ABA Basketball not covered by local newspapers

[Kolchak]

Eh, it's a reasonable discussion for a journalism board. It's not just basketball, either. Lots of low-level sports out there fall under this category.

The worst scenarios, in my experience, is when the SE has it on a different priority level than everyone else. Maybe the SE and team owner are golfing buddies, so the SE wants to do his buddy his favor. Team gets horribly mismanaged and stinks and the whole staff knows it is a huge waste of time, but the SE wants it covered, so we get stuck playing it up like anyone else actually gives two shirts about it.

We have some issues like that. You know how every now and then college football games are played at a baseball stadium? One time, because the executive editor's alma mater was one of the teams -- even though neither team playing had anything to do with our state or our football conferences, or were even Top 25 programs for that matter -- it got front page A1 coverage. But the Fenway Park football game? That wasn't A1-worthy.

Then there's the situation with the SE's alma mater and our coverage of said out-of-state university.

 

[Central-KY-Kid]

OurSportsCentral, which covers a wide range of minor league sports, has a whole board about the craziness (or foolishness) that is the ABA:

http://www.oursportscentral.com/boards/forumdisplay.php?f=77

 

[apeman33]

The new ABA is the single biggest sack of shirt I have ever encountered. shirt lit on fire. I've had two teams in two different states working at two different papers. One of them played almost a whole season in multiple high school gyms before folding. The other didn't even get to creating a roster before folding.

We at least gave it the benefit of poking around and seeing what it was all about both times. I'd advise no one to do the same.

The 1999-2000 version of the Indoor Football League says hello. The Orlando Predators bought the entire league after the 2000 season and killed off all but Peoria, Lincoln and Wichita (which came back with a new identity but was pretty much the same franchise).

A friend and I attended the first Wichita Warlords game in 2000. The game began at 7 p.m. The fourth quarter started at 10 after 10 because they had to have a contest after every stoppage of play. They also let one of the sponsors have a microphone for some reason and he kept trying to encourage the crowd shouting "Whoo! Let's go!" By the middle of the third quarter, there was an entire section chanting "You suck!" at him.

The friend was a DJ at a Wichita radio station. The following Monday, he called the team's front office and put them on live. They apologized for giving the microphone to the sponsor and said that he wouldn't have one anymore after that. They also promised to reduce the number of in-game contests to between quarters and at the 2-minute warning of each half.

By the end of the season, the GM and his assistant had quit. A 22-year-old intern was the interim GM.

They weren't affiliated with "the" arena football, so they didn't have the nets. They allowed punting but if a punt hit the scoreboard, the other team got it automatically at midfield. They also had the rouge to encourage returns although even the worst kicker was capable of kicking it into the stands without the nets. And Wichita's Astroturf was used and still had old markings on it.

 

[RickStain]

That's bad, but it's nothing like what's calling itself the ABA. It's like that "buy a star" registry crap except they convince rich people they are "sports team owners" for their $10k franchise fee.

 

[Armchair_QB]

What ever happened to the Vermont Frost Heaves?

 

[kingcreole]

I know the Kansas City area has a handful of minor league teams that the Star covers with a few sentences, agate and league standings.

The T-Bones are a Northern League baseball team, the Comets a Major Indoor Soccer League team, and Mavericks some sort of hockey team. All three teams do well attendance wise. I went to a Comets game last year, played in front of about 5,000 fans, and the game got what it deserved, coverage wise.

Look, if this team is in fact in Jacksonville, it's got to be on the low end of the totem pole. A step below the small local NAIA schools and junior colleges.

 

[kingcreole]

Most minor basketball leagues are pretty sad. The United States Basketball League was half legit, half crap. If the midwestern teams could have found a way to move on without the east-coast teams, it could have made it a few more seasons. But it would have been difficult to have a strong basketball league with eight towns just like Dodge City, Salina and Enid. And because it played in the summer, there was no real competition to worry about. The problem was, all of its expansion teams following the midwest success were jokes (such as Mississippi, which no one knew had folded until one of the east-coast teams showed up to the arena and found nobody there) and the east-coast teams couldn't make it through a season most years.

Wow, the old USBL. Once, Dodge City played a game at Salina. Actually, the game never happened. Teams warmed up, they had the starting lineups, the teams took the court and they realized nobody in a striped shirt was there to toss the ball in the air.

 

[Bamadog]

Son of a gun. I checked the ABA website and found out we have a team in our area. Of course, the website hasn't been updated since August and the Twitter feed hasn't had a tweet since September. No roster, no nothing ... oh, there is a picture of the dance team.

