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 Michigan Panthers were the original champions of the spring season United States Football League during the league’s 1983 debut season. The team launched the pro careers of future NFL stars Bobby Hebert (quarterback) and Anthony Carter (wide receiver), who sparked the Panthers to the USFL title as rookies. The Panthers played in the longest game in a professional football history, a 93-minute triple overtime playoff loss to Steve Young and the Los Angeles Express in June 1984. This also proved to the Panthers final game. The USFL’s planned move to a fall season in 1986 caused the Detroit-based Panthers to merge with the Oakland Invaders ahead of the USFL’s 1985 season in order to avoid going head-to-head with the NFL’s Detroit Lions in 1986.
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 Toronto Toros started out as the Ottawa Nationals, a charter member of the World Hockey Association (WHA) in 1972. They moved to Toronto for their playoff games and were referred to as the Ontario Nationals. Less than a month later, the team was sold and permantely relocated to Toronto, where the became the Toros.
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 sport of indoor soccer spread across the country during the 1980’s and into the early 1990’s. Thanks to organizations like the Major Indoor Soccer League, National Professional Soccer League and the Continental Indoor Soccer League, practically every Major League city in the country had seen one or more indoor soccer teams come through town by 1999. Salt Lake City, Utah was an exception until the upstart World Indoor Soccer League (WISL) rolled into town at the E Center in West Valley in 1999.
The Tallahassee Thunder were a short-lived Arena Football team that played at the Leon County Civic Center from 2000 through 2002. The team played in Arena Football 2, which was a small market developmental circuit for the larger Arena Football League at the time.
A detailed history of the New Orleans Buccaneers (1967-1970) a founding member of the ABA that played three seasons in the Big Easy and later moved to Memphis.
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.
