EPISODE 367: Myron Cope: Voice of the Steelers - With Dan Joseph

October 27, 2024

Voice of America news editor and Pittsburgh native Dan Joseph ("Behind the Yoi: The Life of Myron Cope, Legendary Pittsburgh Steelers Broadcaster") joins the podcast this week for a deep dive into the legacy of one of pro football's most unique broadcast voices.

Myron Cope (1929-2008) served as the radio color commentator for the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers from 1970 to 2005, becoming an irreplaceable voice in NFL broadcasting. Known for his distinctive, gravelly tone and catchphrases like “Yoi!” and “Okle-dokle,” Cope's excitement and unapologetic support for the Steelers led fans to mute their TVs and tune into his radio broadcasts. His career extended beyond game days, with his pioneering evening talk show dominating Pittsburgh’s airwaves for over two decades and earning him the honor of being the first pro football announcer inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.

Born and raised in Pittsburgh to Lithuanian Jewish parents, Cope initially pursued journalism, writing for publications such as Sports Illustrated. But it was through the airwaves that he truly captured fans’ hearts. In 1975, Cope created the "Terrible Towel" - a gold towel Steelers fans waved in support of their team - which became a powerful emblem of Steelers Nation. His contributions to the team’s lore also include co-naming 1972's “Immaculate Reception,” forever tying him to one of the NFL’s most iconic plays.

Beyond broadcasting, Cope’s legacy reflects his dedication to his family and community. He donated all Terrible Towel royalties to the care facility where his son, born with brain damage, still resides. Over his lifetime, Cope raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for children with disabilities, underscoring the kindness and loyalty that endeared him to Pittsburgh and solidified his place in sports history.

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Behind the Yoi: The Life of Myron Cope, Legendary Pittsburgh Steelers Broadcaster - buy here

EPISODE 366: "Mornings With Madden" - With Stan Bunger

October 20, 2024

John Madden (1936-2021) was more than a football icon - he embodied the sport itself. As the unmistakable voice of the NFL for nearly 30 years, he brought America’s game into TV living rooms across the country. His name became synonymous with football, not just through his legendary broadcast career, but also as the face of his eponymous "Madden" video game franchise. On the field, he was a coaching mastermind, holding the highest career winning percentage of any NFL coach - achieved exclusively with one club, the AFL-then-NFL Oakland Raiders (1969-78). Madden’s influence reshaped how fans experienced football, both on screen and in person.

But there was another side to Madden, known only to those in the San Francisco Bay Area - where he not only grew up and resided, but also where he shared a daily ritual for nearly four decades - a morning chat with his local radio station. To the nation's fans, Madden was the booming voice of Sunday pro football, but to Bay Area listeners, he was also their neighbor, engaging in lighthearted, often profound conversations about life beyond the gridiron. These radio segments offered him a break from the spotlight, where he revealed a more personal and down-to-earth side to his personality.

In "Mornings with Madden: My Radio Life With An American Legend," former KCBS-AM/FM morning news anchor Stan Bunger—the radio host who spent over fifteen years in daily conversation with Madden - presents a rare, intimate look at the man behind the legend. Drawing from thousands of recordings and personal memories, Bunger reveals a different Madden: a devoted father, loving husband, bad golfer, dog owner, and fan of roadside diners. Off-screen, Madden pondered life’s simple joys and frustrations with the same humor and passion that captivated millions on TV.

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Mornings With Madden: My Radio Life With An American Legend - buy here

EPISODE 365: NBC Sports Broadcaster Tom Hammond

October 13, 2024

Legendary sports broadcaster Tom Hammond ("Races, Games, and Olympic Dreams: A Sportscaster's Life") joins host Tim Hanlon for a myriad of career memories from his nearly 35-year journey calling top-tier league packages and prime events for NBC Sports.

Plucked from regional sportscasting obscurity in 1984 for a one-time stall reporting gig as part of the network's telecast of the inaugural Breeders' Cup, Hammond performed so well that an NBC executive offered him a chance to call Sunday NFL/AFC football games on the spot.

The broadcast launched Hammond's multi-decade career with NBC Sports and a pathway to the top levels of American television sportscasting -including other major properties like the NBA, Notre Dame football, horse racing's Triple Crown, and perhaps most memorably, an astounding 13 different Olympic Games (summer and winter) calling marquee events such as gymnastics, track and field, and figure skating.