And the alleged set of standings on the ABA's website has the team with a 0-0 record.

You only cover us when we actually play a game!

They work just as hard as everyone else!

 

[HejiraHenry]

The new ABA is the single biggest sack of shirt I have ever encountered. shirt lit on fire. I've had two teams in two different states working at two different papers. One of them played almost a whole season in multiple high school gyms before folding. The other didn't even get to creating a roster before folding.

We at least gave it the benefit of poking around and seeing what it was all about both times. I'd advise no one to do the same.

The 1999-2000 version of the Indoor Football League says hello. The Orlando Predators bought the entire league after the 2000 season and killed off all but Peoria, Lincoln and Wichita (which came back with a new identity but was pretty much the same franchise).

A friend and I attended the first Wichita Warlords game in 2000. The game began at 7 p.m. The fourth quarter started at 10 after 10 because they had to have a contest after every stoppage of play. They also let one of the sponsors have a microphone for some reason and he kept trying to encourage the crowd shouting "Whoo! Let's go!" By the middle of the third quarter, there was an entire section chanting "You suck!" at him.

The friend was a DJ at a Wichita radio station. The following Monday, he called the team's front office and put them on live. They apologized for giving the microphone to the sponsor and said that he wouldn't have one anymore after that. They also promised to reduce the number of in-game contests to between quarters and at the 2-minute warning of each half.

By the end of the season, the GM and his assistant had quit. A 22-year-old intern was the interim GM.

They weren't affiliated with "the" arena football, so they didn't have the nets. They allowed punting but if a punt hit the scoreboard, the other team got it automatically at midfield. They also had the rouge to encourage returns although even the worst kicker was capable of kicking it into the stands without the nets. And Wichita's Astroturf was used and still had old markings on it.

Makes me smile. Sounds a lot like Tupelo's last go-round with indoor ball.

 

[apeman33]

Most minor basketball leagues are pretty sad. The United States Basketball League was half legit, half crap. If the midwestern teams could have found a way to move on without the east-coast teams, it could have made it a few more seasons. But it would have been difficult to have a strong basketball league with eight towns just like Dodge City, Salina and Enid. And because it played in the summer, there was no real competition to worry about. The problem was, all of its expansion teams following the midwest success were jokes (such as Mississippi, which no one knew had folded until one of the east-coast teams showed up to the arena and found nobody there) and the east-coast teams couldn't make it through a season most years.

Wow, the old USBL. Once, Dodge City played a game at Salina. Actually, the game never happened. Teams warmed up, they had the starting lineups, the teams took the court and they realized nobody in a striped shirt was there to toss the ball in the air.

Not as bad as the misadventure involving the Mississippi team I mentioned before. I think it was the Pennsylvania ValleyDawgs that ended up going there (I think that team was based in Biloxi) only to find there was no team. Supposedly, the ValleyDawgs called the league office and was told to start driving north then call back somewhere around Memphis to find out if they were supposed to go to Dodge City or Gary.

Not on a bus, either. Vans.

I think that was the USBL's final season. Only Kansas (Salina), Dodge City and Oklahoma (Enid) were any kind of viable at the end. They couldn't keep going by themselves.

 

[Precious Roy]

What ever happened to the Vermont Frost Heaves?

I can handle this one.... The Frost Heaves left the ABA along with a section of other teams to form the Premier Basketball League. At the time they created it as a Northeast Region-only minor league basketball organization of teams in New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and then expanded to Washington, North Carolina and Illinois.
When the CBA finally died its final death, the team that won the last two CBA titles went over to the PBL and was going to bring the other three remaining CBA franchises with it, but the CBA franchises just died except the one.
The Frost Heaves lasted in the PBL for about three seasons until money woes finally caught up with them and the team had to be folded midseason in 2011. What followed was a mess of a rest of the season that included allegations of game-fixing in the playoffs and finals. The PBL somewhat collapsed after that year and some of the better teams (all the Canadian teams and one American franchise) split and started what is now the National Basketball League of Canada. The team in the CBA that went to the PBL was the team that lost the championship that year and folded after the season, with the coach and all the players on that team going to Canada to be a part of one of the expansion teams.
So there's a little of what happened at the end of the life of the Vermont Frost Heaves.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Sounds like the clown who started this thread is a fraud who ran off with his tail between his legs when his idiotic post didn't get the response he thought his shirt team would get.