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342: "Boston Ball" - With Clayton Trutor

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Release Date: 03/25/2024

347.5: The North American Soccer League - With Paul Gardner show art 347.5: The North American Soccer League - With Paul Gardner

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We celebrate the 94th birthday of legendary Soccer America columnist Paul Gardner (; ) with this special archive re-release (and our 6th-ever episode!) from 2017. The universally acknowledged "dean" of American soccer writers waxes nostalgic on his unlikely journey from fledgling British pharmacist to the States' most persistently influential commentator on the "beautiful game."  Gardner: Recounts the chaotic formation of the modern professional game in the U.S. during the 1960s; Recalls how ambitious sports entrepreneurs like the International Soccer League’s Bill Cox, and greedy...

info_outline 347: Powering Forward - With Dean Tolson show art 347: Powering Forward - With Dean Tolson

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During the late 1960s, Dean Tolson ("") emerged as a standout prep basketball talent during his junior and senior years at Central High School in Kansas City, Missouri. His prowess on the court attracted the attention of a bevy of college recruiters, leading him to accept a full scholarship offer from the nearby University of Arkansas. Despite literally not knowing how to read or write, Tolson defied significant odds, and became one of the most renowned players in Razorbacks history. In 1974, Tolson was drafted by both the NBA's Seattle Supersonics and the ABA's New York Nets -...

info_outline 346: Roller Derby's Los Angeles Thunderbirds - With Scott Stephens show art 346: Roller Derby's Los Angeles Thunderbirds - With Scott Stephens

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It's our first journey into the chaotically exciting history of "professional" roller derby with former skater and long-time keeper-of-the-flame Scott Stephens ("). From the moment he laced up his first pair of roller skates at age six in mid-1960s Los Angeles, roller derby became more than just a sport to Stephens – it became his passion. In the midst of the craze sweeping through the city, Stephens found himself captivated by the electrifying energy of the Los Angeles Thunderbirds, whose thrilling matches were locally (and nationally) televised, and whose star performers rivaled the fame...

info_outline 345: From Vancouver to Memphis - With Łukasz Muniowski show art 345: From Vancouver to Memphis - With Łukasz Muniowski

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It's a special mea culpa episode this week, as we welcome back Szczecin University (Poland) history professor and Łukasz Muniowski () for a deep dive into the drama of the NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies move to Memphis in 2001 - and an assessment of the winners and losers some 23+ years since.   While Muniowski's current title on the topic () has been out since October, your humble host not only lost track of the book's publishing date, but also the entire audio file of our conversation (originally recorded back in August 2023) - until a recent cloud backup surfaced a redundant...

info_outline 344.5: The NFL’s 1943 “Steagles” - With Matt Algeo [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE] show art 344.5: The NFL’s 1943 “Steagles” - With Matt Algeo [ARCHIVE RE-RELEASE]

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[A dip into the archives for a one of our first-ever episodes from 2017 - by request!] Author Matt Algeo () joins Tim Hanlon all the way from Maputo, Mozambique to discuss the marriage of convenience that literally saved the National Football League from collapse in 1943. Algeo describes how a desperate Art Rooney scrambled to save his Pittsburgh Steelers franchise, depleted by wartime military call-ups; how a hastily assembled squad of ragtag draft rejects practiced football at night while maintaining defense jobs by day (including one player who worked on the eventual war-ending Manhattan...

info_outline 344: The Evolution of Sports Media - With David Bockino show art 344: The Evolution of Sports Media - With David Bockino

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Former ESPN ad researcher, and current Elon University professor of communications and sport management David Bockino () helps us trace the evolution of the sports media industry - with historical points of interest both obvious (e.g., the 1958 NFL Championship Game; "Sports Illustrated" magazine; ABC's "Monday Night Football;" the 1979 launch of cable's ESPN); and subtle (1967's live multinational "Our World" TV broadcast; World Series Cricket; 1981's short-lived Enterprise Radio Network; AudioNet/Broadcast.com; and virtual graphics pioneer SportVision). + + +   SUPPORT THE...

