Shows
Good Seats Still Available"Present At the Creation" - With Upton Bell [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE] [While Tim gets off the mat after a bout with a vaccine-resistant strain of the flu this week, we go back to April 2018 for this classic ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE with the pied piper of classic football history!] Upton Bell grew up at the knee of the National Football League's second-ever commissioner – his father, the legendary Bert Bell – who not only saved professional football from financial ruin in the aftermath of World War II, but also became one of its greatest innovators. Originator of the iconic phrase "on any given Sunday," the senior Bell created lasting contributions to the NFL...
2025-01-202h 05Good Seats Still Available"Present At the Creation" - With Upton Bell [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE] [While Tim gets off the mat after a bout with a vaccine-resistant strain of the flu this week, we go back to April 2018 for this classic ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE with the pied piper of classic football history!] Upton Bell grew up at the knee of the National Football League's second-ever commissioner – his father, the legendary Bert Bell – who not only saved professional football from financial ruin in the aftermath of World War II, but also became one of its greatest innovators. Originator of the iconic phrase "on any given Sunday," the senior Bell created lasting contributions to the NFL...
2025-01-202h 05
Good Seats Still AvailableThe Senior Professional Baseball Association - With David Whitford [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE][An archive re-release favorite from September 2017, featuring one of professional baseball's most enigmatic leagues!] 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 the age of 35 (32 for catchers). Despite half...
2024-07-081h 09
Good Seats Still AvailableThe NFL's 1943 "Steagles" - With Matt Algeo [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE][A dip into the archives for a one of our first-ever episodes from 2017 - by request!] Author Matt Algeo (Last Team Standing: How the Steelers and the Eagles – "The Steagles" – Saved Pro Football During World War II) joins Tim Hanlon all the way from Maputo, Mozambique to discuss the marriage of convenience that literally saved the National Football League from collapse in 1943. Algeo describes how a desperate Art Rooney scrambled to save his Pittsburgh Steelers franchise, depleted by wartime military call-ups; how a hastily assembled squad of ragtag draft rejects practiced football at night whil...
2024-04-1456 min
Good Seats Still AvailableLamar Hunt & the American Football League - With Michael MacCambridge [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE][By popular demand, an archive re-release of Episode 321 guest and "The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America" author Michael MacCambridge - from his first appearance on the show from March 2017!] Sports author/historian Michael MacCambridge ("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 dete...
2023-11-271h 20
Good Seats Still AvailableFox Sports/MSG Networks Broadcaster Kenny AlbertVeteran 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, thoroughbred horse racing, boxing, and (between 1995-99) NHL hockey....
2023-10-091h 10
Good Seats Still AvailableThe United Football League – With Michael Huyghue [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE][A summer vacation re-release of a fan favorite episode from January 2020!] It's a return to the gridiron, and a revealing behind-the-scenes look at the brash, but ultimately ill-fated United Football League of 2009-12 – with its only commissioner, Michael Huyghue (Behind the Line of Scrimmage: Inside the Front Office of the NFL). Formed in 2007 out of big-budget dreams to establish a national top-tier, Fall-season minor league pro football circuit by high-wattage investors like San Francisco investment banker Bill Hambrecht, Google executive Tim Armstrong and Dallas Mavericks owner/firebrand Mark Cuban (who later backed out, along with initially-rumored financier T...
2023-07-241h 23Good Seats Still AvailableThe United Football League – With Michael Huyghue [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE][A summer vacation re-release of a fan favorite episode from January 2020!] It's a return to the gridiron, and a revealing behind-the-scenes look at the brash, but ultimately ill-fated United Football League of 2009-12 – with its only commissioner, Michael Huyghue (Behind the Line of Scrimmage: Inside the Front Office of the NFL). Formed in 2007 out of big-budget dreams to establish a national top-tier, Fall-season minor league pro football circuit by high-wattage investors like San Francisco investment banker Bill Hambrecht, Google executive Tim Armstrong and Dallas Mavericks owner/firebrand Mark Cuban (who later backed out, along with initially-rumored financier T...
2023-07-241h 23
Good Seats Still Available"Krazy" George Henderson [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE][It's a quick trip to the Bay Area this week for an archive fan favorite from 2017, featuring a true American sports original!] America's most famous professional sports cheerleader "Krazy" George Henderson (Still Krazy After All These Cheers) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss some of the wackiest adventures from his 40+ years of live performances – and how a self-described shy, mediocre schoolteacher ultimately followed his passion to a unique and storied career converting passive game-day attendees into cheering fanatics. Henderson (along with his signature drum!) recounts how a school field trip to an Oakland Seals NHL hockey gam...
2023-01-301h 13
Good Seats Still AvailableClive Toye [Archive Re-Release][We celebrate the amazing life of the legendary Pelé with a reissue of our 2018 conversation with the man chiefly responsible for coaxing the "Black Pearl" out of retirement in 1975 to join the NASL's then-fledgling New York Cosmos - Clive Toye!] + + + Soccer America columnist (and Episode #6 interviewee) Paul Gardner summed up this week's Hall of Fame guest in his May 2015 commentary: “The debt owed by American soccer to Clive Toye is a vast one. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say, flatly, that without Toye’s blind faith in the sport in th...
2023-01-011h 45
Good Seats Still AvailableCISL Soccer's Indianapolis/Indiana Twisters - With Kenn Tomasch[We kick off our holiday break this week with a deep descent into the "Good Seats" archives - and an eyebrow-raising revisit of the enigmatic Continental Indoor Soccer League of the 1990s with former play-by-play broadcaster Kenn Tomasch!] 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 hum...
2022-12-261h 40
Good Seats Still AvailableMISL Memories - With Michael Menchel [Archive Re-Release][A June 2017 archive re-release favorite with one of the true insiders behind the initial success of the legendary original 1970s/80s Major Indoor Soccer League!] This week, Tim Hanlon buckles up for a wild ride through the tumultuous early years of the original Major Indoor Soccer League with sports PR veteran Michael Menchel, in our longest and most anecdote-filled episode yet! Menchel takes us on a head-spinning audio journey across some of the most memorable (and forgettable) franchises in professional indoor soccer history – including stops in Long Island, NY (the Arrows trade for Pete Ros...
