With Super Bowl LIV just weeks away and the second coming of the XFL looming on the horizon, professional football is still very much in the air here in Las Vegas. Not only will tens of millions of dollars be bet in our casinos on who wins and who loses on Super Bowl Sunday, but Sin City will be brimming with more supersized Super Bowl parties than perhaps any other city in America. And while the XFL kicks off their 8-team 10-game schedule on February 8, just six days after pro football’s biggest game of the year, the city’s countdown to the start of the 2020 National Football League season will begin.
Before we know it, our newest residents, the Las Vegas Raiders, will take the field at the $1.84 billion Allegiant Stadium, and the NFL’s brand of pro football will officially begin. But before it does, we must confess, the NFL will not be the first pro football league to house a team in Las Vegas. The Continental Football League, the Canadian Football League, the United Football League, the Arena Football League, and the original XFL have all had teams based in Sin City, and every franchise met the same fate as many of our famous hotels and casinos. And while these teams are part of our city’s rich sports history, with each passing day, they become just a faded, distant memory.
And so as a reminder of what professional football has been like here in Las Vegas before the Raiders kick off their 2020 campaign several months from now, let’s take a look back at the teams that suited up and called Las Vegas Home.
Las Vegas Cowboys In 1965 the Continental Football League was founded with the hopes of becoming a major competitor to the more established NFL and AFL (American Football League) even though it was comprised of minor-league teams that had played either in the United Football League or the Atlantic Coast Football League. In 1968 teams from the Professional Football League of America merged with the COFL. After losing their first two games of the season, the Quad City Raiders relocated to Las Vegas and became the Cowboys. The team played their home games at Cashman Field and ended the 1968 season with a last-place record of 1-11. For the 1969 season, the team turned around and ended up in first place in the league’s Pacific Division but lost in the playoffs to the San Antonio Toros, who would go on to win the league championship. After the season, the team was sold, and although they were scheduled to relocate to Memphis, the league folded before they did.
Las Vegas Posse In 1993, the Canadian Football League, which had been around since the mid-1950s with roots going back to the ‘30s, expanded into the U.S. with a team in Sacramento. The following year three more U.S.-based teams were added to the league, including a team in Las Vegas. The Posse played their games at Sam Boyd Stadium, and as history shows, they were one of the least successful CFL teams both on and off the field. Despite having a rookie quarterback named Anthony Calvillo – who would go on to become the all-time pass leader in CFL history with 79,816 yards – the team finished with a record of 5-13, last place in the league’s Western Division. In what would become the team’s very last home appearance, the Posse drew only 2,350 fans to a game against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, which was the lowest recorded attendance in CFL history. Following the game, Posse owner Nick Mileti, who also owned the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and the AHL’s Cleveland Barons at the time, decided to fold the team. But because league rules prohibited disbanding a team midseason, the Posse’s last scheduled home game, against the Edmonton Eskimos, was moved to Edmonton. Following the season singer Jimmy Buffet tried to buy the team and move them to Jackson, Mississippi. However, the league balked and suspended the franchise for one year. But by the time the following season rolled around, they decided to forego the great U.S. expansion experiment and went back to an all-Canadian league.
Las Vegas Sting Right around the same time that the Las Vegas Posse was having their woes in the CFL, another pro football team made its debut in Sin City, but this team played their games indoors. In what would be the first of three Arena Football League teams to call Las Vegas home, the Sting played their 1994 home games at the MGM Grand Garden Arena and their 1995 home games at the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Nevada. Despite drawing more than 10,000 fans to their inaugural game against the Miami Hooters, the team drew no more than 5,500 fans per game for the ‘94 campaign except for a late-season game against the Tampa Bay Storm that drew 8,900. And although coach Babe Parilli could only muster a record of 5-7 out of his team for a 4th place finish in the AFL American Conference, it was enough to get the team a 7th place seed in the playoffs but a first-round defeat at the hands of the Albany Firebirds. For the ‘95 campaign coach, Parilli got the Sting to a 6-6 record, but this time around they didn’t make the playoffs. And with the team only drawing more than 5,000 fans for three of its six home games, with their biggest crowd being 6,100 against the St. Louis Stampede, it was time for the franchise to move on. Before the start of the 1996 season, the Sting relocated to California and became the Anaheim Piranhas. In Anaheim, the team played two seasons before disbanding after the 1997 season.
Las Vegas Outlaws In 2001 the great experiment known as the XFL was launched, which was a joint venture between NBC and the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE). Of the league’s eight teams, one was the Outlaws, who were one of four teams in the XFL’s Western Division, with their home games played at the 36,000 seat Sam Boyd Stadium. The prognosis for both the league and team were good as the XFL were to broadcast games on NBC as well as UPN (which in 2006 merged with The WB to become The CW) and TNN (which in 2003 became Spike TV, in 2006 became Spike and in 2018 became Paramount Network), while the Outlaws were able to line up such local sponsors as Cox Communications, Station Casinos, New York-New York Hotel & Casino, Findlay Toyota and PacifiCare Health Systems. Despite a losing record of 4-6 and finishing last in their division, the Outlaws were one of only two XFL teams, with the other being the San Francisco Demons, to consistently play their home games in front of stadium crowds that were more than half full. While the team had only 7,000 season ticket holders, they drew 13,700 fans for their home opener against the New York/New Jersey Hitmen and ended up averaging 22,000 fans per game. While their play on the field was under .500, their league-leading defense under Mark Criner achieved notoriety with the nickname “The Dealers of Doom,” and a number of their players would later find themselves in the NFL including: Quarterback Mike Cawley, receiver Mike Furrey, cornerback Kelly Herndon who played in Super Bowl XL for the Seattle Seahawks, and perhaps the league’s most memorable player, running back Rod “He hate Me” Smart, who would go on to become the first former XFL player to appear in a Super Bowl (Super Bowl XXXVIII for the Carolina Panthers). Unfortunately, with NBC and the WWF losing $35 million each on their $100 million investment in the league’s inaugural season, NBC pulled out of its two-year broadcast commitment citing poor viewership. Although WWF head honcho Vince McMahon had planned to continue without NBC, following UPN’s unfavorable demands on the league, the decision was made to cease operations a month after the XFL championship game. As the new XFL prepares for its inaugural season, the original league of the same name will always have a very special place in the heart of the city’s sports history.