info_outline 343: Baseball History Landmarks - With Chris Epting show art 343: Baseball History Landmarks - With Chris Epting

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We reach back into the vaunted Good Seats library stacks this week for a deep dive into one of Tim's favorite sports reference books - - with its (prodigious non-fiction) author .   Now in its third edition, Roadside is everything you'd imagine from the title: a detailed, geographic cataloging of over 500 important events in North American baseball history, including historical data, trivia, photographs, and lore - highlighting birthplaces of baseball legends, ballparks, museums and halls of fame, final resting places, and dozens of former locations no longer standing.   Join...

info_outline 342.5 [PROMO DROP] 342.5 [PROMO DROP] "Ways To Win"

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Sharing something special, an episode of the new podcast "Ways to Win" - where coaches Craig Robinson and John Calipari use their on-court wisdom to solve off-court problems. In this first episode (recorded before the start of the NCAA basketball tournament!), there's no better way to kick off March Madness than with President Barack Obama (and Craig’s favorite brother-in-law), who drops by to break down his bracket. Find out who’s in his Final Four and how far he thinks Coach Cal’s Wildcats will go (even if Cal doesn't want to know). Plus, the guys chat about how Cal's preparing his...

info_outline 342: 342: "Boston Ball" - With Clayton Trutor

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We bust some brackets this week in honor of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, with a look back at the old East Coast Athletic Conference and the coaching cradle of city of Boston - with return () guest Clayton Trutor ("").   Before the formation of the original Big East Conference in 1979, much of DI college basketball in the US Northeast and Mid-Atlantic was part of a loose patchwork of small conferences and independents that collectively fed into the not-really-a-conference ECAC umbrella for post-season playoffs, helping winnow at-large bids for a still-small NCAA...

info_outline 341: 341: "Pro" Wrestling's Origin Story - With Jon Langmead

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We squint hard this week for a look into the story of American "professional" wrestling's formative years - with pop culture writer Jon Langmead ().   Langmead takes us inside the raucous period roughly between the mid-1870s to the early-1940s - where genuine competitive wrestlers and opportunistic amusement-minded promoters (both heavily influenced by the country's booming carnival circuit) together codified the now modern-day conventions that transformed a legitimate, physically demanding sport into melodramatic mass entertainment.    Central to Langmead's narrative is...

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We bust some brackets this week in honor of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, with a look back at the old East Coast Athletic Conference and the coaching cradle of city of Boston - with return (Episode 237) guest Clayton Trutor ("Boston Ball: Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams, and the Forgotten Cradle of Basketball Coaches").
 
Before the formation of the original Big East Conference in 1979, much of DI college basketball in the US Northeast and Mid-Atlantic was part of a loose patchwork of small conferences and independents that collectively fed into the not-really-a-conference ECAC umbrella for post-season playoffs, helping winnow at-large bids for a still-small NCAA tournament. 
 
Trutor helps set the stage through the early-career Boston exploits of three eventual Hall of Fame coaches:
 
"Before Pitino became the face of the Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville programs, before Calhoun turned UConn into a national power, and before Williams brought Maryland to its first national championship, all three of these coaches cut their teeth in front of modest-sized crowds in the crumbling college gymnasiums of Boston during the 1970s and early 1980s.

"'Boston Ball' charts how this trio of coaches, seemingly out of nowhere, started a basketball revolution: Pitino at Boston University, Calhoun at Northeastern University, and Williams at Boston College. Toiling in relative obscurity, they ignited a renaissance of the “city game,” a style of play built on fast-breaking up-tempo offense, pressure defense, and board crashing.  Pitino, Calhoun, and Williams took advantage of the ample coaching opportunities in 'America’s College Town' to craft their respective blueprints for building a winning program and turn their schools into regional powers, and these early coaching years served as their respective springboards to big-time college basketball."
 
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