2022-06-201h 46Good Seats Still AvailableMISL Memories - With Michael Menchel [Archive Re-Release][A June 2017 archive re-release favorite with one of the true insiders behind the initial success of the legendary original 1970s/80s Major Indoor Soccer League!] This week, Tim Hanlon buckles up for a wild ride through the tumultuous early years of the original Major Indoor Soccer League with sports PR veteran Michael Menchel, in our longest and most anecdote-filled episode yet! Menchel takes us on a head-spinning audio journey across some of the most memorable (and forgettable) franchises in professional indoor soccer history – including stops in Long Island, NY (the Arrows trade for Pete Ros...
2022-06-201h 46
Good Seats Still AvailableThe TVS Television Network - With Howard Zuckerman [Archive Re-Release][A September 2017 archive re-release favorite with the production wizard behind behind early network TV coverage of the World Football League & North American Soccer League of the 1970s!] 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 aff...
2022-03-141h 17
Good Seats Still AvailableBaseball's Continental League - With Professor Russ Buhite [Archive Re-Release][We dig out from last week's major winter storm with a fan-favorite Archive Re-Release from 2018!] By the summer of 1959, the absence of two former National League franchises from what was once a vibrant New York City major league baseball scene was obvious – and even the remaining/dominant Yankees couldn't fully make up for it. Nor could that season's World Series championship run of the now-Los Angeles Dodgers – a bittersweet victory for jilted fans of the team's Brooklyn era. Fiercely determined to return a National League team to the city, mayor Robert Wagner enlisted the help of a B...
2022-02-071h 24
Good Seats Still AvailableArena Football League Founder Jim Foster [Archive Re-Release][We celebrate the holidays with a re-release of a fan favorite episode from January 2018!] 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 fraction of the 19 clubs that competed during its heyday in the ear...
2021-12-202h 18
Good Seats Still AvailableKyle Rote, Jr. (Archive Re-Release)[A re-release of a fan favorite episode from July 2017!] 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 the 1973 Dallas Tornado helped thrust him into the North A...
2021-08-162h 27
Good Seats Still AvailableMajor League Baseball Expansion – With Fran ZimniuchBaseball writer Fran Zimniuch (Baseball's New Frontier: A History of Expansion, 1961-1998) help us sketch out a nearly forty-year survey of the major leagues' fitful journey from a regional set of 16 teams confined to just ten US Northeast and Midwest cities, to the 30-club colossus that today stretches across 27 markets across North America. While the sport's modern-day wanderlust began in earnest during the 1950s as the Braves moved to Milwaukee, the Browns left for Baltimore (new name: Orioles), the A's traded Philadelphia for Kansas City, and New York's Giants and Brooklyn's Dodgers made haste for California – Major Le...
2020-02-101h 15
Good Seats Still AvailableThe United Football League – With Michael HuyghueWe kick off the new year with a return to the gridiron, and a revealing behind-the-scenes look at the brash, but ultimately ill-fated United Football League of 2009-12 – with its only commissioner, Michael Huyghue (Behind the Line of Scrimmage: Inside the Front Office of the NFL). Formed in 2007 out of big-budget dreams to establish a national top-tier, Fall-season minor league pro football circuit by high-wattage investors like San Francisco investment banker Bill Hambrecht, Google executive Tim Armstrong and Dallas Mavericks owner/firebrand Mark Cuban (who later backed out, along with initially-rumored financier T. Boone Pickens) – the UFL was...
2020-01-061h 23Good Seats Still AvailableThe United Football League – With Michael HuyghueWe kick off the new year with a return to the gridiron, and a revealing behind-the-scenes look at the brash, but ultimately ill-fated United Football League of 2009-12 – with its only commissioner, Michael Huyghue (Behind the Line of Scrimmage: Inside the Front Office of the NFL). Formed in 2007 out of big-budget dreams to establish a national top-tier, Fall-season minor league pro football circuit by high-wattage investors like San Francisco investment banker Bill Hambrecht, Google executive Tim Armstrong and Dallas Mavericks owner/firebrand Mark Cuban (who later backed out, along with initially-rumored financier T. Boone Pickens) – the UFL was...
2020-01-061h 23
Good Seats Still AvailableA British View of US Pro Soccer History – With Tom ScholesUK sportswriter Tom Scholes (Stateside Soccer: The Definitive History of Soccer in the United States) joins host Tim Hanlon to discuss the surprisingly long, colorfully vibrant and regularly misunderstood history of the world's most popular sport in America. While even the most erudite of the game's international scholars mistakenly (though understandably) define the US pro game's epicenter as the chaotic, post-1966 World Cup launch of the North American Soccer League – the roots of organized soccer actually date as far back as the American Civil War, around the time when the first rules around "American football" were also co...
2019-08-261h 24
Good Seats Still AvailableThe Portland Timbers' Origin Story – With Michael OrrAs the 2019 version of the Portland Timbers celebrates its 10th season in Major League Soccer, we spin the WABAC Machine dial back 44 years earlier to 1975 – when the club's original namesake became an overnight sensation (figuratively and literally) in the then-20-team North American Soccer League. The last of the NASL's five newly announced sides for that season (along with Chicago, San Antonio, Tampa Bay, and Hartford), the "Timbers" weren't even named (via an open "name the team" contest) until March of 1975 – just two months after having been awarded the franchise, and barely a month before its first sched...
2019-07-081h 40
Good Seats Still AvailableThe Alliance of American Football – With Conor OrrJust weeks after its sudden collapse, we take our first look at the brief life of the Alliance of American Football with Sports Illustrated football writer and MMQB NFL podcast host Conor Orr (The Curious Rise and Spectacular Crash of the Alliance of American Football; More Strange Tales from the Collapse of the AAF). Inspired by his work producing the 2017 documentary This Was the XFL for ESPN Films' 30 for 30 series, director Charlie Ebersol concluded that the renegade league co-created by his father (NBC Sports producer Dick) and World Wrestling Federation (now WWE) impresario Vince McMahon in 2001 had...
2019-05-201h 20
Good Seats Still AvailablePro Football's "League That Didn't Exist" – With Gary WebsterWKKY-FM radio personality and sports author Gary Webster (The League That Didn't Exist) helps us return to the curious story of the All-America Football Conference – the well-funded upstart that competed directly with the NFL in the late 1940s for supremacy of the still-fledgling sport of US pro football. After being rebuffed by the NFL to expand, influential Chicago Tribune sports editor (and baseball and college football All-Star Games' creator) Arch Ward recruited a who's who of wealthy businessmen to help form a rival second league that he hoped would ultimately play the senior circuit in an annual ch...
