The history of professional soccer in the United States is richer and far more complex than today’s generation of Major League Soccer fans might realize. Multiple ethnically-infused pro leagues existed as far back as the early 1900s – but when the American Soccer Association collapsed in Depression-Era 1933, it wasn’t until the mid-1960s when the next serious attempt to bring full-fledged, top-flight Division One professional soccer to US shores was pursued in earnest. In 1966, suddenly and incr...
Feb 05, 2018•2 hr 2 min
For the first time since Episode #11 , we return to the brief, but unforgettable streak of pro football lightning known as the United States Football League, with the author of its definitive history, Paul Reeths ( The United States Football League, 1982-1986 ). The brainchild of New Orleans plywood manufacturer/car dealer/World Championship Tennis co-founder/Superdome director/art-and-antiques dealer David Dixon, the USFL splashily announced its intention to bring big-league, springtime profess...
Jan 29, 2018•2 hr 13 min
Veteran sportswriter Mark Montieth ( Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis ) returns to the podcast ( Episode #41 ) to help complete the story of the Indiana Pacers’ nine-year sojourn through the American Basketball Association – including its shaky transition into a merger-expanded NBA in 1976. Arguably the most stable and successful franchise in the ABA’s short but colorful history, the franchise nearly collapsed under its own weight after its inaugural National B...
Jan 22, 2018•1 hr 35 min
We conclude our two-part journey into the early history of the Arena Football League with founder and inventor Jim Foster, who recounts some of the most notable events of the league’s formative years – including a memorable 1987 “demonstration season” featuring: The February debut “Showcase Game” in suburban Chicago’s Rosemont Horizon between the hometown Bruisers and the Miami Vise – highlights of which later dominated ESPN’s SportsCenter ; A return to the Horizon for the first-ever nationally ...
Jan 15, 2018•1 hr 47 min
As the new year beckons, the fate of the Arena Football League – one of America’s most innovative modern-day professional sports concepts – hangs in the balance. With only four teams (the mutually-owned Washington Valor and Baltimore Brigade, defending champion Philadelphia Soul, and a still-unnamed Albany, NY squad) confirmed for the upcoming 2018 season, the AFL will play with exactly the same number of franchises that comprised its inaugural “demonstration” season back in 1987 – and a mere fr...
Jan 08, 2018•2 hr 19 min
We usher in the holidays and round out our debut season with the inimitable Pat Boone – an American entertainment legend and inveterate business entrepreneur, with a life-long passion for the sport of basketball. In a career spanning over six decades (and counting!), the incomparable Boone has just about done it all in the fields of music, film, television, and stage, as well as the pursuit of a wide variety of business interests – including being the majority owner of the American Basketball As...
Jan 01, 2018•1 hr 22 min
We usher in the holidays and round out our debut season with the inimitable Pat Boone – an American entertainment legend and inveterate business entrepreneur, with a life-long passion for the sport of basketball. In a career spanning over six decades (and counting!), the incomparable Boone has just about done it all in the fields of music, film, television, and stage, as well as the pursuit of a wide variety of business interests – including being the majority owner of the American Basketball As...
Dec 25, 2017•1 hr 22 min
Long-time Indianapolis pro hoops beat reporter Mark Montieth ( Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis ) joins host Tim Hanlon to delve into the intriguing story behind the efforts of late-1960s civic leaders to re-establish a top-tier professional franchise in the capital city of basketball-mad Indiana after a curious 14-year absence. One of eleven charter franchises in 1967’s upstart American Basketball Association, the Indiana Pacers literally and figuratively “set...
Dec 18, 2017•1 hr 26 min
Long-time Metro Silicon Valley columnist and San Jose, California native Gary Singh ( The San Jose Earthquakes: A Seismic Soccer Legacy ) joins host Tim Hanlon to discuss the confusing journey and three distinct incarnations of one of American soccer’s most colorful and persistent professional franchises. As one of four West Coast expansion teams (along with the Los Angeles Aztecs, Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps) added for the North American Soccer League’s breakthrough 1974 season, th...
Dec 11, 2017•1 hr 34 min
Former sportscaster and fellow defunct pro sports enthusiast Kenn Tomasch joins host Tim Hanlon to dig deep into the two-season saga of the Indiana (née Indianapolis) Twisters of the Continental Indoor Soccer League – the mid-90s summertime indoor soccer circuit hatched by a collective of team and arena owners from the NBA and NHL to keep their facilities humming during their respective “off”-seasons. CISL franchises controlled by entities outside the big-league fraternity were also part of the ...
