Tim Hanlon Reminds Us There Are "GOOD SEATS STILL AVAILABLE!"
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EPISODE SUMMARY
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....
AUTHOR BIO - TIM HANLON
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.
THE FOOTBALL HISTORY DUDE BACKGROUND
The Football History Dude is a show dedicated to teaching NFL fans about the rich history of the game we all know and love. I’m your host, Arnie Chapman, and I’m just a regular dude that loves football and is a nerd when it comes to learning about history. I created this show to share the gridiron knowledge nuggets I gain from researching various topics about the history of the National Football League. Each episode I welcome you to climb aboard my DeLorean to travel back in time to explore the yesteryear of the gridiron, and yes, that’s a reference to the Back to the Future Movies.
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