Author/team biographer Steve Guinan (We Are the Troopers: The Women of the Winningest Team in Pro Football History) helps us celebrate the return of football this week - with a look back at the unheralded story of the most dominant women's team of the 1970s -the Toledo Troopers.
Winners of seven consecutive championships across two different leagues - Sid Friedman's barnstorming Women’s Professional Football League (1971-72), and the pioneering true-pro successor National Women's Football League (1974-77) - the Troopers compiled an astounding 58-4-1 record over its nine years of life, including six seasons of undefeated play.
Led by the league's most recognizable star Linda Jefferson and overseen by its hard-charging owner/head coach Bill Stout - the Troopers' roster was an unlikely assemblage of housewives, factory workers, hairdressers, former nuns, high school teachers, bartenders, mail carriers, pilots, and would-be drill sergeants - whose combined spirit, tenacity and simple "love for the game" helped create what even the hallowed Pro Football Hall of Fame officially recognizes as the “winningest team in professional football history.”