Dec 04, 2017•1 hr 41 min
Documentary film producer/director Jon Leonoudakis ( The Wrecking Crew! ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss Season Three of his digital video series The Sweet Spot: A Treasury of Baseball Stories – devoted to the plight of women in the pursuit of playing America’s pastime. Over this season’s nine episodes, Shutout! The Battle American Women Wage to Play Baseball tackles the tortuous journey of women in baseball from multiple angles – including notable attempts at professional play over the last centur...
Nov 27, 2017•1 hr 10 min
Ice hockey makes its long-awaited return to the podcast, as host Tim Hanlon revisits the legendarily forlorn California Golden Seals franchise of the late 1960s/early 1970s National Hockey League, with author Steve Currier ( The California Golden Seals: A Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL’s Most Outlandish Teams ). Part of the NHL’s “Great Expansion” of 1967, the Seals never posted a winning record in any of its 11 years of existence (including its last two seasons as the Clevela...
Nov 20, 2017•1 hr 35 min
Author/historian Bill Young ( John Tortes “Chief” Meyers: A Baseball Biography ) returns to the podcast to discuss the life and legacy of one of Major League Baseball’s most intriguing personalities from the sport’s “dead-ball era” of the 1900s/10s. The sturdy, hard-hitting battery-mate (and eventual vaudeville stage partner) of Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Matthewson – as well as a fixture in some of legendary New York Giants manager John McGraw’s most successful teams – “Chief” Meyers was also...
Nov 13, 2017•1 hr 10 min
Former NASL, MISL, CISL (and even ASL) soccer great Paul Child becomes the fifth National Soccer Hall of Famer to join the podcast – and regales host Tim Hanlon with a bevy of eyebrow-raising anecdotes from a 25+ pro career as a player and coach across teams and leagues in both the outdoor and indoor versions of the game, including: • Taking a chance to get first-team play as a 19-year-old via loan with the Atlanta Chiefs in the fragile 1972 North American Soccer League; • Learning to love the n...
Nov 06, 2017•1 hr 24 min
Basketball historian and Penn State professor emeritus Murry Nelson ( The National Basketball League: A History ) returns to the podcast – this time to dive into the deep end of one of the modern-day NBA’s most important formative tributaries. The National Basketball League was forged out of an industrial collective of independent “company teams” that dotted the Midwest in the mid-1930s – and through the corporate patronage of firms like Goodyear, Firestone and General Electric, became a full-ti...
Oct 30, 2017•1 hr 33 min
Author Bill Ryczek ( Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball’s National Association ) makes a return visit to the podcast – this time to regale host Tim Hanlon in the intriguing story of the raucous early days of organized baseball’s first attempt at forming and sustaining a true professional league. Birthed in early 1871 from a hodgepodge, post-Civil War-era amalgam of amateur teams, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players – or “National Association” – became bot...
Oct 22, 2017•1 hr 10 min
The lineage behind what is today’s Atlanta Braves is one of the longest, deepest and most uniquely enduring in all of professional baseball. With early roots dating back to the launch of 1871’s National Association (when they were based in Boston, and known simply as the “Red Stockings”), the later-renamed Braves franchise boldly moved to the greener pastures of Milwaukee in 1953 – where for 13 years, the team never endured a losing season, won two National League pennants, and, in 1957, brought...
Oct 16, 2017•1 hr 22 min
Wichita, Kansas natives Mike Romalis and Tim O’Bryhim (Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings) join host Tim Hanlon to talk about their current book – and upcoming documentary – focused on the improbable story of the Major Indoor Soccer League’s smallest-market (Nielsen-ranked #66) club that became the first major league professional sports team in Kansas history. The MISL’s Wichita Wings defied conventional logic, as world-class soccer players from places like England...
Oct 09, 2017•1 hr 32 min
Inc. Editor-at-Large David Whitford ( Extra Innings: A Season in the Senior League ) joins host Tim Hanlon to retrace his journalistic odyssey covering the inaugural season of the short-lived, Florida-based Senior Professional Baseball Association (SPBA) in the winter of 1989-90. Whitford recalls the early-career events leading up to his plum writing assignment, and the process by which he went about chronicling this unique, but ultimately ill-fated eight-team circuit for former pro players over...
Oct 02, 2017•1 hr 10 min
While the meteoric rise of the United Soccer League’s FC Cincinnati franchise caught many pro sports observers by surprise, keen observers of soccer’s unique history in the Queen City note that the foundation of the team’s current success actually dates back to 1972, when an ambitious little club called the Cincinnati Comets won the American Soccer League championship in the team’s inaugural season. Cincinnati writer/photographer/native Ronny Salerno ( The Extraordinary Story of the Cincinnati C...
