043: Arena Football League Founder Jim Foster
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English - January 08, 2018 08:00 - 2 hours - 191 MB - ★★★★★ - 98 ratingsSports History volleyball baseball basketball defunct football hockey nostalgia soccer sports Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
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 early-to-mid 2000s.
Much has happened to the league and the sport during those 30+ years, of course – and few doubt that the unique (and once-patented) excitement of arena football won’t eventually find a sustainable business model and a return to long-term stability.
In the interim, however, we delve into how it all began, with the first of our two-part interview with Iowa native Jim Foster – the inventor of arena football and the founder of the original Arena Football League – who takes host Tim Hanlon on rollicking excursion across the uncharted sports terrain of the 1970s and 80s that led to both the birth of a sport and the launch of a professional league, including:
Exporting professional American football to Europe decades before the NFL; Discovering fans’ year-long appetite for pro football via the USFL; Scribbling parameters for “indoor football” on a manila envelope while attending the 1981 MISL All-Star Game; Tinkering on a shoestring with facilities, equipment, rules, and approaches to TV broadcast coverage; Tapping into the nostalgia and cost economics of two-way players, as well as the fan appeal of “run-and-shoot” offensive action; AND Defending the notion of centrally-controlled league ownership from franchise-hungry charter owners.This week’s episode is sponsored by Sports History Collectibles, Audible and Podfly.