But of course, we can't let Hammond forget his time as the lead voice for the network's curious, but ultimately ill-fated AFL on NBC arena football adventure from 2003-06!

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Races, Games, and Olympic Dreams: A Sportscaster's Life - buy here

EPISODE 360: The NFL's 1952 Dallas Texans - With Mike Cobern

September 8, 2024

Metroplex restauranteur and armchair football historian Mike Cobern (Wards of the League: The Untold Story of the First NFL Team in Dallas) joins for a deep dive into the mostly forgotten saga of the 1952 Dallas Texans, the one-year wonder that has nearly vanished from the annals of National Football League history.

Before the Cowboys became "America's Team," the NFL's Dallas Texans were nobody's team!

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Wards of the League: The Untold Story of the First NFL Team in Dallas - buy here

EPISODE 359: The Making of the Super Bowl - With Dennis Deninger

September 1, 2024

Syracuse University communications professor and former Emmy award-winning ESPN producer Dennis Deninger ("The Football Game That Changed America: How the NFL Created a National Holiday") joins the show to take us through the origin story and unlikely sociological trajectory of the Super Bowl - pro football's annual championship extravaganza that morphed from uncertain beginnings during the late 1960s AFL-NFL merger into one of America's dominant cultural touchstones.

From the book's dust jacket:

The Super Bowl has changed what was just another wintry Sunday into America’s unofficial holiday. It’s the biggest entertainment event of the year. It’s the most important advertising event of the year. It is the biggest gambling event of the year. More Americans watch this game than vote in presidential elections.

How did this all happen? In "The Football Game That Changed America," Dennis Deninger reveals how the Super Bowl went from almost being canceled after its first two years to becoming an ingrained part of American life. He tells the story of how this colossal event came to be—including the challenges, stumbles, and amusing surprises along the way—and details the game’s incredible impact well beyond the sports world, touching virtually every facet of life in the United States.

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The Football Game That Changed America: How the NFL Created a National Holiday - buy here

EPISODE 330: The 4th Annual(-ish) Year-End Holiday Roundtable Spectacular!

December 24, 2023

We press the rewind button on a most interesting 2023, and peer ahead into the uncharted waters of 2024 with our fourth-annual(-ish) Holiday Roundtable Spectacular - featuring three of our favorite fellow defunct sports enthusiasts: Andy Crossley (Fun While It Lasted & Episode 2); Paul Reeths (OurSportsCentral.com, StatsCrew.com & Episode 46); and Steve Holroyd (Crossecheck, Philly Classics & Episodes 92, 109, 149, 188 & 248).

Takes of varying temperatures fly as we review some of the most curious events of the past year, debate who and what might be next to wobble into obscurity, and conjecture about future scenarios for the next generation of defunct and otherwise forgotten pro sports teams and leagues - including:

USFL 2.0 + XFL 3.0 = TBD 2024
Oakland A's to Las Vegas (maybe)
Major League Cricket
Savannah Bananas
MiLB ownership consolidation
Premier Lacrosse League: from tour to teams
Professional Box Lacrosse Association (RIP)
Women's pro volleyball
MLS vs. US Soccer
NBA, NHL & MLB expansion/relocation rumors
NWSL expansion & TV deal
Women's hockey 3.0: PWHL

PLUS, we speculate on the dubious reincarnation of the Arena Football League!

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EPISODE 329: The 1963 AFL San Diego Chargers - With Dave Steidel

December 17, 2023

After last week's ugly, team-record 63-21 drubbing by the Las Vegas Raiders, and the subsequent dismissal of its head coach and general manager - it's been a (yet another) rough season for the NFL's Los Angeles Chargers. While family owner/scion Dean Spanos tries (again) to plot a plan forward, we look nostalgically back to the franchise's early years in San Diego as one of the charter entries in the iconoclastic American Football League - an era that produced the club's (still) one-and-only championship in 1963.

AFL history chronicler Dave Steidel ("The Uncrowned Champs: How the 1963 San Diego Chargers Would Have Won the Super Bowl") helps us zero in on the story behind that AFL title-winning season - with an in-depth revisit of iconic coach Sid Gilman's blockbuster squad, featuring revered Charger greats like Tobin Rote, John Hadl, Paul Lowe, Keith Lincoln, Chuck Allen, and future Pro Football Hall of Famers Lance Allworth and Ron Mix.

