The World Football League (WFL) was an American football league that played one full season in 1974 and most of its second in 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; it folded in 2011.
The American Basketball Association (ABA) was a men's professional basketball league from 1967 to 1976. The ABA merged into the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1976, resulting in four ABA teams joining the NBA and the introduction of the NBA 3-point shot in 1979.
The Baltimore Claws were an American basketball team which was supposed to appear in the 1975–76 season in the American Basketball Association. The team collapsed before the season started, playing only three exhibition games, all losses, in its brief history.
The Kentucky Colonels were a member of the American Basketball Association (ABA) for all of the league's nine years. The name is derived from the historic Kentucky Colonels. The Colonels won the most games and had the highest winning percentage of any franchise in the league's history, but the team did not join the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the 1976 ABA–NBA merger. The downtown Louisville Convention Center was the Colonels' venue for their first three seasons before moving to Freedom Hall for the remaining seasons, beginning with the 1970–71 schedule.
The Memphis Sounds were an American professional sports franchise that played in Memphis, Tennessee from 1970 until 1975 as a member of the American Basketball Association. The team was founded as the New Orleans Buccaneers in 1967.
An expansion draft, in professional sports, occurs when a sports league decides to create one or more new expansion teams or franchises. This occurs mainly in North American sports and closed leagues. One of the ways of stocking the new team or teams is an expansion draft. Although how each league conducts them varies, and they vary from occasion to occasion, the system is usually something similar to the following:
There are 12 United States cities with sports teams competing in the four major leagues of the United States and Canada: Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, National Football League, and National Hockey League.
An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also hope that the expansion of their competition will grow the popularity of the sport generally. The term is most commonly used in reference to the North American major professional sports leagues but is applied to sports leagues in other countries with a closed franchise system of league membership. The term refers to the expansion of the sport into new areas. The addition of an expansion team sometimes results in the payment of an expansion fee to the league by the new team and an expansion draft to populate the new roster.
The Cleveland Barons were a professional ice hockey team in the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1976 to 1978. They were a relocation of the California Golden Seals franchise that had played in Oakland since 1967. After just two seasons, the team merged with the Minnesota North Stars. As a result, the NHL operated with 17 teams during the 1978–79 season.
The 1976–77 NBA season was the 31st season of the National Basketball Association. The season ended with the Portland Trail Blazers winning their first NBA Championship in franchise history, beating the Philadelphia 76ers in six games in the NBA Finals.
The 1991 NHL dispersal and expansion drafts were held via telephone conference call on May 30, 1991. The dispersal draft took place to fill the roster of the league's only expansion team for the 1991–92 season, the San Jose Sharks, first from the Minnesota North Stars pool of players, and then from the rest of the NHL pool of players.
The 1979 NHL expansion draft was held on June 13, 1979. The draft took place to fill the rosters of the National Hockey League's new teams for the 1979–80 season: the Edmonton Oilers, Hartford Whalers, Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets. These four teams had joined the NHL after a merger agreement was reached with the World Hockey Association (WHA).
Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada traditionally include four leagues: Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), and the National Hockey League (NHL). Other prominent leagues include Major League Soccer (MLS) and the Canadian Football League (CFL).
Utah Rockies was the name under which the Spirits of St. Louis were to play during the ultimately aborted 1976–77 American Basketball Association (ABA) season.
The 1976–77 NBA season was the Spurs first season in the NBA. Months earlier, the Spurs were part of the American Basketball Association. The ABA had ended its ninth and last campaign. Of the seven remaining ABA teams, four joined the NBA: the Denver Nuggets, New York Nets, Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs. The Kentucky Colonels and Spirits of St. Louis agreed to take a cash settlement and cease operations. Immediately, the ABA players were dispersed across the new 22-team league. The other ABA teams from the prior season were all folded prior to the ABA–NBA merger: the Baltimore Claws, Utah Stars, San Diego Sails and Virginia Squires.
The 1976–77 Denver Nuggets season, is the Nuggets first season in the NBA, after nine seasons in the ABA.
The ABA–NBA merger was a major pro sports business maneuver in 1976 when the American Basketball Association (ABA) combined with the National Basketball Association (NBA), after multiple attempts over several years. The NBA and ABA had entered merger talks as early as 1970, but an antitrust suit filed by the head of the NBA players union, Robertson v. National Basketball Ass'n, blocked the merger until 1976.
The 1979 NHL expansion was the culmination of several years of negotiations between the National Hockey League (NHL) and the World Hockey Association (WHA). The result of the negotiations was that the WHA and its six surviving franchises folded, and owners of four WHL teams—the Edmonton Oilers, New England Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and Winnipeg Jets—were granted expansion franchises, which commenced play in the NHL in the 1979–80 season. The agreement officially took effect on June 22, 1979. The agreement ended the seven-year existence of the WHA and re-established the NHL as the lone major league in North American professional ice hockey.
The 1978 NHL dispersal draft was held on June 15, 1978. It was the result of the merger of two National Hockey League (NHL) teams, the Cleveland Barons and the Minnesota North Stars. The NHL granted majority ownership of the North Stars to Barons owners Gordon Gund and George Gund III, after their bid to buy the Barons' home arena failed, and as the League feared the ownership group of the North Stars, another team performing poorly amid waning fan interest, would cease that team’s operations. To prevent the North Stars from folding, the NHL allowed the Gunds to merge them with the Barons; the Gunds would be majority owners of Minnesota North Stars.