Sep 25, 2017•1 hr 24 min
The history of women’s professional basketball in the US pre-dates the modern-day WNBA by at least two decades, when inveterate pro sports entrepreneur Bill Byrne launched the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL) in 1978. Taking cultural cues from the Equal Rights Amendment movement, the adoption of Title IX, Billie Jean King’s landmark victory in tennis’ “Battle of the Sexes,” and a surprisingly strong showing by the US women’s squad in the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics, Byrne hustled h...
Sep 18, 2017•1 hr 22 min
At the dawn of the Roaring Twenties, the National Football League was a mere footnote in the American sports scene, when matchups were played on dirt fields by vagabond athletes who would beat up or punch out their opponents for fifty bucks a game. But one team during that era was different – the Oorang Indians. Founded by an ambitious dog breeder, comprised only of Native American players, and coached by a national multi-sport superstar (and charter pro football Hall of Famer), the Indians barn...
Sep 11, 2017•1 hr
On January 20, 1968, a frenzied crowd of 52,693 packed the Houston Astrodome to witness the #2-ranked University of Houston Cougars nip the #1 (and previously undefeated) UCLA Bruins in a college basketball spectacle that legendarily became the sport’s “Game of the Century.” In addition to the record-sized gate, it was the first-ever college game to be televised nationally in prime time – and it was sports entrepreneur Eddie Einhorn’s scrappy little independent network of affiliated stations cal...
Sep 04, 2017•1 hr 18 min
The Memphis Tigers professional football team of the late 1920s and early 1930s never played a down in the National Football League, but that didn’t stop them from becoming one of the era’s most successful clubs – including laying a legitimate claim as the sport’s national champions in 1929. Author/historian Wylie McLallen ( Tigers by the River: A True and Accurate Tale of the Early Days of Pro Football ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the story of the Tigers’ exploits in the Depression Era world o...
Aug 28, 2017•1 hr 9 min
Fox Sports soccer rules analyst and newly minted National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee Dr. Joe Machnik has done just about everything across the American soccer landscape in his 60+ year career. As a player, coach, referee, administrator, match commissioner, and soccer camp (No.1 Soccer Camps) pioneer, “Dr. Joe” has had a direct hand in helping achieving some of the sport’s major milestones in the US at virtually every level – amateur, collegiate, professional, and international. Entwined within...
Aug 21, 2017•1 hr 24 min
Before the modern-day New York Jets of today’s NFL – before Joe Namath, before the infamous “Heidi Game,” before the guaranteed Super Bowl III victory – there were the New York Titans. A charter member of the upstart American Football League in 1960, the underfunded Titans played for three seasons to meager crowds in Upper Manhattan’s decrepit Polo Grounds, flirting with bankruptcy and collapse from virtually day one. Author/historian Bill Ryczek ( Crash of the Titans: The Early Years of the New...
Aug 14, 2017•1 hr 9 min
Award-winning British documentarian Daniel Gordon ( Hillsborough; 9.79*; The Game of Their Lives ) joins Tim Hanlon from London to discuss his new ESPN Films 30 for 30 feature George Best: All By Himself – and the enigmatic soccer star whose life story it depicts. Gordon reveals: Why he was attracted to the story of George Best, despite others’ previous attempts to tell it; How Best’s early-career interviews with the British media while at Manchester United became a hauntingly predictive narrati...
Aug 07, 2017•56 min
Author/historian David Jordan ( The Athletics of Philadelphia: Connie Mack's White Elephants ; The A's: A Baseball History ) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the first incarnation of one of Major League Baseball’s most enigmatic franchises. Jordan discusses how the Philadelphia As: Helped launch the American League as a charter franchise in 1901; Dominated the majors with six league pennants, three World Series titles and two 100+ win seasons in its first 15 years; Were dismantled by long-time manage...
Jul 31, 2017•1 hr 15 min
Award-winning Cleveland Plain Dealer sports columnist Bill Livingston ( George Steinbrenner’s Pipe Dream: The ABL Champion Cleveland Pipers ) joins Tim Hanlon to delve deeper into the history of the ill-fated 1960s American Basketball League – this time through the lens of one of its (and ultimately, one of pro sports’) most combustible figures. Livingston describes how Pipers owner (and future New York Yankees “Boss”) George Steinbrenner: • Retooled a local Cleveland industrial amateur team int...
Jul 24, 2017•1 hr 13 min
National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee and three-time ABC-TV “Superstars” champion Kyle Rote, Jr. joins Tim Hanlon from his home in Memphis for an in-depth and wide-ranging conversation about his trailblazing journey as America’s first true native-born professional soccer star. Along the way, Rote, Jr. reveals: How a fortuitous heart-to-heart with his famous football star-father helped convince him to choose soccer over football for his pro career; How a standout Rookie of the Year season with th...
Jul 17, 2017•2 hr 25 min