2019-05-061h 34
Good Seats Still AvailableThe "Almost Yankees" of 1981 – With David HermanWe're stuck in the minors again this week – this time with Microsoft News senior managing editor and former newspaper sportswriter David Herman (Almost Yankees: The Summer of '81 and the Greatest Baseball Team You've Never Heard Of) – as we discuss the memorable story and unique circumstances of the 1981 championship season of the International League's Columbus Clippers, the then-flagship farm club of the New York Yankees. Longtime baseball fans will remember 1981, of course, as the year Major League Baseball experienced its first-ever mid-season interruption of play, as players took to the picket lines against ownership beginning on June 12th –...
2019-04-151h 25
Good Seats Still AvailableSeattle's "Sonicsgate" – With Filmmakers Jason Reid & Adam BrownDocumentary filmmakers Jason Reid and Adam Brown (Sonicsgate: Requiem for a Team) join host Tim Hanlon to discuss the long, tortuous and acrimoniously messy departure of the NBA's iconic Seattle SuperSonics to Oklahoma City in the summer of 2008 – a story newly relevant as the "Emerald City" prepares to welcome a new NHL expansion franchise, and as former owner (and Starbucks CEO Emeritus) Howard Schultz publicly explores a run for the US Presidency. A real-life drama replete with local political intrigue, wily (and/or naïve) business dealings, and an array of villains straight out of Hollywood central cas...
2019-04-011h 47Good Seats Still AvailableSeattle's "Sonicsgate" – With Filmmakers Jason Reid & Adam BrownDocumentary filmmakers Jason Reid and Adam Brown (Sonicsgate: Requiem for a Team) join host Tim Hanlon to discuss the long, tortuous and acrimoniously messy departure of the NBA's iconic Seattle SuperSonics to Oklahoma City in the summer of 2008 – a story newly relevant as the "Emerald City" prepares to welcome a new NHL expansion franchise, and as former owner (and Starbucks CEO Emeritus) Howard Schultz publicly explores a run for the US Presidency. A real-life drama replete with local political intrigue, wily (and/or naïve) business dealings, and an array of villains straight out of Hollywood central cas...
2019-04-011h 47
Good Seats Still AvailableBig League Baseball in WWII Wartime Washington – With David Hubler & Josh DrazenOn a cold and ominous Sunday, December 7, 1941, Major League Baseball's owners were gathered in Chicago for their annual winter meetings, just two months after one of the sport's greatest seasons. For the owners, the dramatic news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor earlier that morning was not only an assault on the United States, but also a direct threat to the future of the national pastime itself. League owners were immediately worried about the players they were likely to lose to military service, but also feared a complete shutdown of the looming 1942 season – and perhaps beyond. But...
2019-03-181h 37
Good Seats Still AvailableNew York Yankees Broadcaster John SterlingLegendary New York Yankees baseball play-by-play man John Sterling joins host Tim Hanlon for a cavalcade of career memories from his 50+ year journey in sports broadcasting – including a treasure trove of stops along the way with previously incarnated or otherwise defunct teams (and leagues). Now celebrating his 30th consecutive season with the Bronx Bombers, Sterling's unique vocal stylings have become synonymous with some of the Yankees' most signature moments during that time – including the team's dominant run of American League and World Series championships across the late 1990s and much of the 2000s. The path to be...
2019-02-251h 00
Good Seats Still Available100: WHA Hockey's New England Whalers – With Former Owner Howard BaldwinWe celebrate our 100th(!) episode with one of the founding owners of the pioneering World Hockey Association – and the man ultimately responsible for the absorption of four its teams into the NHL in the "don't-call-it-a-merger" of 1979. Hollywood film producer and original New England Whalers founder/owner Howard Baldwin (Slim and None: My Wild Ride from the WHA to the NHL and All the Way to Hollywood) joins host Tim Hanlon for a rollicking ride through the modest beginnings, death-defying life, and lasting aftermath of pro hockey's paradigm-transforming challenger league – as well as the tortuous journey of the only...
2019-02-181h 24
Good Seats Still Available097: Pro Football's Dynastic Cleveland Browns – With Andy PiascikWin or lose in next week's Super Bowl LIII, the five-time NFL champion New England Patriots are already guaranteed a spot in the annals of pro football history as one of the sport's most dominant teams – especially when viewed through the truncated lens of the last two decades. That said, a legion of successful clubs over the league's prior eight decades – such as the Green Bay Packers of 1929-44 (and much of the 1960s); the 1981-98 San Francisco 49ers; the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers; the 1990s Dallas Cowboys; and the early 1970s Miami Dolphins – can legitimately claim the right...
2019-01-281h 45
Good Seats Still Available096: The National Pastime in the Nation's Capital – With Fred FrommerWe throw another chunk of firewood into our baseball hot stove this week, as we warm up with the surprisingly long and rich history of the National Pastime in the Nation's Capital with sports PR veteran Fred Frommer (You Gotta Have Heart: A History of Washington Baseball from 1859 to the 2012 National League East Champions). While historically smaller in population than its more industrial neighbors to its north and west, Washington, DC was regularly represented in the highest levels of baseball dating back to the earliest professional circuits – including the 1871-75 National Association's Olympics, Blue Legs, and two na...
2019-01-211h 42
Good Seats Still Available095: The MISL's Denver Avalanche – With Former Owner Ron MaierhoferIt was December 1979, and Denver-area IT marketing and sales executive Ron Maierhofer was having what some would consider to be a mid-life crisis. Just off the heels of an annual work retreat and now vacationing on a British Virgin Islands beach with his wife, Maierhofer – a second-generation German-American immigrant and a former player with a lifelong passion for and recreational involvement in the sport of soccer – mused that his business career just wasn't doing it for him anymore, and that a radical change of pace might be in order. His muse was the fledgling professional sport of indoo...
2019-01-141h 14
Good Seats Still Available093: National Soccer Hall of Famer Bobby SmithWe close out an amazing second season of episodes with a special year-end conversation featuring the US pro soccer pioneer who is, at least indirectly, responsible for the creation of this little podcast. Just weeks after signing with the fledgling New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League in January 1976, league All Star Bobby Smith (along with fellow Philadelphia Atoms teammate Bob Rigby) was already out pounding the promotional pavement in support of his new club – including (unwittingly) a stop at host Tim Hanlon's then-elementary school in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey to hand out recreational league trophies and...
