The original United States Football League (USFL) officially debuted at a press conference in New York City on May 11, 1982. The 12 franchise owners and league founder David Dixon stood before the media and detailed their plans to play a 20-game regular season schedule starting in March 1983.
The original Pittsburgh Maulers were a One-Year Wonder in the United States Football League during the spring of 1984. The Maulers were best known for signing 1983 Heisman Trophy-winning running back Mike Rozier of the University of Nebraska before he could enter the 1984 NFL draft. But Rozier was banged up from his senior season of college football and the rest of the roster was awfully thin. The Maulers staggered to a wretched 3-15 record. When a faction of USFL leaders headed by Donald Trump announced that the USFL would abandon the league’s spring football niche to compete head-to-head with the NFL in the fall of 1986, Maulers owner Edward DeBartolo Sr. cut his losses and folded the team after only one season.
The Baltimore Elite Giants got their start in Nashville, before moving to Columbus, Ohio for one year, then to Washington, D.C. They moved down the road in Baltimore in 1938 and played there until 1950, before spending their final season back in Tennessee.
The original Winnipeg Jets were charter members of the WHA in 1972. They moved to the NHL in 1979, along with three other WHA squads. In 1995, they were sold and moved to Phoenix for the 1996-97 hockey season. The name was revived when the Atlanta Thrashers moved to Manitoba in 2011 and assumed the Jets name but not their history.
The Atlantic City Surf were one of the six original franchises in the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. The Atlantic League was (and remains) the most ambitious league to arise out of the independent baseball boom of the 1990’s. The Surf played at the Sandcastle, a 5,900-seat ballpark built on the grounds of Atlantic City’s municipal airport, Bader Field. The stadium was built with $11.5 million in Casino Reinvestment Development Authority funds and $3 million in taxpayer bonds.
The Philadelphia Atoms won the North American Soccer League championship in the debut season of 1973. In doing so, they became the first American pro soccer club to earn the cover of Sports Illustrated. After that charmed first season, though, the Atoms’ fortunes fizzled out and the club was out of business by the end of 1976.
The Dallas Texans were the first of four Arena Football League teams to set up shop in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. The Texans earned a trip to Arena Bowl IV in their first season of play in 1990. Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Ernie Stautner was the Texans’ head coach in 1990 and would win the league’s Coach-of-the-Year award (and then never coach indoor football again).
The American Basketball Association (ABA) was formed in 1967 as a competitor to the established National Basketball Association (NBA). It started with 11 teams, and within a few years was angling for a merger with the older league. In 1976, the NBA took in four ABA teams, while three other surviving teams disbanded.
The Birmingham Barracudas were the final American expansion team awarded during the Canadian Football League’s failed incursion into the United States during the mid-1990’s.
