World Football League 50th Anniversary

I would say that my interest in obscure sports began 50 years ago with the World Football League (WFL).  In July 1974, the WFL was a new rival football league with unique rules and team names.  After some shuffling before the inaugural season, the league kicked off with 12 teams in New York, Orlando, Jacksonville, Philadelphia, Birmingham, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Honolulu, Houston, Portland and Anaheim.

The first regular season games kicked off on July 10, 1974.  Results from those games:

• Memphis 34, Detroit 15
• Florida 8, Hawaiians 7
• Chicago 17, Houston 0
• Philadelphia 33, Portland 8
• Birmingham 11, Southern California 7

The first Thursday Night televised game:  Jacksonville 14, New York 7

The WFL was also one of the first sports leagues which featured teams with singular nicknames with the Philadelphia Bell, Chicago Fire, Portland Thunder and Southern California Sun.

Instability plagued the league during the season as Jacksonville and Detroit folded, Houston moved to Shreveport, New York moved to Charlotte and Chicago ended the season forfeiting the final regular season game.

The Birmingham Americans won the first World Bowl.

The league had some innovative rules such as:

• The WFL football was orange colored, to make it more visible at night and to fit with 1970s aesthetics.
• Touchdowns were worth 7 points, instead of 6. As a result of this, the standard point after touchdown kick was eliminated.
• In lieu of the PAT kick, conversions called "Action Points" were instituted, and could only be scored via a scrimmage play (much in the same way as a two-point conversion) and were worth one point. The ball was placed on the two-and-a-half-yard line for an Action Point. 
• Kickoffs were from the 30-yard line instead of the 40. 
• Receivers needed only one foot in bounds for a legal pass reception, instead of both feet in the NFL then and now. 
• Bump-and-run pass coverage was outlawed once a receiver was 3 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. 
• The goalposts were placed at the end line (the back of the end zone). 
• A player in motion was allowed to move toward the line of scrimmage before the snap, as long as he was behind the line of scrimmage at the snap. 
• Punt returners were prohibited from using the fair catch, although the covering team could not come within 5 yards of the kick returner until he caught the ball. 
• The WFL's original overtime system was unique among American football leagues. Overtime in the regular season was one fixed 15-minute period, divided into two halves of 7½ minutes, each starting with a kickoff by one of the teams. The complete overtime was always played; there was no "sudden death" feature. In 1975, the WFL changed its overtime to the 15-minute sudden-death period.

The WFL had a 20-game regular season with no preseason games which started in July before the NFL season.  The league was first professional football league to schedule regular season games during midweek on Wednesday nights with a nationally televised game on Thursday nights.  

Another change from the NFL was with measuring first downs. The WFL had a device called the "Dicker-rod" (named for its inventor, George Dicker). For measuring first-down yardage, instead of using a 10-yard chain strung between two sticks and a chain crew to perform the task, the WFL used a device operated by a single person. This was a single stick, approximately three yards long, used to gauge the position of the football relative to the nearest gridiron line (the lines completely crossing the playing area, spaced every five yards).

The WFL actively competed for NFL players and brought over Larry Csonka, Paul Warfield and Calvin Hill who were prime stars in the NFL at the time of their defections to the new league.  

Unfortunately, the league folded mid-way through the 1975 season as most teams went bankrupt.

For more details on the World Football League go to the Wikipedia page at:  World Football League - Wikipedia