The San Diego Clippers were born when the Buffalo Braves headed west in the summer of 1978. Almost as soon as they got there, the team was angling to move up the 5 to L.A., which they ultimately did in 1984.
Roanoke, Virginia was the final stop for this well-traveled Mid-Atlantic minor league football outfit that first formed in Maryland as the Annapolis Sailors in 1965. By the time the team arrived at Roanoke’s Victory Stadium in 1969, it had landed a deal as a farm team of the NFL Washington Redskins and adopted the “Buckskins” name to reflect that affiliation. The Buckskins went out of business in 1971 at the end of their third season in Roanoke.
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 Cleveland Crusaders were one of twelve original franchises in the World Hockey Association in the winter of 1972-73. The franchise originally intended to play in Calgary. But after hitting a dead end in Alberta, the club ended up in Cleveland, where they skated for seven seasons.
The second incarnation of the Seattle Rainiers played in the Northwest League from 1972 through 1976. They were displaced when MLB’s Seattle Mainers arrived in 1977.
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 Tampa Bay Storm were arguably the greatest franchise in the 30-year history of the Arena Football League(s). The Storm played for 26 seasons and won 5 Arena Bowl titles. For many years the team was among the most popular box office attractions in the AFL. The Storm’s fierce “War on I-4” rivalry with the Orlando Predators lasted a quarter century from 1991 until 2016 and drew large crowds in both cities.
The Pittsburgh Pipers were charter members of the American Basketball Association (ABA) in 1967 and won the league’s first championship. Then promptly moved to Minnesota, only to move back to Pittsburgh after one season. When that didn’t improve their situation, the team changed its name to the Pittsburgh Condors.
The Sacramento Gold Miners were the first U.S.-based franchise admitted into the Canadian Football League during the CFL’s short-lived American expansion adventure from 1993 to 1995. The Gold Miners weren’t a brand new operation though. Owner Fred Anderson’s team previously played in the NFL-sponsored World League of American Football (WLAF) as the Sacramento Surge in 1991 and 1992. After NFL owners pulled the plug on the WLAF in September 1992, Anderson applied for entry to the CFL. The team retained its color scheme, Head Coach Kay Stephenson and a number of players from the WLAF era, but changed its name upon joining the CFL.
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