2018-12-241h 34
Good Seats Still Available092: "Retro" Pro Lacrosse History – With Steve Holroyd & Dave ColemanWe celebrate the (labor dispute-delayed) opening weekend of the National Lacrosse League's 2018-19 season – as well as the return of the iconic Philadelphia Wings franchise – with two of pro box lacrosse's most ardent fans and chief chroniclers. Metro Philly natives Steve Holroyd and Dave Coleman are the engines behind the historical treasure trove known as RetroLax.com, which digs deep into the history of the pro indoor game in North America – and features a wealth of hard-to-find stories and rare game footage from circuits like the original six-team National Lacrosse League of 1974-75, the one-year National Lacrosse Associa...
2018-12-171h 27
Good Seats Still Available091: NASL Soccer Video Archeology – With Dave Brett WasserThe images are grainy, the commentary earnestly naïve, and the theme music disco-infused, but the bigger picture is clear – it's American soccer history, in all its VHS videotape glory. Gleaned from a simpler, pre-HD media landscape of the 1970s and early 1980s – much of it before even the mass consumer adoption of the VCR – the roughly 900 hours of TV broadcast match coverage that still survives from the pioneering North American Soccer League is a veritable time machine of pro soccer's coming-of-age. And one man has been chiefly responsible for compiling and preserving it. De facto soc...
2018-12-101h 14
Good Seats Still Available088: The 1968-69 AFL New York Jets – With Bob LedererOn January 12, 1969, the American Football League champion New York Jets stunned the sports world when they beat their heavily favored NFL title-winning counterparts the Baltimore Colts to win the third annual "AFL–NFL World Championship Game" – today remembered as version III of the "Super Bowl." The key to the Jets' ultimate success, of course, was superstar quarterback Joe Namath – whose talent, confidence and charm had already made him an instant celebrity when he first arrived on the Gotham sports scene in 1965. But the rise of the former (and by the end of its third season in 1962, insolvent) New Yor...
2018-11-191h 52
Good Seats Still Available086: The Battle for Dallas: The AFL Texans vs. The NFL Cowboys – With John EisenbergBy the end of the 1958 NFL season – one punctuated by an iconic, nationally televised "Greatest Game Ever Played" championship – interest in professional football had risen to unprecedented levels across the country, capturing enough attention to seriously challenge baseball for America's chief sporting interest. Nowhere was the ground more fertile than in the state of Texas, where college and even high school football had held sway for generations – but the pro game (last attempted with a relocated 1952 NFL franchise called the Texans that ended in mid-season abandonment) had still yet to firmly root. But in the spring of 1960, after a...
2018-11-051h 26
Good Seats Still Available085: Houston's Iconic Astrodome – With Bob TrumpbourWhen it debuted to the public on April 9, 1965 (with an exhibition Major League Baseball game featuring the newly-renamed Houston Astros and Mickey Mantle's New York Yankees), the Astrodome – audaciously dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World" by its builders – immediately captured the attention of the sports, entertainment and architectural worlds. It was a Texas-sized vision of the future – a seemingly unimaginable feat of engineering, replete with breakthrough innovations such as premium luxury suites, theater-style seating, and the world's first-ever animated stadium scoreboard. At the time, it was the biggest-ever indoor space ever made by man – an immense cylinder ne...
2018-10-291h 39
Good Seats Still Available084: The 1960s-Era NFL Baltimore Colts – With Jack GildenThe third incarnation of the Baltimore Colts – the second as an official member of the NFL – produced some of the most memorable and dominant teams to ever play the pro game. Winners of impressive back-to-back NFL titles over the New York Giants in both 1958 (the December 28th Yankee Stadium sudden-death overtime final regarded as the mythic "Greatest Game Ever Played") and 1959, the Colts and head coach Weeb Ewbank surprisingly stumbled into mid-table mediocrity in the early years of the 1960s – enough to convince mercurial owner Carroll Rosenblum to make a stunning change at the end of the team's...
2018-10-221h 36
Good Seats Still Available082: AFL & NFL Football All-Star Ron McDoleIn a nearly 20-year playing career across the 1960s American Football League and 1970s NFL, defensive end Ron McDole (The Dancing Bear: My Eighteen Years in the Trenches of the AFL and NFL) experienced pro football's modern-day coming-of-age from inside his old-school, two-bar helmet. From 1961-1978, McDole played in over 250 professional games, including championship runs with the AFL Buffalo Bills (1964, 1965) and a Super Bowl appearance with the NFL Washington Redskins in 1972. A cagey and deceptively agile athlete, McDole wreaked havoc on football's best offenses as part of a Bills defensive line (including left tackle Jim Dunaway, right t...
2018-10-081h 31
Good Seats Still Available080: The AAFC, AFL & the NFL's Formative 1950s – With Economist David SurdamAfter barely surviving World War II, the National Football League of the late 1940s was not only on tenuous financial footing, but also facing an existential threat from an ambitious new challenger with deep-pocketed owners ready take advantage of America's growing interest in professional football, a newfound surplus of playing talent, and a tantalizing return to economic prosperity. While the All-America Football Conference lasted for only four seasons (1946-49), its mere presence jolted the historically conservative and inwardly-focused NFL into an era of dramatic transformation and strategic maturation that laid the groundwork for a meteoric rise in p...
2018-09-241h 39
Good Seats Still Available079: The NHL's New York/Brooklyn Americans – With Dale MorriseyOn September 21, 2013, a crowd of 14,689 Brooklyn hockey fans cheered when the NHL's New York Islanders played a pre-season exhibition against the New Jersey Devils in the sleekly modern Barclays Center – the first-ever contest of its kind in New York's most populous borough, and one that set into motion the eventual relocation of the team from Long Island to Kings County. What few in the stands realized, however, was that the borough, technically, was the home to a professional hockey team many decades earlier. Originally funded from a Depression-era bootlegger's fortune, the New York (later renamed Brooklyn) Americans pre...
2018-09-171h 36
Good Seats Still Available077: Before the NHL's "Original Six" – With Andrew RossWhen quizzed on the historical origins of the National Hockey League, most fans reflexively default to the hagiographic construct known as the "Original Six" – the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers, Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Detroit Red Wings – as the seminal franchise lineup from which the modern-day NHL was ultimately built. In fact, the league traces its official roots to a much friskier start dating back to 1917 – when, out of the ownership discord of the predecessor National Hockey Association (1909-17), and a rising challenge to Stanley Cup supremacy from other fledgling pro circuits like the Pa...