Plus: we debate whether the '63 Chargers could have truly beaten the NFL champion Chicago Bears that season for a definitive (albeit mythical) pre-merger American pro football title.

The Uncrowned Champs: How the 1963 San Diego Chargers Would Have Won the Super Bowl - buy book here

Remember the AFL: The Ultimate Fan’s Guide to the American Football League - buy book here

AFL Trivia & Tales - buy book here

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EPISODE 328: Raycom Sports - With Founders Rick & Dee Ray

December 10, 2023

We adjust our TV antenna rabbit ears back to the late 1970s for the origin story of one of the most influential firms in modern-day sports media - with Rick and Dee Ray, the founders of televised college sports juggernaut Raycom Sports.

In their new George Hirthler-penned memoir "Unstoppable: A Story of Love, Faith and the Power Couple Who Ignited the College Sports Broadcasting Boom," the Rays rewind the videotape to a time when a new technology called "cable" was still in its infancy, and the American television landscape was largely defined by a web of powerful broadcast network-affiliated stations - save for a handful of scrappy alternative "independent" signals in each market.

While pro sports filled plenty of prime/weekend network TV windows, and individual teams provided a steady slate of in-season games to local indie station audiences - regularly scheduled D-I college sports was virtually non-existent outside of limited national broadcasts featuring only big-name schools.

It was against this backdrop that an entrepreneurially minded local station programmer and a never-say-no ad executive saw an opening for regularly scheduled regional broadcasts of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball that not only delighted rabid fans throughout the Southeast, but also laid the groundwork for a sports syndication force that would eventually rewrite the rules for college sports media - and beyond.

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Unstoppable: A Story of Love, Faith, and the Power Couple Who Ignited the College Sports Broadcasting Boom - buy book here

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EPISODE 326: NFL Football "Survivor" Steve Wright

November 19, 2023

11-year pro football offensive lineman and budding Renaissance man Steve Wright ("Aggressively Human: Discovering Humanity in the NFL, Reality TV, and Life") helps us check off a few new boxes in our obsessive quest for forgotten sports franchise completism.

Before his post-career exploits as the 10th-place finisher in the 22nd season of the CBS reality competition series "Survivor" ("Survivor: Redemption Island"), and as the inventor of pioneering sideline cooling-mist tech firms Cloudburst and Mist & Cool, Wright blocked and tackled for some of the game's most exciting teams during the 80s and early 90s - including the Dallas Cowboys, the Baltimore and Indianapolis versions of the Colts, the Los Angeles incarnation of the Raiders, and the 1985 USFL Championship Game finalist Oakland Invaders.

Aggressively Human: Discovering Humanity in the NFL, Reality TV, and Life - buy book here

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EPISODE 324: Football's Enigmatic Coach George Allen - With Mike Richman

November 5, 2023

Football biographer Mike Richman ("George Allen: A Football Life") joins us for a decades-long journey back into the old-school NFL (and USFL) exploits of one of pro football's most intense and enigmatic sideline characters.

From the dust-jacket of "A Football Life":

"George Allen was a fascinating and eccentric figure in the world of football coaching. His remarkable career spanned six decades, from the late 1940s until his sudden death in 1990 at the age of seventy-three. Although he never won a Super Bowl, he never had a losing season as an NFL head coach and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2002.

"In 'George Allen: A Football Life', Mike Richman captures the life and accomplishments of one of the most successful NFL coaches of all time and one of the greatest innovators in the game. A player’s coach, Allen was a tremendous motivator and game strategist, as well as a defensive mastermind, and is credited with making special teams a critical focus in an era in which they were an afterthought. He had a keen eye for talent and pulled off masterful trades, often for veteran players who were viewed to be past their prime, who then had great seasons and made his teams much better.

"In addition to his coaching feats, Allen had an idiosyncratic and controversial personality. His life revolved around football 24/7. One of his quirks was to minimize chewing time by consuming soft foods, giving himself more time to prepare for games and study opponents. He lived and breathed football; he compared losing to death. Allen had contentious relationships with the owners of the two NFL teams for which he was the head coach, the Washington Redskins and Los Angeles Rams. Richman explores why he was fired by those teams and whether he was blackballed from coaching again in the NFL."

