The Los Angeles Dons were a professional football team that played four seasons in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) starting in 1946. The team merged with Rams after the NFL absorbed the AAFC following the 1949 season.
The 1975 Portland Thunder were the Rose City’s second and final go-round with the World Football League, a ramshackle mid-70’s start-up that briefly sought to challenge the NFL for top collegiate and veteran stars. The Thunder followed on the feels of the Portland Storm, who played in WFL’s debut season of 1974 before tax problems and bounced checks drove the team out of business. Like the Storm before them, the similarly-named Thunder dressed in green & blue and played at Civic Stadium. The Thunder had a record of 4-7 when the WFL went out of business midway through its second campaign in October 1975.
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 Macon Whoopee was a minor league hockey team that played in the second iteration of the Central Hockey League. They played from 1996 to 2001 and were the second Macon hockey team to use that nickname, though their predecessors from the Southern Hockey League added an “S.”
Houston’s dreams of landing a Major League Baseball team go back at least as far as the 1950s. The threat of a third major league, the proposed Continental League, yielded Houston a National League expansion franchise that was known as the Houston Colt .45s for its first three seasons.
This doomed 2nd division men’s club was part of the disastrous Lehigh Valley Multi-Purpose Stadium project, intended to bring minor league baseball and pro soccer to the Easton/Allentown region of Pennsylvania during the late 1990’s. The Steam would be the region’s first outdoor pro soccer team since the Pennsylvania Stoners, who played out of Allentown and Bethlehem, folded in 1984. When the stadium project failed to come to fruition, the Steam embarked on a single, futile season in the USL A-League during the summer of 1999, cobbling together a schedule of “home” matches in various sites around Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The Steam officially disbanded in December 1999.
The (original) New Orleans Voodoo were a tremendously popular Arena Football League team that played in the city from 2004-2005 and 2007-2008. The team went on hiatus for the 2006 season in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and saw its roster dispersed. But the Voodoo returned to New Orleans Arena in 2007 and were more popular than ever, setting an all-time league record with the reported sale of over 13,000 season tickets.
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.
The Birmingham Barracudas were the final American expansion team awarded during the Canadian Football League’s failed incursion into the United States during the mid-1990’s.
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.
