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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 made-for-TV athletic competition against the biggest stars of the “traditional” sports world; The unique relationship he developed with the New York Cosmos’ international legend Pelé,  and the public relations narrative the NASL built around them;  How lucrative marketing endorsements made up for embarrassingly low-paying player contracts; The serendipitous story of ho

Pro 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 dominate pro football in markets like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Cleveland; The immediate dominance and innovative approach of Paul Brown’s Cleveland Browns, who many felt were the best team across both leagues; Why the Browns, San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Colts were ultimately absorbed by the NFL, but the Buffalo Bills we

Penn 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 encouraged Saperstein to not only launch the upstart ABL, but with franchises in virgin pro basketball territories like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Honolulu, Hawaii; The peripatetic Washington-to-New York-to-Philadelphia Tapers, whose owner also secretly owned the relatively stable Pittsburgh Rens, featuring league superstar and future Hall of Famer Connie Hawkins; Why the ABL’s (and S

National 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 double-edged sword of the indoor game; and the NASL's controversial “Team America” experiment in 1983 that helped hasten the demise of the league - and cost Davis at least one friendship in the process.   This week’s episode is sponsored by our friends at Audible!  

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 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 NASL’s Hurricane!), Baltimore (the marketing genius of Tim Leiweke!), and Hartford (what the hell is a “Hellion”?).  Plus, Menchel: hits the road with Frank Deford; spends a year outdoors among the Caribou(s?) of Colorado; has a bad day in Rochester, NY; and “settles down” in St. Louis wondering when and where the NFL football Cardinals will move next.  Thanks to Audible for sponsoring this week’s ep

Syndicated 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.  Thanks to Audible for sponsoring this week’s episode!

Religious 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 nurtured a stunning array of all-star players that transcended both Negro and Major league rosters – 11 of whom were ultimately enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  This week’s episode is sponsored by our friends at Audible!

Author 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 coldest NFL finals ever played); and owner Dan Reeves’ not-so-unexpected move to the sunnier climes of Los Angeles just one month after winning the NFL title.  This week’s episode is sponsored by our friends at Audible.com!

Long-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 explains how the 1985 USFL champion “Baltimore” Stars never actually played a down inside “Charm City.”  This episode is sponsored by our audiobook friends at Audible.com!

Perennial 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 ,winning both the NASL’s outdoor and indoor championships with the Tampa Bay Rowdies; and waxes nostalgic on his subsequent career stops in Portland (Timbers), Cleveland (Force), Toronto (Blizzard), and Los Angeles (Lazers).

Award-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 talent from both Olympic national teams and California beaches; and speculates as to why the IVA eventually collapsed under a “haze” of financial instability.

Emmy 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 named Bob Costas got his first professional sportscasting gig; and how three of the team’s most talented players effectively lost their careers to the evils of drug addiction. 

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 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; recalls how his success with the NFL’s Houston Oilers almost led to banishment from performing at pro football games; and breaks down the chronology of the formative elements of his most famous in-stadium creation – The Wave. 

Legendary 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 a complex Welsh-born, player-turned-NASL-commissioner curiously nudged him into national TV game commentating; remembers when he first recognized pro soccer had finally “arrived” in America (ironically, while out of the country); and suggests that a revised U.S. corporate tax code may have helped hasten the demise of an already-wob

Former 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 having played a league match 1,800 miles away in San Antonio the night before); and why the NASL “lost the plot” when it came to capitalizing on the indoor game.

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 Eagles colors and played more home games in Philadelphia than in Pittsburgh; and, in a PODCAST EXCLUSIVE, why the story of the Steagles just might soon be coming to a theatre near you.

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

Fellow 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 team hastened the league’s demise, and why he doesn’t expect any Christmas cards from Hope Solo anytime soon.

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