2018-09-031h 18
Good Seats Still Available075: The World Hockey Association Hall of Fame with Tim GassenBuckle up for our sophomore excursion into the legendary World Hockey Association, as we chat with the passionate founder and meticulous curator of the short-lived but influential league's official Hall of Fame, Tim Gassen. Physically ensconced inside the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, MN, as well as an expansive online digital presence, the WHA Hall of Fame is the undisputed historical authority on the brief seven-season life and wild times of the iconic 1970s-era challenger league that kicked the staid National Hockey League in the butt and reinvigorated the pro game in the process.
2018-08-201h 24Good Seats Still Available075: The World Hockey Association Hall of Fame with Tim GassenBuckle up for our sophomore excursion into the legendary World Hockey Association, as we chat with the passionate founder and meticulous curator of the short-lived but influential league's official Hall of Fame, Tim Gassen. Physically ensconced inside the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, MN, as well as an expansive online digital presence, the WHA Hall of Fame is the undisputed historical authority on the brief seven-season life and wild times of the iconic 1970s-era challenger league that kicked the staid National Hockey League in the butt and reinvigorated the pro game in the process.
2018-08-201h 24
Good Seats Still Available074: NASL Soccer's Chief Architect Clive ToyeFamed Soccer America columnist Paul Gardner summed up this week's Hall of Fame guest in his May 2015 commentary: "The debt owed by American soccer to Clive Toye is a vast one. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say, flatly, that without Toye's blind faith in the sport in the 1970s, pro soccer in the USA would have withered and died. Yes, Phil Woosnam and Lamar Hunt and Bob Hermann were there too. But in those unpromising years it was Toye's voice -- it came in a steady flow of ridiculously optimistic press releases and...
2018-08-131h 45
Good Seats Still Available070: National Soccer Hall of Fame Coach Al MillerIn February 1973, the suddenly ascendant North American Soccer League hurriedly awarded a new franchise to Philadelphia construction magnate Thomas McCloskey, despite the league's fast-approaching season start date of May 1st. The result of some Super Bowl VII arm-twisting by Kansas City Chiefs (and NASL Dallas Tornado) owner Lamar Hunt after helping McCloskey secure last-minute tickets, the team that would soon become the Philadelphia Atoms had only three months to move from birth to first game. In desperate need of a head coach, McCloskey and GM/soccer novice Bob Ehlinger turned to a bright young Hartwick College coach na...
2018-07-161h 20
Good Seats Still Available060: Baseball's League That Never Was: The Continental League with Professor Russ BuhiteBy the summer of 1959, the absence of two former National League franchises from what was once a vibrant New York City major league baseball scene was obvious – and even the remaining/dominant Yankees couldn't fully make up for it. Nor could that season's World Series championship run of the now-Los Angeles Dodgers – a bittersweet victory for jilted fans of the team's Brooklyn era. Fiercely determined to return a National League team to the city, mayor Robert Wagner enlisted the help of a Brooklyn-based attorney named William Shea to spearhead an effort to first convince a current franchise to rel...
2018-05-071h 22
Good Seats Still Available059: Pro Soccer's Dean of Media Relations, Jim TreckerWith a career spanning more than four decades, the National Soccer Hall of Fame's 2017 Colin Jose Media Award-winner Jim Trecker has been part of the American sports media relations landscape since the late 1960's. After a chance part-time undergrad job in Columbia University's modest sports information department, Trecker traded his initial career ambitions in French language education for what ultimately became an unmatched professional journey in public relations at the highest levels of international sports. After cutting his PR teeth with various post-grad pro sports gigs around New York (including work for the Madison Square Garden-owned New Y...
2018-04-301h 54
Good Seats Still Available057: The Pro Football Life of Upton BellUpton Bell grew up at the knee of the National Football League's second-ever commissioner – his father, the legendary Bert Bell – who not only saved professional football from financial ruin in the aftermath of World War II, but also became one of its greatest innovators. Originator of the iconic phrase "on any given Sunday," the senior Bell created lasting contributions to the NFL, such as the first pro football draft, scheduling parity, television revenue-sharing, and sudden-death overtime. For the junior Upton, it was a priceless childhood amidst pro football's formative years – begun while watching his father draw up the lea...
2018-04-162h 05
Good Seats Still AvailableThe Players' League of 1890 with Professor Bob RossWith Major League Baseball finally back in full swing, we dial the Wayback Machine all the way back to the year 1890, when the professional version of America's Pastime was still nascent, its business model was largely unproven, and the players of the day seethed at their team owners' increasingly restrictive operating practices – to the point of dramatic and open revolt that ultimately set the contentious tone of owner-player relations for baseball and all of US pro sports for generations to follow. Global cultural studies professor Bob Ross (The Great Baseball Revolt: The Rise and Fall of the 1890 Pl...
2018-04-091h 33
Good Seats Still Available055: Russ Cline and the Birth of Modern-Day Indoor Box LacrosseOur first-ever (and long-overdue) exploration of the sport of professional lacrosse begins with a conversation with one of the godfathers of the modern indoor game, Russ Cline – founder (along with partner and fellow Kansas City sports promoter Chris Fritz) of 1987's seminal four-team Eagle Pro Box Lacrosse League (soon renamed the Major Indoor Lacrosse League) – and the progenitor of today's vibrant National Lacrosse League that spans 11 cities across the US and Canada. Cline walks obsessive inquisitor Tim Hanlon through: the duo's rationale behind choosing lacrosse as the focus of their entrepreneurial efforts; the slow-growth approaches to expansion beyo...
2018-04-021h 23
Good Seats Still Available054: Effa Manley & the Negro National League's Newark Eagles with Biographer Bob LukeBaseball historian Bob Luke (The Most Famous Woman in Baseball: Effa Manley and the Negro Leagues) joins host Tim Hanlon to delve into the intriguing story of the first (and still only) woman to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame – and the second Negro National League's Newark Eagles franchise she successfully co-owned (with husband Abe) and general managed from 1936-48. A student of the sport since early childhood with a keen sense of promotion, marketing and player welfare, Manley blended a strong baseball operations IQ with a savvy aptitude for local politics and African-American com...
2018-03-261h 10
Good Seats Still AvailableNational League Baseball's Detroit Wolverines with Author Brian "Chip" MartinWhile the Detroit Tigers hold the record as the oldest continuous one-name, one-city franchise in the American League (debuting as one of the league's "Classic Eight" charter clubs in 1901), they were not the first team to play major league baseball in the Motor City. That distinction actually goes to the Detroit Wolverines of the late 19th-century National League, which took to the field for the first time against the visiting Buffalo Bisons on May 2, 1881 in front of a curious crowd of 1,286 at Recreation Park – land now occupied by today's Detroit Medical Center in the city's Midtown. Playing in...
