

To the surprise of no one, Molson pulled the plug on the Manic during the first week of November 1983.  The brewery cited losses of $10 million over three seasons and admitted the Team Canada concept had been a disaster which obliterated the Manic fan base.

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Downloads:

Montreal Manic sources

Is Las Vegas a Major League sports city?  That 30-year old debate still rages on occasion.  Waves of speculative sports ventures have planted their respective flags in the Nevada sand, with consistently tragic results.  Canadian football and Arena Football and indoor soccer have only the flimsiest of claims to Major League status and none have been able to lure tourists and conventioneers off the Strip.  The first league with a nationwide footprint to try to conquer Sin City was the North American Soccer League with their Las Vegas Quicksilvers club in the spring of 1977.

San Jose car dealer Ken Keegan owned the Quicksilvers.  Keegan was originally an investor in the NASL’s popular San Jose Earthquakes expansion franchise which entered the league in 1974.  At the end of the 1975 season, Keegan bought the struggling Baltimore Comets club and relocated the team to San Diego.  Keegan re-named his team the San Diego Jaws, after the Steven Spielberg blockbuster of 1975, but the Jaws didn’t do the same kind of box office, averaging a modest 6,144 per game in 1976.  Keegan relocated the team to Las Vegas Stadium in the fall of 1976.

Jaws holdover Derek Trevis, a veteran of England’s lower division leagues, handled player-coach duties for the Quicksilvers.  The team had a distinct Portuguese flavor, with former Benfica teammates and National Team stars Eusebio and Humberto Coelho, along with Toni and Abel.  In the midfield, the Quicksilvers had the German duo of Wolfgang Sunholz and Franz Krauthausen.  The team’s best American player was the young goalkeeper Alan Mayer, who had been with the club since the Baltimore Comets days.

Former baseball executive Marvin Milkes served as Vice President and Director of Operations – essentially the General Manager – of the Quicksilvers.  Milkes gained a measure of national/literary infamy as the General Manager of Major League Baseball’s doomed Seattle Pilots franchise in 1969.  Milkes was lampooned extensively by Pilots pitcher Jim Bouton in his groundbreaking memoir Ball Four.

The Quicksilvers finest moment came in their home opener at Las Vegas Stadium on April 9th, 1977 against the NASL’s glamour club, the New York Cosmos.  The match pitted Pele of the Cosmos against the Quicksilvers’ aging Portuguese superstar Eusebio.  Throughout the 1960′s and early 1970′s Pele and Eusebio were considered by many football fans to be the world’s two finest players.  By 1977, Pele was in his final season of professional soccer and Eusebio was a shadow of his former self after multiple knee surgeries.  Nevertheless, the match was only the tenth time the two legends had faced each other.

In the event, the Quicksilvers upset the Cosmos 1-0 on a goal by unheralded Victor Arbelaez.  An opening night crowd of 11,869 turned out at Las Vegas Stadium to watch the festivities.

The Quicksilvers got off to a 10-8 start, led by strong goalkeeping from Mayer, who recorded shutouts in six of his first twelve matches.  But a late season collapse saw the ‘Silvers finish at 11-15, tied for last place in the NASL’s five-team Southern Division.  Wolfgang Sunholz was elected to the All-NASL 1st team in midfield and Alan Mayer was selected as the 2nd Team goalkeeper.

At the turnstiles, the Quicksilvers claimed an average attendance of 7,092 for 13 home dates, which ranked 14th among the NASL’s 18 clubs.  The team ended the 1977 season in financial and legal straits, facing a civil suit from the Clark County District Attorney’s office and proceedings from the Convention and Visitors Authority who were seeking $32,000 in back rent for Las Vegas Stadium.

Following the season, the Milwaukee Brewers explored purchasing the Quicksilvers and shifting the club to Milwaukee.  Instead, the team moved back to San Diego under new ownership in the fall of 1977, ending the one-year Las Vegas experiment.  As the San Diego Sockers, the former Comets-Jaws-Quicksilvers franchise lasted for another 18 years in three different leagues, becoming an indoor soccer dynasty during the 1980′s.

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Professional soccer returned to Las Vegas in the winter of 1984-85 with the Las Vegas Americans of the Major Indoor Soccer League.  Alan Mayer handled most of the goalkeeping duties for the Americans, who played at the Thomas & Mack Arena.  Like the Quicksilvers, the Americans lasted only one season.

Marvin Milkes died of a heart attack in a Los Angeles health club in 1982.  Quicksilvers player/coach Derek Trevis passed away in 2000 at the age of 58.

