Tim Hanlon Reminds Us There Are "GOOD SEATS STILL AVAILABLE!"

This week I bring Tim Hanlon on the show to take us back in the DeLorean to many moments in the football history of leagues that are now “defunct.” I found Tim way back in 2019 when Upton Bell first reached out to me for my “first interview opportunity.”

I had to perform some research, so I typed “UPTON BELL” into my podcast player, and wouldn’t ya know it, Good Seats Still Available released an interview with Upton right around the day of my first episode being released. It was destiny.

There are a ton of football topics and episodes of “Good Seats Still Available” (and even more when you count overall sports). At the time of this release, Tim’s already on episode 258. I highly recommend you head over to Tim’s entire podcast library after listening to this interview.

We couldn’t get into all of them, so I grabbed a few to talk about and asked Tim to share some stories about each. As with his podcast, Tim did not disappoint. Here are a few of the episodes we and topics we get into:

Arena Football League history (including the origin and a moment in time that Tim shares with the founder of the league)
Birmingham and Memphis’s never-ending quest for a Pro Football team
The World League of Football and NFL Europe
WFL (World Football League) history
The original XFL
What league Tim would use my converted DeLorean to bring the entire league to modern times to watch it play out and survive
And much more….

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About Tim Hanlon

**From Tim’s Website***

Tim Hanlon is the host and producer of the “Good Seats Still Available” podcast — the culmination of a life-long fascination, and downright unhealthy obsession with the defunct, abandoned and otherwise abjectly forgotten corners of professional North American sports.

Though hotly debated in professional psychology circles, most people believe the original source of Tim’s questionable, borderline-perverse passion for lost sports history dates back to his unmitigated childhood love affair with his first true professional sports mistress — the (original) New York Cosmos of the (original) North American Soccer League.

The “Once in a Lifetime” thrills of witnessing some of the world’s greatest soccer players prancing about the sparkling-new Giants Stadium Astroturf beginning in 1977, left an indelible mark on an impressionable 11-year-old suburban New Jersey kid — whose head spun trying to keep track of an unending procession of NASL teams the Cosmos played, each with bold and distinctive names like Rogues (Memphis), Lancers (Rochester), Tea Men (New England, then Jacksonville), Sting (Chicago), and Blizzard (Toronto).

A mere seven years later, however, the Cosmos and the NASL were gone — just as fast as they seemed to arrive. By then, Tim had spread his allegiances to the upstart Major Indoor Soccer League (including season tickets to the lamentable 1981-82 New Jersey Rockets); the brash United States Football League (with its braggadocio of an owner, Donald Trump); and the fledgling Major Indoor Lacrosse League’s (1988) champion New Jersey Saints. And each time, losing them to eventual disappointment and oblivion.

Now, many years later, Tim seeks to figure out the people, places and circumstances behind some of the most interesting professional sports teams and leagues that once were, and now are not.

About Good Seats Still Available

***From Tim’s Website***

Although you could be forgiven for somehow thinking that teams like the Dallas Chaparrals, Sacramento Gold Miners, Caribous of Colorado, Ohio Glory, San Diego Conquistadors, New York/New Jersey Hitmen, Bay Area CyberRays, Minnesota Fighting Saints, Philadelphia Bell, and San Francisco Fog were mere figments of your imagination.

Or for believing leagues (and premises) with names like World Hockey Association, All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, World Team Tennis, Continental Indoor Soccer League, International Volleyball Association, Roller Hockey International, or even “XFL” (which wasn’t even an acronym) were mere flights of fictional fantasy, too.

But they were real, all right.

In fact, the history of North American professional sports is littered with scores of teams and leagues that, today, are mere fuzzy recollections in the minds of former players, patrons, broadcasters, and owner-dreamers.

From troubled, eager-to-relocate franchises in established organizations like the NBA (really, the Utah Jazz?) or Major League Baseball (hint: look up “Youppi!”), to pioneering clubs comprising audacious, but often wobbly circuits like the World Football League, American Basketball Association, Major Indoor Soccer League, and Women’s Professional Soccer — teams of all shapes, sizes and suspicion have routinely come and gone from the pro sports landscape over the last century.

While they may be the forgotten footnotes of sports history, teams like the Seattle Pilots, New Jersey Gems, Pittsburgh Triangles, Indianapolis ABC’s, Virginia Squires, Chicago Blitz, Birmingham Americans, Oakland Seals, Washington Senators, New England Tea Men, New York Arrows, Rockford Peaches, and The Hawaiians have their place in the hearts and memories of fans from coast to coast.

Dozens of franchises and scores of leagues that, at one time or another, captured the fancy of sports fans in every major North American market – only to leave behind little more than a raft of souvenir ticket stubs and, in many cases, unpaid bills.

This podcast is dedicated to unearthing, reliving and preserving the rich stories behind the rise and fall of some of the most wild and woolly moments in (often forgotten) sports history.

And to provide some level of proof that you (and they) weren’t dreaming after all.

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