George Allen: A Football Life - buy book here

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EPISODE 323: Play-By-Play Pioneer Marty Glickman - With Jeffrey Gurock

October 29, 2023

It's an episode that's hopefully as "Good! Like Nedicks!" - as we take a biographical look back at the rich and influential life of pioneering New York City sports broadcaster Marty Glickman - with biographer/Yeshiva University history professor Jeffrey Gurock ("Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend").

From the "Marty Glickman" dustjacket:

"For close to half a century after World War II, Marty Glickman was the voice of New York sports. His distinctive style of broadcasting, on television and especially on the radio, garnered for him legions of fans who would not miss his play-by-play accounts. From the 1940s through the 1990s, he was as iconic a sports figure in town as the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, the Knicks’ Walt Frazier, or the Jets’ Joe Namath. His vocabulary and method of broadcasting left an indelible mark on the industry, and many of today’s most famous sportscasters were Glickman disciples. To this very day, many fans who grew up listening to his coverage of Knicks basketball and Giants football games, among the myriad of events that Glickman covered, recall fondly, and can still recite, his descriptions of actions in arenas and stadiums.

"In addition to the stories of how he became a master of American sports airwaves, Marty Glickman has also been remembered as a Jewish athlete who, a decade before he sat in front of a microphone, was cynically barred from running in a signature track event in the 1936 Olympics by anti-Semitic American Olympic officials. This lively biography details this traumatic event and explores not only how he coped for decades with that painful rejection but also examines how he dealt with other anti-Semitic and cultural obstacles that threatened to stymie his career. Glickman’s story underscores the complexities that faced his generation of American Jews as these children of immigrants emerged from their ethnic cocoons and strove to succeed in America amid challenges to their professional and social advancement."

Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend - buy book here

Glickman - buy DVD here

Sports on New York Radio: A Play-By-Play History - buy book here

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EPISODE 321: The 1970s - With Michael MacCambridge

October 15, 2023

After an absence of over six years and more than 300+ episodes, sportswriter extraordinaire Michael MacCambridge ("Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports"; "America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation"; "Chuck Noll: His Life's Work") makes his triumphant return to the podcast - this time to celebrate the release of his brand new, instant sports history classic, "The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America."

It's just about everything you'd expect from the author of what is arguably the most definitive look yet at the decade that undeniably shaped the modern trajectory of sports in America - including (of course) a bevy of challenger leagues, defunct teams, one-of-a-kind events that only the Seventies could produce!

The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America - buy book here

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EPISODE 320: Fox Sports/MSG Networks Broadcaster Kenny Albert

October 8, 2023

Veteran Fox Sports and MSG Networks play-by-play man Kenny Albert ("A Mic for All Seasons") joins host Tim Hanlon for a cornucopia of career memories from his 30+ year journey in sports broadcasting – including, of course, obligatory stops along the way for various "forgotten" teams, events and even TV networks of yore.

Now celebrating his third decade with Fox, the Emmy Award-winning Albert has regularly called Sunday games for every season of the network's NFL coverage - as well as for its telecasts of Major League Baseball, college football, boxing, thoroughbred horse racing, and (between 1995-99) NHL hockey.

Simultaneously, the versatile Albert has been a fixture in New York local sports broadcasting as a regular TV and radio voice for the NHL Rangers and the NBA Knicks for MSG Networks - and is the lead play-by-play hockey announcer for TNT's national NHL broadcast package.

If that weren't enough, Albert has been a regular broadcast presence for NBC's network coverage of the Winter (since 2002) and Summer (since 2016) Olympics, and, since 2010, lead-announces Washington Commanders preseason NFL games on local DC television.

Despite all of those marquee assignments, we (naturally) obsess over some of Albert’s more memorable “forgotten” gigs along the way, including:

College moonlighting with the United States Basketball League's (USBL) Staten Island Stallions;
Fight song memories of the American Hockey League's Baltimore Skipjacks;
His first "jacket" with DC's original regional sports network, Home Team Sports;
Following the NHL national broadcast puck across a litany of now-defunct TV networks like Outdoor Life Network, Versus & NBC Sports Network; AND
The national record for live play-by-play sportscasts in 3-D!