Downloads:

Las Vegas Quicksilvers Sources

That the Dallas Tornado existed as long as they did – 15 seasons from 1967 to 1981 – is a testament to the endurance of American Football League founder Lamar Hunt and fruitcake baron Bill McNutt.  The Tornado existed longer than the famed New York Cosmos and developed the first American-born “Superstar” of the soccer (at least by ABC’s definition) in Kyle Rote Jr.  But the team was never especially popular in Dallas and it wandered around the metroplex in nomadic fashion, shifting among five different stadiums in little more than a decade of play.

The Tornado began play in 1967 as charter members of the United Soccer Association (USA).  The USA was one faction in a so-called “soccer war” between two upstart leagues in the United States that summer.  The USA had formal sanctioning from FIFA and the United States Soccer Football Association, while its rival, the National Professional Soccer League (NPSL) was considered an “outlaw” league.  However, the outlaw league was the one that landed the network television contract with CBS, and both leagues boasted deep-pocketed owners from professional football and Major League Baseball.  Inspired by the 1966 World Cup, the men behind the USA and the NPSL in 1967 were the first to attempt the mass-marketing of professional soccer in major American cities coast-to-coast.

In the rush to get ready for the 1967 season, the twelve franchises of the USA decided to import entire clubs wholesale from Europe and South American to play under American aliases.  The 1967 Dallas Tornado were actually Dundee United of Scotland.

After one season of competition, the USA and the NPSL merged to form the North American Soccer League in December 1967.  Meanwhile, the  new Tornado – now an assemblage of new European players, rather than Dundee United –  embarked on an epic 48-game World tour between August 1968 and March 1969 under Head Coach Bob Kap.  The tour took the Tornado around the globe from Spain to the Far East and back to Central America.  Along the way, the Tornado stopped in South Vietnam to play two games in Saigon in mid-December 1968, just over a month before the Tet Offensive.  The brutal tour schedule did little to prepare the Tornado for the 1968 season though - Kap’s club finished with a league-worst 2-26-4 record in the first season of the NASL and were outscored 109-28.

Twelve of the seventeen NASL clubs folded after the 1968 season.  Tornado owners Lamar Hunt and Bill McNutt were among the few investors that decided the forge ahead with a strange 1969 season.  In the spring and early summer of 1969, the five remaining NASL teams once again imported foreign clubs as stand-ins - Dundee United once again played the role of the Tornado - for an eight-game round robin “International Cup”.  Then in late summer, the five franchises assembled proper clubs and played a 16-game season. This time the Tornado were competitive under new player/Head Coach Ron Newman, finishing 3rd place at 8-6-2.

The Tornado’s glory years came under Newman’s direction from 1969 to 1975.  The Tornado defeated the Atlanta Chiefs to win the NASL title in 1971.  Two years later, the Tornado returned to the championship game against the Philadelphia Atoms, led by the exciting young American star Kyle Rote Jr., who led the league in scoring in 1973 and earned Rookie of the Year honors.  Wholesome, clean-cut and the son of former NFL star and TV broadcaster Kyle Rote Sr., the younger Rote was ideally suited to poster-boy status for the young league.  His presence in the 1973 title game – along with that of the Atoms’ American goalie Bob Rigby - helped the NASL gain its first Sports Illustrated cover shoot.  The match drew 18,824 to Texas Stadium – see video at the top of this post – but the locals went home disappointed after a 2-0 Atoms victory.

The complexion of the NASL truly changed in 1975 when the Time-Warner owned New York Cosmos signed Brazilian superstar Pele to an unprecedented multi-million dollar three-year contract.  The Tornado travelled to crumbling Downing Stadium in New York City to play the foils to Pele’s American debut on June 15th, 1975.  CBS televised the match nationwide and it was simulcast in countries all around the globe.  When Pele made his first visit to Dallas one month alter, a Tornado record crowd of 26,127 turned out at Texas Stadium to see The King of Football.

The Cosmos didn’t stop there.  For the rest of the 1970′s, Time-Warner imported a stream of expensive and aging European and South American stars including Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, Johan Neeskens and Giorgio Chinaglia.  Nearly alone among NASL team owners, Lamar Hunt possessed the wealth to go toe-to-toe with the Cosmos on player signings.  In a 1972 profile, Sports Illustrated related an oft-told apocryphal story from the American Football League’s formation in 1959.  A member of the media says to Hunt’s father, H.L. Hunt:

“Mr. Hunt, your son is going to lose one million dollars a year on that new league.”