2018-02-261h 16
Good Seats Still Available"Rock & Roll" NASL Soccer with Author Ian PlenderleithBy many accounts, the North American Soccer League was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon in the history of the world game – and, during its 1970s heyday (although it began shakily in 1968 and ended in shambles after the 1984 season) – a league years ahead of its time. More than just Pelé and the star-studded, bigger-than-life New York Cosmos, the NASL lured international soccer's biggest names like Johan Cruyff, Eusebio, George Best, and Franz Beckenbauer to play the "beautiful game" the way it was meant to be played—uninhibited, and with fan-pleasing innovations like sudden-death overtime, a 35-yard-line offsides demarcation, tie-breaking shootouts, and a points s...
2018-02-191h 23Good Seats Still AvailableHow the ABA's Indiana Pacers Helped "Change the Game" – with Bob Netolicky & Robin MillerFour-time American Basketball Association All-Star Bob Netolicky and former Indianapolis Star sportswriter Robin Miller join host Tim Hanlon to share some of their most memorable (and heretofore untold) first-person accounts of playing and traveling with the thrice-ABA-champion Indiana Pacers – and promote their upcoming book We Changed the Game, penned in partnership with original team co-founder/owner Dick Tinkham. Despite three championships, five finals appearances and the strongest fan base in the league, the Pacers – and by extension, the ABA itself – barely survived a number of remarkably close calls and dire financial situations during their collective nine-year pre-NBA-merger existe...
2018-02-121h 25Good Seats Still AvailableArena Football League Founder Jim FosterAs 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 fraction of the 19 clubs that competed during its heyday in the early-to-mid 2000s. Much has happened to the league and the sport during those 30+ years...
2018-01-082h 18Good Seats Still AvailableABA Basketball's Indiana Pacers with Sportswriter Mark MontiethLong-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 the pace" early and often during the league's nine-year existence – amassing three ABA championships, five finals appearances, and a dazzling array of All-Star talent incl...
2017-12-181h 25Good Seats Still AvailableThe Three Acts of Pro Soccer's San Jose Earthquakes with Columnist Gary SinghLong-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, the original San Jose Earthquakes were an immediate hit both on the field (finishing second in the all-new Western Division, and led by the league's le...
2017-12-111h 33
Good Seats Still AvailableThe Continental Indoor Soccer League's Indianapolis Twisters with Broadcaster Kenn TomaschFormer 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 mix (accounting for half of the eventual 18 teams during the league's five-year run from 1993-97) – including the tumultuously tenuous Twisters, who cy...
2017-12-041h 40Good Seats Still Available038: Women's Professional Baseball with Film Producer/Director Jon LeonoudakisDocumentary 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 century, such as: The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League – launched in wartime 1943 to keep interest in the sport alive while enlisted male players...
2017-11-271h 10Good Seats Still Available037: The NHL's California Golden Seals with Author Steve CurrierIce 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 Cleveland Barons), and consistently finished dead last in league attendance despite playing in a then-state-of-the-art Oakland–Alameda County Colis...
2017-11-201h 35Good Seats Still Available035: National Soccer Hall of Famer Paul ChildFormer 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 narrow confines and uniquely spray-painted burgundy and black penalty areas of San Jose's S...
2017-11-061h 24
Good Seats Still Available034: The National Basketball League with Author Murry NelsonBasketball 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-time pro hoops circuit that eventually stretched from Syracuse to Denver – with a hefty dollop of smaller markets in between. Teams like the Oshko...
2017-10-301h 32
Good Seats Still Available033: Early Baseball's National Association with Author Bill RyczekAuthor 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 both a novel experiment and decidedly imperfect beginning to bringing professional status not only to the game of baseball, but ultimately to the entire landscape of America...
2017-10-221h 09
Good Seats Still Available032: Major League Baseball's Milwaukee Braves with Documentarian/Writer Bill PovletichThe 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 the city its first and only World Series championship. With a talented lineup featuring future Hall of Famers Henry Aaron, Warr...
2017-10-161h 22
Good Seats Still Available031: Indoor Soccer's Wichita Wings with Mike Romalis and Tim O'BryhimWichita, 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, Denmark, Argentina, and Ecuador enthralled jam-packed Kansas Coliseum crowds with a fiery brand of play that made them a perennial playoff contender and one of t...
2017-10-091h 31Good Seats Still Available031: Indoor Soccer's Wichita Wings with Mike Romalis and Tim O'BryhimWichita, 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, Denmark, Argentina, and Ecuador enthralled jam-packed Kansas Coliseum crowds with a fiery brand of play that made them a perennial playoff contender and one of t...
2017-10-091h 31
Good Seats Still Available030: The Senior Professional Baseball Association with Author David WhitfordInc. 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 the age of 35 (32 for catchers). Despite half the franchises folding after the first 72-game season (and the rest of the league mid-way through the second), the Senior Le...
2017-10-021h 09
Good Seats Still Available029: The American Soccer League's Cincinnati Comets with Writer/Photographer Ronny SalernoWhile 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 Comets; Fading Ads of Cincinnati) joins Tim Hanlon to delve into the curious story of this surprisingly notable squad, whose motley cast of characters included:
2017-09-251h 23Good Seats Still Available028: Women's Pro Basketball's "Machine Gun" Molly KazmerThe 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 his way into forming an odds-defying circuit that ultimately lasted three seasons with franchises that stretched from New York to San Francisco. The first pe...
2017-09-181h 21Good Seats Still Available027: Jim Thorpe's Oorang Indians with NFL Films' Chris WillisAt 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 barnstormed their way through the NFL in 1922-23 – becoming an instant hit in virtually every city they p...
2017-09-1159 minGood Seats Still Available026: The TVS Television Network with Producer/Director Howard ZuckermanOn 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 called the TVS Television Network that brought it to millions of TV viewers. Calling all the shots from the production truck was veteran TV sports director Howard Zuck...
2017-09-041h 17Good Seats Still Available025: Early Pro Football's Memphis Tigers with Author Wylie McLallenThe 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 of "independent" gridiron competition – as well as the team's sizable role in helping shape the early years...
