By Brian Boone

As the teams of the NFL take the field to begin their season-long campaigns in pursuit of a championship, let’s take a look at some forgotten greats. These are the best teams from the many defunct and failed football leagues of the past few decaces.

World League of American Football

After the NFL first floated the idea in 1974, the World League of American Football finally started up in 1991 to spread what was at the time a sport truly popular only in North America to other regions of the world, and named as such to avoid confusion with soccer, which most of the rest of the world calls “football.” The rules were pretty much the same, and the league developed a modest following even though it had to change its name multiple times, to NFL Europe League, NFL Europe, and NFL Europa. At first, eight of the 11 teams were North America based, but after a three-year hiatus, the league returned in 1995 with only European teams — five in Germany, two in the U.K., and one each in Spain and the Netherlands. By far the best team in World League history was the Frankfurt Galaxy. It stayed intact through the league’s entire run (1991 to 2007), during which time it played the most games (150), amassed the most wins (82), and captured the most World Bowl league titles (4).

CFL in the U.S.

The Canadian Football League hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s provided a high level of play for athletes and fans since the 1880s, and the annual Grey Cup is a Canadian culture event on par with the Super Bowl in the U.S. The rules are slightly different versus the NFL game (the field is 10 yards longer; the offense gets three downs instead of four), and it’s so easy for outsiders to understand that in the early 1990s, the CFL expanded into the U.S. After the Sacramento Gold Miners started play in 1993, the Las Vegas Posse, Shreveport Pirates, and the Baltimore CFLers, later the Stallions, did so in 1994. The Gold Miners then moved to San Antonio, and teams Birmingham and Memphis came onboard in 1995. The best of all the American teams playing Canadian football was the Baltimore Stallions. The squad went 12-6 in its first season and was the runner-up in the Grey Cup. The next year, the team went 15-3 and won the Grey Cup… and then the CFL decided to pull out of the U.S. entirely.

The early NFL

The NFL was founded in 1920, and many of its early teams, who primarily played in small stadiums in medium-sized Midwestern cities, didn’t last for more than a few years. Ohio’s Akron Pros were the NFL’s very first champion, earning the title with an 8-0-3 record in 1920; the franchise went defunct in 1926. The best early NFL team to cease to exist was the Canton Bulldogs, which won back-to tiles in 1922 and 1923 and amassing a combined record of 21-0-3. It, too, was gone by 1926. 

XFL

After NBC lost NFL broadcast rights, it teamed up with the World Wrestling Federation to build the XFL, a supposedly grittier, tougher, and telegenic form of football. Stocking its team with players deemed not good enough for the NFL made for a low quality game, and the whole thing flopped, earning some of NBC’s worst ratings ever. This iteration would exist for just one season, during which the Orlando Rage posted the best record, eight wins and two losses (ties were deemed too weak to exist in the XFL). The Rage lost in the playoffs, and the climactic Million Dollar Game was won by the 7-3 Los Angeles Xtreme.

The USFL

From 1983 to 1985, the USFL played football in the spring and summer, capturing fans during the NFL’s offseason and placing franchises in both major markets and cities that didn’t have a lot of pro teams. Financially shaky throughout its existence, teams folded, merged, and moved a lot. Not even the Philadelphia Stars could gain a toehold. In 1983, it amassed a league-best 15-3 record, then lost the championship game to the Michigan Panthers. The next year, the Stars improved to 16-2 and won a title, and then moved to Baltimore for its final season.