Albany Metro Mallers

The Albany Metro Mallers are a semi-professional football team that has played its home games primarily in Albany, New York, with the 6500-seat Bleecker Stadium as its home field. The team has long been successful regionally and nationally, having regularly been in the national semipro playoffs, and having won the national semipro title in 2008. Some of the team's players have gone on to play professional football, and a number of the team’s past and present players are listed among the all-time semipro football record holders.

After the team's first year in 1972, the Mallers moved into the Seaboard Football League in 1973, which had teams in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland. They played their home games in Schenectady, New York, that year. Unlike most semipro leagues, which had only local players and did not pay their players, the Seaboard League teams brought in players from outside their areas, paid their players modestly and helped them find local jobs. League teams were able to attract numerous players who had been signed to NFL contracts, had been cut in the preseason, and were hoping to make the NFL eventually. More than ten of the Mallers had been in NFL camps. Later in the season, the team made an informal arrangement with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League to develop players for the Alouettes who had been released by that team., Three of the players on the 1973 Mallers (Bill Ellenbogen, Don Aleksiewicz and Gary Weinlein) played professional football eventually, although none ever played for the Alouettes.

The Seaboard Football League folded at the end of that season, and the team then joined the Empire Football League, a league with teams primarily located in Upstate New York that prohibited paying their players. The Mallers moved to Albany that year. They finished second in the league in 1975 and 1976, and won the league championship in 1979.

In 1981, the team moved into the Eastern Football League, which had teams in Massachusetts and in New York State. The Mallers won the league championship 12-9 on an electrifying play: a 73-yard flea flicker touchdown pass thrown by wide receiver Mike DeCarlo that was deflected by a defender into the hands of wide receiver Davey Williams, who held on to it and then ran the remaining 50 yards into the end zone.

The Mallers also won the Eastern Football League championship in 1986, defeating the Marlboro Shamrocks 23-14. The Metro Mallers returned to the Empire Football League in 1987, and finished second in the league that year. They won the league championship in 1989, and finished second in the league in 1990.

...
Wikipedia