2017-08-281h 08Good Seats Still Available024: Soccer "Renaissance Man" Dr. Joe MachnikFox 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 that legacy were memorable stops in oft-forgotten places like the original Major Indoor Soccer League, the scrappy American Indoor Soccer Association, and the chao...
2017-08-211h 24Good Seats Still Available023: The AFL's New York Titans with Author Bill RyczekBefore 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 York Jets and the AFL) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the Jets' ignominious beginnings as the Titans, including notable performances by:
2017-08-141h 09Good Seats Still Available022: The Life of George Best with Documentary Filmmaker Daniel GordonAward-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 narrative device for the film; Why the vibrantly ascendant mid-1970s North American Soccer League became an attractive alternative to Best's post-ManU European wanderings; How...
2017-08-0755 minGood Seats Still Available021: Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics with Author David JordanAuthor/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 manager Connie Mack in the 1914 off-season after losing (or throwing?) the Fall Classic to the "Miracle" Boston Braves; Posted the worst-ever record (36-117; .235) in baseball h...
2017-07-311h 15Good Seats Still Available020: George Steinbrenner's Cleveland Pipers with Sportswriter Bill LivingstonAward-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 into a fledgling pro club with NBA ambitions; • Traded a player at halftime of a league game, and fired his collegiate hall-of-fame coach in mid-season – an...
2017-07-241h 13Good Seats Still Available019: American Soccer "Superstar" Kyle Rote, Jr.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 the 1973 Dallas Tornado helped thrust him into the North American Soccer League's national marketing spotlight; The remarkable impact of winning a ma...
2017-07-172h 24Good Seats Still Available018: Pro Football Historian Ken Crippen & the All-America Football ConferencePro Football Researchers' Association president Ken Crippen (The Original Buffalo Bills: A History of the All-America Football Conference Team; The All-America Football Conference: Players, Coaches, Records, Games & Awards) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the upstart pro football circuit that gave the war-weary NFL a formidable challenge in the late 1940s. Crippen describes: How a newspaper sportswriter from Chicago convinced big money investors spurned by the NFL to start a directly competitive alternative league; The NFL's public attempts to minimize the credibility, yet private efforts to contain the success of the AAFC; The head-to-head battles between the leagues to domi...
2017-07-101h 34Good Seats Still Available017: Abe Saperstein & the American Basketball League with Author Murry NelsonPenn State University professor emeritus Murry Nelson (Abe Saperstein and the American Basketball League, 1960–1963: The Upstarts Who Shot for Three and Lost to the NBA) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the oft-forgotten second incarnation of the ABL – and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer who willed it into being. In this hidden gem of an episode, Nelson describes: How the master promoter of the legendary Harlem Globetrotters attempted to parlay his influence in pro basketball circles into securing his own West Coast NBA franchise, only to be rebuffed; How the advent of reliable and speedy commercial air travel...
2017-07-031h 23Good Seats Still Available016: National Soccer Hall of Famer Rick DavisNational Soccer Hall of Fame legend Rick Davis joins Tim Hanlon direct from his family-owned/operated Ellsworth Steak House in Ellsworth, KS for a revealing conversation about his pioneering career as one of America's first pro soccer superstars. Among the many highlights, Davis discusses: the circumstances that vaulted him from AYSO youth soccer in Claremont, CA to international fame with the NASL's star-studded New York Cosmos; the priceless on-field, in-game tutelage of world-class players like Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto; the challenges of balancing the often-conflicting demands of both club team and the US Men's National Team; the...
2017-06-261h 30Good Seats Still Available015: MISL Memories with Michael MenchelThis week, Tim Hanlon buckles up for a wild ride through the tumultuous early years of the original Major Indoor Soccer League with sports PR veteran Michael Menchel, in our longest and most anecdote-filled episode yet! Menchel takes us on a head-spinning audio journey across some of the most memorable (and forgettable) franchises in professional indoor soccer history – including stops in Long Island, NY (the Arrows trade for Pete Rose!), New Jersey (scoring champ Fred Grgurev's unique approach to car maintenance!), Houston (the "Summit Soccer" borrows its name from the arena it plays in and its players from the NAS...
2017-06-191h 46Good Seats Still Available015: MISL Memories with Michael MenchelThis week, Tim Hanlon buckles up for a wild ride through the tumultuous early years of the original Major Indoor Soccer League with sports PR veteran Michael Menchel, in our longest and most anecdote-filled episode yet! Menchel takes us on a head-spinning audio journey across some of the most memorable (and forgettable) franchises in professional indoor soccer history – including stops in Long Island, NY (the Arrows trade for Pete Rose!), New Jersey (scoring champ Fred Grgurev's unique approach to car maintenance!), Houston (the "Summit Soccer" borrows its name from the arena it plays in and its players from the NAS...
2017-06-191h 46Good Seats Still Available014: Radio Personality Terry Hanson's Formative Years in NASL SoccerSyndicated morning radio personality Terry Hanson (The Big Show with John Boy & Billy) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the formative years of his renaissance career in sports and media, across three of the original North American Soccer League's more memorable franchises. Hanson waxes nostalgic about doling out "Americanized" first names to the Serbian-infused roster of 1976's Rochester Lancers; moonlighting in the Washington Diplomats broadcast booth with play-by-play pros Jon Miller and Don Earle; and marketing a reborn, Ted Turner-owned Atlanta Chiefs team that no one seemed to want to watch play outdoors, but everyone flocked to see play indoors. Th...
2017-06-121h 14Good Seats Still Available013: Author Bill Young & the Baseball Legacy of J.L. Wilkinson's Kansas City MonarchsReligious studies professor-turned-baseball-historian Bill Young (J.L Wilkinson & the Kansas City Monarchs: Trailblazers in Black Baseball) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the life and legacy of one of baseball's most overlooked and underappreciated executive figures. Young recalls the photograph at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City that inspired him to pursue the telling of Wilkinson's story, and describes how the quiet-yet-influential pioneer affectionately known as "Wilkie": built one of the Negro Leagues' most formidable franchises from modest Midwestern barnstorming beginnings; ingeniously kept his club relevant during lean Depression-era times through innovations such as portable night-time lighting; and n...