A Mic for all Seasons: My Three Decades Announcing the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, and the Olympics - Buy Book Here

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EPISODE 317: Before the NFL - With Gregg Ficery

September 10, 2023

The National Football League is back in full swing, and what better way to celebrate than with a deep dig into the primordial ooze from which it and the broader endeavor of professional football evolved - with Gregg Ficery, author of the new and immediately essential tome "Gridiron Legacy: Pro Football's Missing Origin Story."

From the revelatory new book's dust jacket:

Professional football's backstory was lost, until now. In the beginning, in 1892, pro football was born. Then it effectively died in infamy in 1906. It was resurrected nearly a decade later and soon became the American Professional Football Association in 1920 (renamed the National Football League in 1922). Few are even familiar with the basics of the historical narrative: the star players, the rivalries, and the game's brutality.

After its infancy in Pennsylvania, fanatic passion and media hype started exploding around the country for the greatest teams ever assembled in what became known as the Ohio League. More suddenly, the league died because of a gambling scandal. Nobody has ever been sure who was behind it or who were the heroes who saved the game. Careers and lives were ruined, and the game's legacy was left suspended in time without resolution. As of the NFL's 100th anniversary, nobody knows the true narrative that led up to its founding. Gridiron Legacy brings the story to light for the first time with a treasure trove of new research and never-before-published photographs from the career of one of the game's early champions. It is the greatest sports story never told.

Gridiron Legacy: Pro Football’s Missing Origin Story - Buy Book Here

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EPISODE 314: The UK (Hearts) the NFL - With Ben Isaacs

August 20, 2023

Domestically, American football has never been more popular (or prosperous) than it is today - yet questions continue to circle among the ownership class of the NFL as to how the pro game can continue to grow outside the confines of its current 32-team franchise structure.

While the feasibility of pursuing more club expansion within the US is hotly debated, there is no denying that the true future of the league's fortunes rests on its ability to more reliably tap into the massive fan fervor for pro pigskin building in international markets.

Ben Issacs ("The American Football Revolution: How Britain Fell in Love with the NFL") makes the case that the UK might be one of the most logical regions to put on the league's shortlist - buttressed by a surprisingly strong history of interest in and support for the game - especially in London, where nearly three dozen regular season games have been played since 2007.

In fact, the British Isles have been fascinated with American football for much longer than that - and Isaacs takes us through some of the evidence, including: the NFL's American Bowl pre-season exhibition series during the 1980s; the post-season 1984 USFL Wembley Stadium matchup between the champion Philadelphia Stars and the Burt Reynolda/Tim Bassett-owned Tampa Bay Bandits (for the long-forgotten "Jetsave Challenge Cup"); the ill-fated league-sponsored World League of American Football (with the 1991 World Bowl champion London Monarchs); and the reconstituted NFL Europe/Europa and its still-revered Scottish Claymores.

The American Football Revolution: How Britain Fell in Love with the NFL - Buy Book Here

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EPISODE 313: The NFL's Minneapolis Marines & Red Jackets - With R. C. Christiansen

July 16, 2023

We discover the story of the Twin Cities' forgotten, but undeniably first, NFL franchise(s) with the help of football writer/historian R. C. Christiansen ("Mill City Scrum: The History of Minnesota's First Team in the National Football League").

From the "Mill City Scrum" book jacket:

"In the flour milling city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, a group of first-generation American teenagers team up to play football in the sandlots. They call themselves the Marines, and with no high school or college experience, they learn to dominate their opponents using the same offense as the University of Minnesota Gophers.
"The Marines later emerge as an independent professional team, and they claim city, state, and regional championship titles, but World War I sends Marines players across the globe. When they return, the Marines face player defections, bad publicity, and low fan support.
"A former player and team captain and the manager of the Marines decides to bet his own fortune and the team’s future on a new National Football League. The Minneapolis Marines, later named the Minneapolis Red Jackets, play six years in the NFL and leave their mark on the history of pro football in Minnesota.

"Long before Minnesota had the Minnesota Vikings, they had the Minneapolis Marines."

Mill City Scrum: The History of Minnesota’s First in the National Football League - Buy Book Here

Border Boys: How Americans from border colleges helped western canada win a football championship - Buy Book Here

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EPISODE 311: Bob Whitsitt

July 3, 2023

From groundbreaking trades to team-saving negotiations, Bob Whitsitt ("Game Changer: An Insider's Story of the Sonics’ Resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ Turnaround, and the Deal that Saved the Seahawks") has been in the captain's seat for some of the most pivotal moments in Pacific Northwest pro sports franchise history.