“Well.” the elder Hunt supposedly replied, “At that rate he’ll be finished in 150 years.”

Hunt could have taken on the Cosmos, but he chose not to.   During the 1976 season, the same year that Pele earned between $900,000 and $1.5 million with the Cosmos (depending on whom you ask), Hunt’s biggest star Kyle Rote, Jr., earned a $7,000 base salary with the Tornado.  The bulk of Rote’s income apparently came from ABC Sports’ Superstars competition, where he was something of a one-man dynasty.  Rote won Superstars in 1974, 1976 and 1977, earning over $150,000 in prize money along the way.  In fact, by 1976 Rote’s celebrity profile considerably usurped his on-field role.  He was only a part-time starter on his own team.  The late 1970′s was the period of the NASL’s irrational exuberance.  But Hunt – arguably the league’s richest owner – made only one player move that attracted significant press attention.  In October 1978, the Tornado sold Kyle Rote Jr.’s contract to the Houston Hurricane for $250,000.

Throughout their existence, the Tornado shuffled among a half dozen venues in the Dallas area, beginning in the Cotton Bowl (1967-1968), before moving on to P.C. Cobb Stadium (1969) and Franklin Field (1970-71).  In 1972, the Tornado moved into Texas Stadium, home of the Cowboys, for a four year run, then spent another four seasons at Southern Methodisty University’s Ownby Stadium, before returning to Texas Stadium for the final two seasons of the franchise in 1980 and 1981.   From an attendance standpoint, the club’s high water mark was 1977, when the club average 16,511 at SMU, up from just 4,630 per game two years earlier in 1975.  But in 1978, Tornado attendance crashed by nearly 50% to just over 8,900 per game and the team continued to decline in the following years.

The 1981 season was especially demoralizing for the loyal core of Tornado fans and for owners Hunt and McNutt.  A year after winning the NASL Central Division with an 18-14 record, the 1981 Tornado dropped to 5-27, the worst record in the NASL.  Only 4,670 fans showed up on average in cavernous Texas Stadium, also the worst figure in the 21-team league.  At NASL league meetings in August 1981, Hunt and McNutt proposed several kooky rules changes – including enlarging the goals and replacing throw-ins with kick-ins – in an attempt to provide something…anything…that would reinvigorate the American soccer audience.

By September 1981, Hunt and McNutt were finally ready to throw in the towel on the  Tornado after fifteen years, part of a seven-team exodus that saw the NASL contract by one-third in the autumn of 1981.  The Dallas Morning News estimated Hunt and McNutt’s cumulative financial loss over 15 years at a minimum of $20 million.

The bloom was officially off the rose for the NASL and the euphoria of the Pele/Beckenbauer years seemed far away.  Unlike the other departing owners, however, Hunt and McNutt didn’t get out of the league entirely.  The pair immediately took a minority stake in the NASL’s popular Tampa Bay Rowdies franchise.

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The North American Soccer League folded after the 1984 season.

Lamar Hunt remained a loyal benefactor of top-flight soccer in the United States after folding the Tornado in 1981.  Hunt was an original investor-operator in Major League Soccer in 1996, operating the Columbus Crew and Kansas City Wiz/Wizards franchises through his Hunt Sports Group.  In 1999, Hunt Sports Group built $29 million Columbus Crew Stadium in Ohio, sparking a wave of soccer specific stadium construction that stabilized MLS and led to a boom in franchise values during the early 21st century.  In 2003, Hunt Sports Group purchased MLS’ Dallas Burn franchise, bringing soccer and the Hunt family full circle in Dallas.

Lamar Hunt passed away at the age of 74 in December 2006.  His friend and former business partner in the Tornado Bill McNutt passed away three months earlier at age 81.

Kyle Rote Jr. played one season for the Houston Hurricane in 1979 and retired from pro soccer in early 1980.

Downloads:

Dallas Tornado Sources

The North American Soccer League (NASL) awarded an expansion franchise to Hartford, Connecticut in late 1974 to begin play in the spring of 1975.  During the same expansion round, the NASL created the Chicago Sting, Portland Timbers and Tampa Bay Rowdies franchises, which became iconic teams in the early history of American pro soccer, fondly recalled by many middle-aged soccer fans today.  The Hartford Bicentennials did not join them in that club.