2017-06-051h 09Good Seats Still Available012: Author Jim Sulecki & the NFL's Cleveland RamsAuthor and Cleveland native Jim Sulecki (The Cleveland Rams: The NFL Champs Who Left Too Soon) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss his Pro Football Researchers Association award-winning book about the oft-forgotten first decade of one of the National Football League's most enduring franchises. Sulecki describes the Cleveland Rams' inauspicious first season in the shaky second incarnation of the American Football League in 1936; its struggles to remain competitive against entrenched NFL powerhouses like the Chicago Bears, New York Giants, Green Bay Packers, and Washington Redskins in the WWII-distracted years that followed; the team's surprising 1945 championship season (including one of the c...
2017-05-221h 19Good Seats Still Available011: The USFL's Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars with Publicist Bob MooreLong-time Kansas City Chiefs public relations director Bob Moore joins Tim Hanlon to recount his pre-NFL baptism-by-fire tenure as communications lead for the United States Football League's most successful franchise, the Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars. Moore recalls the instant credibility boost of snagging General Manager Carl Peterson from the cross-town NFL Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles; credits Peterson's vision in building the USFL's most consistently dominant team from his mastery of the league's novel territorial draft system; laments the league's irrational zeal to expand by six teams in the first off-season as an unwitting hastener of its ultimate demise; and e...
2017-05-151h 30Good Seats Still Available010: The American Soccer Sojourn of Clyde BestPerennial NASL and MISL soccer all-star Clyde Best (The Acid Test: The Autobiography of Clyde Best) joins Tim Hanlon from his native Bermuda to discuss his 1970s/80s soccer adventures in the United States, emanating from his stellar, but challenging beginnings with England's First Division West Ham United. Best recalls his first matches in a five-team 1969 NASL, when the Hammers spent the summer masquerading as the "Baltimore Bays"; recounts a hot and steamy friendly a year later at New York's overcrowded crackerbox Downing Stadium, matching his childhood idol Pelé goal-for-goal; describes his magical first full season in the States ,win...
2017-05-0854 minGood Seats Still Available009: Documentarian Mike Jacobs & the International Volleyball AssociationAward-winning ESPN 30 For 30 sports documentarian Mike Jacobs (The High Five; The Pittsburgh Drug Trials) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss his new film Bump & Spike, which recounts the curious tale of the 1970s International Volleyball League – the short-lived pro co-ed circuit hatched by Hollywood moguls, fueled by a basketball legend, and ultimately undermined by a combination of sketchy ownership and a US Olympic boycott. Jacobs relates how TV/movie producer David Wolper charmed his entertainment industry friends into co-founding the IVA; describes how volleyball-loving Wilt Chamberlain became the versatile promotional face of the league; explains how teams successfully blended star tal...
2017-05-0159 minGood Seats Still Available008: Documentarian Dan Forer & the ABA's Spirits of St. LouisEmmy Award-winning TV producer and ESPN 30 For 30 sports documentarian Dan Forer (Free Spirits; Mike and the Mad Dog) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the curious two-year odyssey of the American Basketball Association's colorful Spirits of St. Louis franchise, whose impact still continues to haunt the modern-day NBA, forty years after the team's demise. Forer describes the importance of mercurial star forward Marvin "Bad News" Barnes to both the club's success and the making of the documentary; why Spirits brother-owners Dan and Ozzie Silna declined to participate in the making of the film; how a baby-faced kid out of Syracuse n...
2017-04-2438 minGood Seats Still Available007: "Krazy" George Henderson & The Art of Pro Sports CheerleadingAmerica's most famous professional sports cheerleader "Krazy" George Henderson (Still Krazy After All These Cheers) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss some of the wackiest adventures from his 40+ years of live performances – and how a self-described shy, mediocre schoolteacher ultimately followed his passion to a unique and storied career converting passive game-day attendees into cheering fanatics. Henderson (along with his signature drum!) recounts how a school field trip to an Oakland Seals NHL hockey game led to his first sustaining professional gig; describes how he and the NASL's San Jose Earthquakes changed the face of professional soccer in the mid-1970s...
2017-04-171h 13Good Seats Still Available006: Columnist Paul Gardner & the Original North American Soccer LeagueLegendary Soccer America columnist Paul Gardner (The Simplest Game: The Intelligent Fan's Guide to the World of Soccer; Soccer Talk: Paul Gardner on Soccer) joins Tim Hanlon to wax nostalgic on his unlikely journey from fledgling British pharmacist to America's most persistently influential soccer commentator. Gardner recounts the chaotic formation of the modern professional game in the U.S. during the 1960s; recalls how ambitious sports entrepreneurs like the International Soccer League's Bill Cox, and greedy corporate owners like the United Soccer Association's Madison Square Garden were quickly chagrined by the machinations of soccer's international governing body; describes how...
2017-04-101h 33Good Seats Still Available005: Bobby Moffat & and the 1970s NASL Dallas TornadoFormer Dallas Tornado defensive stalwart Bobby Moffat (The Basic Soccer Guide) joins Tim Hanlon to reminisce about life in the 1970s North American Soccer League, and how his commitment to nurturing the game's grass roots in the Metroplex became the envy of US soccer enthusiasts during a tenuous decade for the sport. Moffat recounts how not-so-glamorous off-the-field jobs helped him and most of his teammates make ends meet; how Dallas' 1971 marathon overtime-riddled championship season helped usher in needed tie-breaking into NASL games; how the Tornado became the last-minute exhibition foil for Pele's 1975 New York Cosmos national TV debut (despite...
2017-04-0357 minGood Seats Still Available004: Author Matthew Algeo & the NFL's 1943 "Steagles"Author Matthew Algeo (Last Team Standing: How the Steelers and the Eagles – "The Steagles" – Saved Pro Football During World War II) joins Tim Hanlon all the way from Maputo, Mozambique to discuss the marriage of convenience that literally saved the National Football League from collapse in 1943. Algeo describes how a desperate Art Rooney scrambled to save his Pittsburgh Steelers franchise, depleted by wartime military call-ups; how a hastily assembled squad of ragtag draft rejects practiced football at night while maintaining defense jobs by day (including one player who worked on the eventual war-ending Manhattan Project); why the "Phil-Pitt Combine" wore E...
2017-03-2756 minGood Seats Still Available003: Author Michael MacCambridge on Lamar Hunt & the American Football LeagueSports 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...
2017-03-201h 20Good Seats Still Available002: Sports Executive Andy Crossley & the WPS Boston BreakersFellow defunct pro sports enthusiast (Fun While It Lasted) 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 U.S. 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 U.S. Women's National...
2017-03-131h 39Good Seats Still Available001: Documentarian Mark Greczmiel & the NHL's California Golden SealsTV 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 c...
2017-03-061h 21