But before helping rebuild Seattle's SuperSonics into an NBA Finals team in the mid-90s, tame the combustible personalities of the late 90s/early 2000s Portland Trail Blazers, and oversee the development of soccer-inclusive Seahawks Stadium (now Lumen Field) - "Trader Bob" cut his professional sports management teeth as an intern-turned-exec with the fledgling post-ABA Indiana Pacers, as well as a stabilizing behind-the-scenes front office force that guided a tenuous Kansas City Kings NBA club to a new home in Sacramento in the mid-80s.

In this first installment of an eventual two-parter, we grill Whitsitt on his early days climbing the sports exec ladder, and set the table for his eventual "game-changing" work in Cascadia country.

Game Changer: An Insider’s Story of the Sonics’ Resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ Turnaround, and the Deal that Saved the Seahawks - Buy Book Here

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EPISODE 295: "From the 55 Yard Line" - With Greg James (Vacation Special)

March 12, 2023

It's an early Spring Break hiatus for us this week - but not before sitting down for a very fun interview with CFL America blog/podcast publisher and friend-of-the-show Greg James - as a guest on his popular Sports History Network podcast "From the 55 Yard Line."

Tim and Greg go deep into the origin story of Good Seats Still Available, as well as a veritable audio potpourri of hot takes on what we've learned from doing the show over the course of nearly 300 episodes - and where we think pro football (and sports generally) might be headed in the years ahead.

Please enjoy this conversation we recorded a few weeks back - and be sure to check out all the other great podcasts across the Sports History Network!

Listen to “From the 55 Yard Line” here

Check out CFL America here

Check out Sports History Network here

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EPISODE 294: California Dreaming - With Dan Cisco

March 5, 2023

We head West this week to pay a visit to the "California Sports Guy" Dan Cisco ("California Sports Astounding: Fun, Unknown, and Surprising Facts from Statehood to Sunday"), and stir up a rich bouillabaisse of little-known factoids about defunct, previously domiciled and otherwise forgotten teams and leagues who once called the Golden State home.

Discover the reason why Oakland was chosen as an inaugural franchise in 1960's American Football League debut - and why its original name was hastily changed to "Raiders" just weeks before its first game.

Follow the move of the Pacific Coast League's original Hollywood Stars to San Diego in 1936 to become the Padres - and how a talented young player named Ted Williams unceremoniously ended his pitching career there before making it to the bigs.

And learn which legendary NBA basketball helped launch the International Volleyball Association's Irvine-based charter Southern California Bangers franchise in 1975 - and ultimately become the league's commissioner two years later.

PLUS, we make a bevy of unsolicited suggestions for Cisco's inevitable revised edition (and you can too)!

California Sports Astounding: Fun, Unknown, and Surprising Facts from Statehood to Sunday - Buy book here

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EPISODE 290: The Many Leagues of Women's Football - With Russ Crawford

January 22, 2023

While American tackle football has long been considered an exclusively male sport, this week's guest Russ Crawford ("Women's American Football: Breaking Barriers On and Off the Gridiron") takes us on an eye-opening journey over the decades that highlights the persistent and still-growing interest of women playing the game - including professionally.

Anecdotal evidence abounds of amateur football competitions, collegiate intramural leagues, and even an 1926 NFL halftime exhibition featuring Frankford's "Lady Yellow Jackets" - proving women's intrigue with the sport.

The women’s game became more organized in 1965 with the launch of sports entrepreneur Sid Friedman's aspirational Women's Professional Football League, and later more forcefully in 1974 with the founding of the pioneering National Women’s Football League - featuring notable teams such as the Houston Herricanes, Dallas Bluebonnets, Toledo Troopers, Oklahoma City Dolls, and Detroit Demons.

Today, two robust national semi-pro outdoor leagues (the 60+ team Women’s Football Alliance; the 18-club Women’s National Football Conference), plus an increasingly evolved/credible indoor "X League" (fka as both the infamous "Lingerie," and later "Legends" Football League) - keep the women's gridiron game alive, with undoubtedly more pioneering to come.

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PURCHASE Russ Crawford's book "Women's American Football: Breaking Barriers On and Off the Gridiron" in either hardcover or Kindle electronic versions NOW!