EPISODE #03: Author Michael MacCambridge on Lamar Hunt & the American football league

Sports author/historian Michael MacCambridge (America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation; Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the legacy of Lamar Hunt – the most unlikely of sports executive pioneers – and the outsized role he played in modernizing 1960s pro football into the enduring American sports juggernaut it is today.  MacCambridge recounts how a strong rebuff from the stodgy 1950s NFL establishment galvanized Hunt’s determination to disrupt the football status quo, how the AFL’s “Foolish Club” of owners persevered through staggering financial losses, how Kansas City mayor Harold Roe “Chief” Bartle wooed Hunt and his flailing Dallas Texans franchise to the City of Fountains, and the karmic irony of the AFL Chiefs’ victory over Max Winter’s NFL Minnesota Vikings in the final AFL-NFL Super Bowl (IV) in 1970.

Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports -  buy book here

America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation -  buy book here

ESPN College Football Encyclopedia: The Complete History of the Game -  buy book here

Chuck Noll: His Life's Work - buy book here

EPISODE #02: Sports Executive Andy Crossley & the WPS Boston Breakers

Fellow defunct pro sports enthusiast (Fun While It Lasted, Minor League Paper) and former Boston Breakers General Manager Andy Crossley joins Tim Hanlon to discuss his rollicking ride on the Women’s Professional Soccer league roller coaster in the late 2000s, and why the second major attempt at professionalizing the women’s game in the US fell apart after just three seasons.  Crossley recounts why Harvard’s archaic on-campus football stadium became the oddly natural choice for Breakers home games, the moment when he first recognized the WPS business model was doomed, how an Internet telephone entrepreneur’s obsession with the US Women’s National team hastened the league’s demise, and why he doesn’t expect any Christmas cards from Hope Solo anytime soon.

EPISODE #01: Documentarian Mark Greczmiel & the NHL’s California Golden Seals

TV producer Mark Greczmiel (E! True Hollywood Story) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss his labor-of-love documentary The California Golden Seals Story, and the colorful late 60s/early 70s National Hockey League franchise that inspired it.  Greczmiel recounts the Seals’ largely hapless record on the ice, tortuous ownership history (including a turn by tightfisted Oakland A’s baseball impresario Charles O. Finley), unique approaches to gaining promotional “exposure,” and why current fans of both the NHL’s San Jose Sharks and Dallas Stars owe a debt of gratitude to a team remembered more for garish uniforms and white ice skates than their competitive hockey-playing prowess. 

The California Golden Seals Story - buy or rent movie on iTunes here