National Bicycle League

The National Bicycle League (NBL) was a United States–based Bicycle Motocross (BMX) sports sanctioning body originally based in Deerfield Beach, Florida, but after several moves it was based in Hilliard, Ohio. It was created by George Edward Esser (September 17, 1925 – August 31, 2006) in 1974 as first the bicycle auxiliary of the National Motorcycle League (NML) then set up as an independent non-profit organization unlike the earlier National Bicycle Association (NBA) and the later American Bicycle Association (ABA). George Esser played a major part in establishing Bicycle Motocross racing in Florida and shortly after the East Coast of the United States as Ernie Alexander did in California and the West Coast. The organization that sanctions bicycle motocross races in the United States/Canada is now known as USA BMX (see External Links).

George Esser, unlike the creators of the earlier NBA and later ABA, set up a non-profit organization with a very inclusive government including a Competition Congress meetings in which opinions of how the body was being administered would be heard. It is perhaps this input and exercise of corporate democracy kept it in touch with the grass roots and from suffering periodical lost of member track operators and internal rebellions, like what happened to the ABA and NBA, in the NBA's case, fatally. Mr. Esser did not start the NBL for its own sake, but for the sake of his sons Bryan and Greg Esser who were competing in local races at the time before their father knew what BMX was. The elder Esser, being a motorcycle motocross race promoter like Ernie Alexander was on the United States's west coast before him, was dissatisfied with how the sanctionless independent tracks were run and created a bicycle motocross division of his thirty-three-year-old National Motorcycle League (NML).

The NML's Bicycle Division's first race at Miami Hollywood Speedway Park on January 26, 1974. One of George Esser's sons, the aforementioned Greg Esser, won the 14 & over class (there was no proficiency classes as we know them now, just age divisions). Greg Esser would later become the first official NBL pro Number One racer in 1979. In February 1976 Mr. Esser broke the NBL off from the NML to become its own entity. Starting in Florida in these early days its track affiliations were overwhelmingly concentrated east of the Mississippi River with only a few west of that boundary. However, after the 1981 racing season it commenced joint operations with the troubled National Bicycle Association (NBA) that was shrinking both terms of ridership and track operations. From that point on, the NBA handled race promotions, sponsor relations and marketing of NBL races but ceased sanctioning races in its own right. In return, the NBL absorbed the remaining NBA membership and tracks, particularly those west of the Mississippi, making it a truly nation spanning sanctioning body like the rival ABA.

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