The Bi’s ramped up for the 1975 campaign by raiding the roster and front office of the minor league Rhode Island Oceaneers, defending champions of the lower division American Soccer League (ASL).  Hartford signed the Oceaneer’s star 21-year old American goalkeeper Arnie Mausser and also lured away Head Coach Manny Schellscheidt and General Manager Mike Bosson.

Meanwhile the Bicentennials faced local competition from an ASL franchise in their own city - the Connecticut Yankees who already played in Dillon Stadium.  When the ASL and NASL released their schedules in early 1975, there were five dates when the rival clubs had both scheduled home games at Dillon.  The resulting glut of pro soccer helped to depress attendance in one of the NASL’s smallest markets.  The Bi’s averaged only 3,720 fans for eleven home matches.  The team’s minor league approach also left the team uncompetitive  on the field.  Hartford finished the 1975 season with a 6-16 record, tied for worst in the 20-team NASL.

In 1976, Connecticut Yankees owner Bob Kratzer moved his ASL club to West Haven, alleviating the scheduling logjam at Dillon Stadium.  The 1976 Bicentennials were also improved on the pitch, fielding a reasonably competitive .500 team (12-12).  But after two seasons in Hartford the Bicentennials soured on Dillon Stadium, where the club had averaged fewer than 4,000 fans per game.  By comparison, the NASL’s top draws in cities such as Minneapolis, Portland and Seattle all claimed average crowds in excess of 20,000 during the 1976 season.

In 1977, Bi”s owner Robert Darling moved his club 45 miles down Interstate 91 to New Haven’s 70,000-seat Yale Bowl.  The club dropped “Hartford” from their name and went by the “Connecticut Bicentennials” for the 1977 campaign.

Unsurprisingly, the Bi’s drew their best gate of the 1977 season when the Brazilian superstar Pele and his New York Cosmos came to town for the home opener at the Yale Bowl on May 8th.  The teams treated the club record crowd of 17,302 to a dramatic finish, as the Bi’s rallied from a 2-0 deficit in the final eight minutes to tie the match, only to lose when Keith Eddy of the Cosmos beat Bi’s keeper Gene DuChateau on a penalty kick with less than two minutes remaining.

After the novelty of Pele’s appearance wore off, Bi’s attendance returned to Hartford-esque levels.  Among other factors, owner Robert Darling cited the lack of professional grade lighting at the Yale Bowl, which limited the Bi’s to afternoon and early evening start times.  The team’s lackluster talent couldn’t have helped – the Bi’s regressed to a league-worst 7-19 record.  Dave Litterer’s American Soccer History Archives website puts Bi’s average attendance at the Yale Bowl at just 3,848 for 13 home matches in 1977, also worst in the 18-team NASL.

In September 1977, Bi’s owner Bob Darling sold the team to Milan Mandaric, owner of the NASL’s San Jose Earthquakes, for an undisclosed amount.  As part of the transaction, Mandaric divested himself of the Earthquakes and established his new club - renamed the Oakland Stompers –  just across the Bay at the Oakland Coliseum.

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After one season at the Oakland Coliseum, Mandaric decided he had made a mistake in attempting to start a second Bay Area club in the NASL.  He sold the team to Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington, who moved the franchise to Edmonton where it played four more seasons as the Edmonton Drillers before folding in 1982.

Arnie Mausser was inducted into the National Soccer Hall-of-Fame in 2003.

Bicentennials owner Robert E. Darling passed away in October 2009 at the age of 72.

Downloads:

Hartford/Connecticut Bicentennials Sources

In January 1978, Thomas J. Lipton, Inc., better known as the Lipton Tea Company, purchased an expansion franchise in the North American Soccer League.  The NASL was riding a wave of expansion in 1978 – a speculative bubble as it would turn out – sparked by the spectacular three-year run of Brazilian superstar Pele at the New York Cosmos, another corporate owned club.

Lipton’s club set up shop in Foxboro, Massachusetts and adopted the nickname New England Tea Men, in a nod to the area’s revolutionary roots and, of course, its corporate overlords.  Lipton Vice President of Marketing Derek Carroll took the reigns as club President with a $1.5M operating budget and $600,000 allocated to sign players from around the world.

One player signed was a little known English striker named Mike Flanagan acquired on loan from Charlton Athletic.  Flanagan came out of nowhere for the Tea Men, scoring 30 goals in 28 games and earning NASL Most Valuable Player honors in 1978.  The rest of the squad was also unexpectedly strong for a club put together on just four months notice.  The Tea Men tied the Tampa Bay Rowdies for first place in the NASL’s American Conference Eastern Division with a 19-11 record.  The Fort Lauderdale Strikers eliminated the Tea Men in the first round of the 1978 NASL playoffs.  At the box office, the Tea Men drew an average crowd of just over 11,000 to Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, the home of the NFL’s Patriots.

