World Football League
WFL official logo
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| Sport | American football |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1973 |
| Inaugural season | 1974 |
| Ceased | 1975 |
| No. of teams | 13 (all) |
| Country | United States |
| Last champion(s) |
Birmingham Americans |
The World Football League (WFL) was a short-lived American football league that played in 1974 and part of 1975. Although the league's proclaimed ambition was to bring American football onto a worldwide stage, the farthest the WFL reached was placing a team – the Hawaiians – in Honolulu, Hawaii. The league folded midway through its second season, in 1975. A new minor football league began play as the World Football League in 2008 after acquiring the rights to its trademarks and intellectual property.
Gary Davidson was the driving force behind the WFL. He had helped start the successful American Basketball Association and World Hockey Association, some of whose teams survived long enough to enter the established National Basketball Association and National Hockey League. His World Football League did not bring any surviving teams into the National Football League, much less survive as a whole league.
To get the league off the ground, Davidson knew he needed investors. At a press conference held in Chicago, Davidson announced his core of investors, a group of men he called the "founding fathers". These men were Robert Schmertz, who owned the WHA's New England Whalers and NBA's Boston Celtics; a former hockey prospect named Howard Baldwin (future owner of the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins), who ran the Boston Bulls charter; Ben Hatskin, who owned the WHA's Winnipeg Jets; and R. Steve Arnold, another WHA associate.
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