The Frankford Yellow Jackets were a professional football team based in Northeast Philadelphia that played in the National Football League (NFL) from 1924 to 1931. The team predates the city’s current NFL team, the Eagles.
The Victoria Steelers were a British Columbia-based minor league football team active during the late 1960’s. The club started out as a semi-pro outfit in the Pacific Football League in 1966. At the end of 1966, the Continental Football League launched a West Coast expansion and the Steelers stepped up to fully professional status in 1967. The club relocated to Spokane, Washington prior to the 1968 season.
The Seattle Steelheads were members of the West Coast Negro Baseball Association (WCNBA) in that circuit’s only season, 1946. The team was actually the Harlem Globetrotters baseball club and returned to barnstorming when the WCNBA ceased operations.
The Thrashers were Atlanta’s second foray into the National Hockey League and were established 17 years after the city’s former NHL team, the Flames, had departed for Calgary. The Thrashers spent 12 seasons in Georgia before moving to Canada, just as their predecessors did.
Fun fact: despite its misleading name, this five-season entry in the Class AA Texas League during the mid-1970’s was not really a farm club of the Milwaukee Brewers. OK, so that’s not quite 100% true. San Antonio was a Milwaukee farm team for one season during the summer of 1972. To commemorate the new Player Development Contract with Milwaukee, San Antonio dropped its long-time local nickname – the ‘Missions’ – to become the Brewers that year. But Milwaukee pulled out after just one season and the team’s local owners didn’t bother to update the name … for the next four years!
The New Jersey Stallions are a long-time youth club soccer program operating out of Clifton, New Jersey. But during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s the organization also operated men’s – and, briefly, women’s – pro & amateur teams in the United Soccer Leagues. The Stallions debuted in 1996 and the Lady Stallions women’s club joined the USL in 2003. Following the 2004 season, the Stallions shuttered both their men’s and women’s USL adult clubs.
The Mohegan Wolves were a short-lived team in Arena Football 2 that played out of the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. When the Wolves joined up in 2002, AF2 was a sprawling 34-team league with franchises stretched from upstate New York to southern California. To keep costs down, the Wolves played primarily against regional opponents in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states.
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.
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.
Fun While it Lasted presents the Jersey of the Week, brought to you by Royal Retros. Each week, we feature a historic uniform. Click to learn more about the team that wore this classic gear.
