
The Miami Floridians / The Floridians (1968-1972) ABA
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.

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 Rhode Island Indians were a minor league football team that played a single season in the Continental Football League during the autumn of 1965. The team played at City Stadium in Providence. The Indians were dreadful, finishing their only season at 3-14 before going out of business. But starting quarterback Tom Kennedy would go on to play 6 games for the NFL’s New York Giants the following year in 1966.

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.

The Ottawa Civics were the former Denver Spurs. They moved to the Canadian capital in January 1976 but lasted just 11 games in Ontario.

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.

Soccer League As I draft this column, I’m sitting in the athletic center at Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts administering the final exam for my Sports Promotions & Marketing course (SM 203). I taught two sections of the course as a guest instructor this semester and it was a blast.

The Norfolk Nighthawks were one of 15 founding franchise in Arena Football 2, a lower-budget, small-market offshoot of the original Arena Football League (1987-2008). AF2 debuted in the spring of 2000 and the Nighthawks lasted for four seasons before folding. Former NFL defensive standouts Kenny Easley and Bruce Smith, both Virginia natives, owned the franchise.

The Carolina Cougars played in the American Basketball Association (ABA) from 1969 to 1974. The team was established as the Houston Mavericks and spent two seasons in Texas before being purchased by North Carolina syndicate. The team was sold and moved to Missouri and became the Spirits of St. Louis in 1974.

Yes, strange as it sounds, but the small, poverty-stricken city of Shreveport, Louisiana once had its very own Canadian Football League franchise: the Shreveport Pirates. The Pirates’ shambolic leadership made a series of head-scratching personnel moves, including the signings of troubled over-the-hill NFL stars Dexter Manley and Mark Duper, and fired the team’s first head coach before taking a regular season snap. Meanwhile the team staggered to a two-year record of 8-28 in the CFL before going out of business at the end of the 1995 season.
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