The Denver Spurs started in the Western Hockey League in 1968. When that circuit folded, they joined the Central Hockey League in 1974. The following year, they joined the World Hockey Association, but moved to Ottawa halfway through the season.
Continental Football League (1966-1969) Atlantic Coast Football League (1970) Born: 1966 – The Newark Bears relocate to Orlando, FL Folded: Postseason 1970 First Game: August 20, 1966 (W 49-27 @ Montreal Beavers) Last Game: November 28, 1970 (L 21-20 vs. Indianapolis Capitols) Continental Football League Champions: 1967 & 1968 The
The Cleveland Buckeyes started as the Cincinnati-Cleveland Buckeyes in 1942, before settling permanently in Northern Ohio in 1943. The club won two league titles as well as a Negro World Series championship.
In the professional sports franchise arms race of the 1970s, there were many casualties, particularly in the world of hockey. One of those was the expansion Kansas City Scouts.
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.
Reno 1868 FC was a 2nd Division pro soccer club affiliated on the technical side with the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer and operated on the business side by the front office staff of Minor League Baseball’s Reno Aces of the Pacific Coast League. 1868 played out of Greater Nevada Field, the Aces’ 9,000-seat baseball stadium, from 2017 through 2020.
The Central Valley Coyotes were a Fresno-based indoor pro football team that played six seasons in Arena Football 2, the small-market developmental league of the original Arena Football League. The Coyotes, who played from 2004 through 2009, were the second AF2 franchise to try and make a go of it at Fresno’s Selland Arena. They followed on the heels of the ill-fated Frenzy, who closed up after only one summer of play in 2002.
A detailed history of the Miami Floridians, later just The Floridians, the former Minnesota Muskies that played four seasons in the Sunshine State before folding.
The Memphis Mad Dogs were a short-lived chapter in the Canadian Football League’s expansion misadventure into the United States between 1993 and 1995. The Mad Dogs arrived at the Liberty Bowl just in time for the final season of the CFL’s three-year American experiment in the fall of 1995. The ‘Dogs featured an outstanding defense and CFL legend Damon Allen at quarterback but never quite put it all together and finished their only season at 9-9. The team did make a star out of unheralded community college wide receiver Joe Horn, who leapt from the Mad Dogs to a 12-year career in the NFL and four Pro Bowl nods. The team folded after the 1995 season.
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