Las Vegas Gladiators In 2003, eight years after the Sting moved to Anaheim and became the Piranhas, the Arena Football League gave Las Vegas another go at it with a franchise that would be named the Gladiators. From 1997 to 2000, the franchise played their home games at the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey as the New Jersey Red Dogs. Before the 2001 season, the team was sold to Miami attorney Jim Ferraro who changed the name to the Gladiators. For the 2003 campaign, Ferraro – who made his money in asbestos litigation – moved the franchise to Vegas and like the Sting before them, played their home games at the Thomas & Mack Center. Playing their first four seasons on the UNLV campus, the team averaged right around 10,000 fans per game, which by league standards was very respectable. In 2007, in an effort to increase attendance, the Gladiators moved to the arena at the Orleans Hotel and Casino. Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Shaun King, who was by far the most famous football player to suit up for the Gladiators during their Nevada run, could only muster a 1-5 record for the team before being cut, despite throwing ten touchdowns in a game against the Grand Rapids Rampage. Due to their poor play (they went 2-14) and not having college students within walking distance of their arena, attendance tanked as the team averaged only 5,383 fans, half of what they drew the year before. At the end of the season, after failing to increase community interest off the field, and failing to win games on the field – the team amassed a losing 31–50 record in five years, making the playoffs only once – Ferraro moved the team to Cleveland where they kept the Gladiators name and stayed operating through the 2017 season before ceasing operations.
Las Vegas Locomotives With home games at the 36,800-seat Sam Boyd Stadium, of all the professional football teams that called Las Vegas home, the Locomotives were by far the most successful when it came to their performance on the field. For nearly four seasons (2009 to 2012), the Locos ran over their opponents in the short-lived United Football League, winning two of the three championship games and going undefeated in season four before the league pulled the plug, canceling the season and suspending operations. Many believe the league was doomed from the start as only six teams played in the UFL throughout its history, with no more than five in any given year, playing a six-game schedule. The Locos drew well at Sam Boyd during their first season, having more than 18,000 fans for its inaugural game against the California Redwoods and never dropping below 12,000. The following year their attendance dropped to an average below 10,000 with their best crowd at 13,622 against the Sacramento Mountain Lions. For the 2011 campaign, despite continuing to win on the field, attendance continued to drop, a pattern that would repeat itself for the 2012 season before the league called it quits. While the Locomotives were as determined as the Little Engine that Could, the league itself couldn’t quite get over the hill, and the result found the Locos permanently derailed.
Las Vegas Outlaws They say, “Third time’s a Charm.” At least that’s what Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil was hoping in 2015 when he joined fellow musicians Jon Bon Jovi, Tim McGraw, and Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of KISS as an Arena Football League franchise owner in 2015. Only a few months earlier, Neil had become a minority owner of the NFL’s Jacksonville Sharks. Taking a name that had previously been used in the XFL, the Las Vegas Outlaws version 2.0 were born and looking to avoid the mistake that the Gladiators made eight years earlier by trying to go into the larger Orleans Arena, the newest AFL franchise would play it smart by staying on the UNLV campus and playing their home games at the Thomas & Mack Center. The outlook was promising as the Outlaws played in the Western Division of the National Conference and were headed by former ArenaBowl-winning quarterback Aaron Garcia. But this time around, neither the local fans nor the students showed up to support the team. The Outlaws averaged only 4,731 fans per game, with one game drawing a paltry 2,166 people and another drawing just 4,114, of which only 500 bought tickets. With poor attendance leading to ongoing financial problems, rumors started circulating in July that the league was going to take over operations of the team and look for new ownership. Another team, the New Orleans VooDoo, was also having financial issues, and a scheduled game between the two teams was canceled and declared a tie. On August 9, 2015, one day after the final game of the regular season, AFL commissioner Scott Butera announced that the Outlaws and VooDoo would immediately cease operations, despite the Outlaws having made the playoffs as the league’s 4th seed with a losing record of 5-12-1.
The demise of the AFL’s Las Vegas Outlaws seemed to be the proverbial nail in the coffin for pro football in Las Vegas. Like the millions of tourists who visit our city, seven unlucky franchises had come to Sin City over the years with the hopes of hitting the jackpot, only to leave broken with empty pockets, leaving nothing behind but a vague memory of mediocrity in their aftermath.
But then on March 27, 2017, something happened that hopefully will forever change the luck of pro football in Las Vegas. With a vote of 31 to 1, the owners of the National Football League officially approved the relocation of the Raiders from Oakland to Las Vegas and for the first time gave the city a team with a rich history (founded in 1960 as a charter member of the American Football League which merged with the NFL in 1970), backed by one of the most powerful ownerships in one of the most powerful leagues in professional sports.
For the fans of pro football who call Las Vegas home, they’ll be doubling down on the Raiders and betting that the NFL team that plays in Vegas, stays in Vegas.