The Tea Men had a rougher go of it in 1979.  Flanagan got into a contract dispute back home with Charlton Athletic and ultimately with the Tea Men themselves.  The saga of Flanagan’s status dragged on for much of the 1979 season, with the Tea Men even prematurely announcing his return in June 1979.  Ultimately, Flanagan never returned to the United States again after his MVP campaign in 1978.  Meanwhile, the Tea Men were evicted from Schaefer Stadium by order of a judge due to a dispute with a neighboring dog racing track.  Forced to play on short notice at urban Nickerson Field in Boston, attendance plummeted nearly 50% as did the team’s record.  The 1979 Tea Men finished 11-13 and out of the playoff hunt.

In December 1979, the Tea Men signed on for the NASL’s first winter indoor soccer season.  Only ten of the league’s twenty-four teams chose to take part. The Tea Men probably wished they had stuck with the majority.  Playing at the Providence Civic Center, the indoor Tea Men found new ways to prolong the agony of the bitter 1979 campaign, staggering to 2-10 last place finish.  The incomparable soccer broadcaster/blogger Kenn Tomasch has posted a terrific video clip of the indoor Tea Men from an early ESPN broadcast on Youtube:

The Tea Men gave up on New England in November, 1980 and relocated to Jacksonville, Florida’s Gator Bowl.  Still owned by Lipton, the franchise retained the Boston Tea Party-inspired name, although it made little sense in Florida, which remained a Spanish territory unti 1821.

Jacksonville lured the Tea Men south with a pledge of 14,000 season tickets, but the pledge never materialized.  The Associated Press reported that the Tea Men sold less than 4,500 season tickets after arriving in Florida.  By the end of 1981, Lipton’s patience with the NASL was wearing thin.  The league had blown its national television contract with ABC and was now shedding franchises at an alarming rate.  Lipton lost a reported $7M on the club between 1978 and 1981, including $1.7M  during the first ten months in Jacksonville.  In September 1981, the Tea Men were on the verge of folding before Lipton posted the required $150,000 bond with the league to stay in for the indoor season.

The Tea Men averaged a relatively strong 6,375 fans for indoor soccer at the Coliseum that winter.  A group of local businessmen led by attorney Earl Hadlow struck a deal to lease the club from Lipton and operate it for the 1982 outdoor season.  The momentum died when the team moved outdoors, however.  On the field, the Tea Men regressed from the 18-14 playoff club of 1981 to a last-place 11-21 finish in 1982.  Fan support dwindled as well.  The Tea Men drew only 7,160 fans on average to the 68,000-seat Gator Bowl in 1982, second worst in the 14-team NASL.  Hadlow’s group ran out of money during the season and returned the Tea Men to Lipton, who immediately began looking to unload the club once and for all.  Deals were announced to sell the club to investors in Milwaukee, then Detroit.  Both fell through.

In early 1983, local businessman Ingo Krieg rescued the Tea Men yet again and entered them in the lower level American Soccer League.  The nonsensical Tea Men name endured, despite the fact that Lipton had finally pulled out entirely.  The ASL had a long and rather weird history dating back to the Great Depression.  Similar to the NASL, the ASL had gone on an expansion spree in the mid-1970′s, convinced that soccer’s moment had arrived.  By the time Krieg and the Tea Men arrived in 1983, the ASL was in its death throes.  Rebounding from 1982′s on-field disapppointment, the Tea Men won the final ASL championship in 1983.

Dissatisfied with his partners in the league, Krieg lead an insurrection in early 1984, peeling away the Dallas and Detroit franchises to form the United Soccer League in the spring of 1984.  The Tea Men regressed to an 11-13 record and missed the playoffs.  After countless near death experiences, the Tea Men folded once and for all after the 1984 campaign.

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The Tea Men’s Jacksonville cheerleader squad was known as the Cu-Teas.  Several of their former members have created a Facebook tribute page.

Tea Men coaches Noel Cantwell and Dennis Viollet both passed away from cancer in 2005 and 1999 respectively.

Downloads:

2011 Interview with Jacksonville Tea Men owner Ingo Krieg

Sources & Further Reading:
Associated Press, January 20th, 1978
“Tea Men’s Owners Rescue Their Team”, Associated Press, September 16th, 1981