World Football League: Forgotten League

[00:00:00] On March 23, 1991, the London Monks beat the Frank for Calzzi, 24 to a million and the very first world league of American football which featured teams in Europe, the United States and Canada. It connection with the NFL to help grow the sport across the world.

[00:00:25] It was the story behind this short-lived football league today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History, and if you're going to read your guide to a rapid deep dive in this sports history every day, we'd go back way past 1991 to say, I will this league started.

[00:00:51] The NFL was growing in popularity and in 1974, they wanted to start an international league, beat multiple teams in Europe and they were going to call it the Intercontinental Football. They even owned NFL owners out of Davis and TechStraighten to help get the league together,

[00:01:11] but unfortunately a player strike in a recession came and there was turmoil in Europe when Turkey invaded Cyprus so they shelves the whole project. In 1980 they wanted to bring it back as they started to see the popularity of the football happening in Europe and they even started

[00:01:33] to play some preseason over in the London. In 1989 they announced the plans to start the International Football League except they started to change the name as Donald Trump, an important attorney in league, are all the rights to that name to give them trying to start their own league.

[00:01:53] So they changed the name to the world of the ball League of America. But the NFL was connected, they didn't want everyone to think that this was a foreign team or

[00:02:00] I might not have the exist for the NFL. They wanted to use it to help grow the sport across the world. And I threatened to have both of you, six in America, six in the United States,

[00:02:13] four in Europe, one in Canada, one in Mexico, they even secured a TV deal with ABC and the USA and text straying was still getting listening together. But he was like, go in 1990,

[00:02:27] do you to him try to make the independent and stand alone on itself instead of being a small league of the toughest to the NFL? But on November 14th, 1990 the WLFF announced it would begin playing

[00:02:41] in 1991 with 10 teams, six in the United States, three in Europe and one in Canada. Splendid to three divisions, North American West, North American East and Europe, where they 50 games schedule that would stretch from March all the way to May

[00:02:59] and they held a 10-day draft convention basically where they would have almost 700 players come down, work out and do a combine like workout and then they would hold a position draft where each round a team would draft a specific position. So they would have a quarterback

[00:03:23] round where each team drafted quarterback and a running background where each draft team drafted running back, trying to make all the teams fair. All the players which receive a base salary of $20,000, and players could make more money by getting performance based incentives.

[00:03:39] With a maximum total salary of $100,000, today that would be roughly $40,000 base and a chance to make almost $200,000. And the league started on March 23rd, 1991, and had a triple header with games featured in Frankfurt Germany, Birmingham Alabama,

[00:03:58] and Sacramento, California. And they made it all the way through their regular season and they had a playoff system where the three division winners, which were the London monarchs, the New York Knights in the Birmingham Fire and one wild card team, the Barcelona Dragons, would all compete

[00:04:16] in a playoff scenario where London faced off against Barcelona in the World Bowl in 1991 at Wimbley Stadium where London won 21 to 0. They were able to get to their first season, but they needed a loss of $7 million, which is almost $15 million today. In addition to that,

[00:04:38] they got terrible ratings on ABC and the US network who were threatening to pull their contracts. Though they averaged roughly 26,000 fans per game for the first season, the European teams had more success than the North America teams. Despite all this,

[00:04:56] the NFL decided to bring them back for one more season to see if they could correct some of this challenges. They shortened the name to the World League, but they didn't see any different results and they forwarded after the 92 season. With three years later, given the popularity that

[00:05:14] they saw in the European league, they tried to bring it back in a new form called NFL Europe where they would have teams exclusive to the Europe. In this last hit, for over 12 years, to despite having thousands of fans at every game, they still couldn't catch on,

[00:05:31] but they did have great players come out of this league, so just quarterback to Kurt Warner, Brad Johnson, Jake Delone, and John Kittner, in Paul Fainkicker, Adam Vittinterio. Since these leagues have failed, it didn't mean they weren't successful, which is why we have seen

[00:05:47] the NFL go more and more playing games in Europe, starting with games in London, playing games in Mexico, and now, more recently, they played a game this past year in Germany. They may continue

[00:05:59] to expand as there's a want for Europeans to enjoy the game of football, or as they call it, American football. And who knows, maybe we'll actually get a team over there one day, seems like that may be a possibility. Thank you for listening to the day's daily

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