Fifty years ago, D.C.’s World Football League team left before playing a game

“I consider Washington among the choice areas for a franchise in the WFL because of the widespread interest not only in Washington but for millions of fans who live in surrounding states,” WFL Commissioner Gary Davidson, who previously created the American Basketball Association and the World Hockey Association with his friend and fellow Southern California attorney Don Regan, said upon installing a team in D.C. “I’m convinced our new team will add to the overall enjoyment of fans in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and residents of the District. I’m sure with the leadership and backing behind Joe Wheeler that his will be a successful franchise in the years ahead.”

Wheeler, the 48-year-old CEO of a D.C.-based oceanographic and engineering company, had no experience in professional sports. That didn’t stop him from paying a sizable entrance fee and forming a corporation called Washington Capitals Inc., on Jan. 9, 1974, to organize and run his new team. Capitals was the tentative name for the franchise, but Abe Pollin would select that moniker for his NHL expansion team two weeks later.

Wheeler told reporters that he hoped his team would play its 20-game regular season from July to November at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis and that he would pay to install lights at the venue. The WFL, which announced its arrival with a mustard-brown ball, flashy uniforms and a new device called the Dicker-rod (yes, really) to measure first downs, would play most of its games on Wednesday nights.

“We don’t want to compete head on or detract from the Redskins or from the Colts,” Wheeler said of the NFL teams in Washington and Baltimore. “We want to add to the sports in the area, not detract from them. This is going to be a franchise for the people. We want to appeal to the Washington-Maryland-Virginia-Delaware area. By going into Annapolis, we are on neutral ground.”

There were early signs that Wheeler’s franchise was destined to fail. At introductory news conferences in Baltimore and Washington the day before the WFL’s collegiate draft in January, Wheeler, who admitted he wasn’t wealthy enough to finance the team himself, made no mention of fellow investors. Instead, he announced a name-the-team contest, with $1,000 promised to the winner.

The franchise, which went by Washington-Baltimore at the start, selected Richmond fullback Barty Smith, Tennessee State linebacker Waymond Bryant and Maryland defensive tackle Paul Vellano with its first three picks of the draft. Despite the team not having a name, Wheeler showed off a red, white and blue prototype helmet with a “W” superimposed over the Capitol dome on the sides.

A few days later, former Rams and Redskins linebacker Jack Pardee, who had spent the previous season as an assistant on George Allen’s staff in Washington, left the NFL to become the coach of Wheeler’s team. Former Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas previously turned down the job.

“Everything you do in your life is a gamble,” the 37-year-old Pardee told The Washington Post of joining the WFL. “I see this job as a good opportunity. I’m not scared at being a new team in a new league.”

The name-the-team contest stretched into February.

“More than a few of the some 14,000 postcards received carry the names of ‘Blades’ and ‘Skates,’ their senders perhaps missed the news that the area’s new big league hockey team has already been christened the Washington Capitals,” The Post reported.

Many of the suggested names were inspired by Washington’s NFL team, including Pigskins, Redcolts, Redcoats, Pawnees and Redbirds. Monuments was among the most popular entries, while The Post described submissions such as Caterpillars, Hijackers, Sodbusters and Washballs as “a waste of the Postal Service time.”

On Feb. 25, Wheeler announced Washington-Baltimore would be shortened to Washington and picked Ambassadors as the team name. He also announced the signing of former New Orleans Saints quarterback Bob Davis, who starred at Virginia.

Wheeler’s team had a name and a quarterback, but it still didn’t have a stadium. The secretary of the Navy had granted permission to negotiate the renting of Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium to the Ambassadors, but Wheeler determined the cost of installing lights was $450,000 and the job couldn’t be completed by the start of the season.

Wheeler preferred that the Ambassadors play at RFK Stadium and offered to pay the Redskins $350,000 to waive their exclusive football rights to the venue. Wheeler claimed the Redskins asked for the money up front, which he balked at, while Washington team president Edward Bennett Williams told The Post he simply asked Wheeler to prove his financial stability.

“He never came up with the first dollar,” Williams said. “If he won’t give me a financial statement, I can’t deal with him.”

At the WFL’s draft of pro players in March, the Ambassadors selected 13 Washington players, including Bill Brundige, George Starke, Roy Jefferson and Diron Talbert. None of them signed, but the new league would earn credibility a few weeks later when Larry Csonka, Paul Warfield and Jim Kiick of the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins signed a record $3 million contract to join the WFL’s Toronto Northmen, beginning in 1975. (The Toronto franchise relocated to Memphis and was renamed the Southmen.)

As the Ambassadors explored the possibility of playing their inaugural season at a high school in Northern Virginia, Wheeler met with Norfolk city officials April 3 about relocating to southeast Virginia.

“It’s unacceptable in the long run, but we could live with it for one year,” Pardee said.

One week later, with its regular season opener less than three months away, the team changed its name to the Virginia Ambassadors and announced plans to play its home games at Norfolk’s 24,000-seat Foreman Field. In May, former AFL linebacker Rommie Loudd, who was representing an Orlando group seeking a WFL franchise, met with Wheeler about buying the Ambassadors.

“Mr. Loudd is one of many investors I have talked to — from Baltimore, Kansas City, San Francisco, Boston,” Wheeler told reporters. “You want to know what will happen if all those potential investors drop out of the picture except Orlando. Well, in that case, we will go to Orlando. But I want to stay in the tidewater Virginia area. However, I need investors. I don’t have anybody else in the organization now.”

With training camp in Harrisonburg, Va., approaching, Wheeler sold the team to Loudd for $1.6 million. He had never posted the $100,000 in “good faith money” he agreed to pay Norfolk for the rental and renovation of Foreman Field.

“We did something unique in sports,” Wheeler said of the deal. “We made a profit.”

“Joe Wheeler did not have the money to run a pro football team,” Wheeler’s assistant, Ed Cain, told The Post in May 1974.

After the sale to Loudd’s group, the Ambassadors relocated to Orlando and were renamed the Florida Blazers. The league’s first season was a disaster from the start. The Philadelphia Bell admitted that 100,000 of the 120,000 fans it announced for its first two home games had received free tickets. Several teams went months without being able to pay their players.

“We’re a couple million in the hole,” a Blazers official told The Post in August.

A few months after the Birmingham Americans defeated the Blazers, 22-21, in the World Bowl, IRS officials auctioned off the contracts of Birmingham’s players to recover more than $200,000 in Social Security and unemployment back taxes due from the team.

Despite estimated losses of $20 million, the league returned in 1975 with 11 teams and a new commissioner, Chris Hemmeter, who was the owner of the Honolulu-based Hawaiians. The WFL folded 12 weeks into its second season, with attendance having dropped to an average of 13,300 per week.

In hindsight, Wheeler said Williams denying the Ambassadors use of RFK in 1974 was a blessing.

“If it hadn’t been for him,” Wheeler laughed a few years later, “I’d be a broke WFL owner like all the others.”

It wouldn’t be Wheeler’s last venture in sports. In the fall of 1976, he formed Washington Pro-Baseball Inc., a public corporation to buy an MLB team and bring it to D.C. Wheeler’s plan called for raising at least $10 million by selling shares to the public at $25 per share. By October 1977, Wheeler had sold just $40,000 in shares. All of the money was eventually refunded.