Memphis Southmen

The memory of a three men from an NFL dynasty team walking into a rival league's training camp set the world  of football on fire in 1975. Join us in this look back at the WFL's Memphis Southmen.

June 27 is the anniversary of a pretty big moment in football history, it is the day that a dynasty was broken. It wasn’t quite on par with the breakup of the Beatles but in the gridiron realm, it was pretty big. The World Football Leagues’ Memphis Southmen held a press conference with former Miami Dolphins stars: Paul Warfield, Larry Csonka, and Jim Kiick showing up in the Memphis training camp for team physicals at the WFL team's local workouts in Senatobia, Mississippi as the announcement was being made to the public. This move was the watershed moment that made the break up of the Dolphins official. 
Remember this happened in 1975. There was no 24-hour news or sports channels or even cable TV in every household. No social media platforms as the internet itself were about a decade or two from even being created and distributed.
This occurred only a handful of years after the NFL survived by staving off another threat of a rival league by merging with the AFL. Things were really chugging along quite well for the shield as the Super Bowl was gaining in popularity, TV contracts were becoming quite lucrative and they had some marquee teams. At the top of that list was the Miami Dolphins, who had not only won back-to-back Lombardi Trophies recently but had appeared in three straight Super Bowls. They darn near made that 4 in a row in 1974 after an 11-3 record but the Oakland Raiders defeated the Phins in a heartbreaking 28-26 AFC Divisional Playoff.
Back to the WFL and the Southmen.If you recall a short while ago we had historian and author of multiple WFL books, Mark Speck on the program giving a quick bio on each WFL squad. He told us the story of the WFL Memphis franchise and how originally they were supposed to be housed out of Toronto per the wishes of team owner John F. Bassett. Bassett’s dream of having the operational HQ of the Canadian city was thwarted though when the CFL lobbied then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to help squelch the competition. Trudeau soon thereafter announced that no U.S.-based professional football league would be allowed in Canada in competition with the Canadian Football League under the Canadian Football Act.
Bassett swiftly secured a field in Tennessee and moved his franchise to Memphis. The original team name was supposed to be the Toronto Northmen and their already designed logo was that of a grizzly bear. Not wanting to toss that design cost out the window, Bassett and company capitulated and changed their moniker to the Southmen but kept the striking grizzly logo. Due to this the team and some dislike of the Southman name by many who resided in Memphis,  the team has gone in the annals as sometimes being referred to as the Grizzlies as well as the Southmen.
The WFL if you remember had put a full season under their belts in 1974. In that inaugural season, they finished with the league's best record at 17–3. However, in the semi-final playoffs, they fell to the Orlando-based Florida Blazers, 18–15. Memphis must have been feeling pretty good about their franchise as that is when they put out the lucrative offers to Warfield, Kiick, and Csonka just before the 1975 season would start.
The signing was a real shot across the bough of the NFL. All appearances were that the WFL had some momentum to rival the elder league, especially the way Bassett was able to toss some big money to lure three stars of one of the NFL’s top teams away. The trio of former Dolphins press conference in March of 1974 announced what was then the richest three-player deal in sports was national news and shocked the sports world. According to Wikipedia, they signed three-year guaranteed contracts beginning in 1975 with a total value, including perks, of $3.5 million. Csonka's salary was $1.4 million, Warfield's $900,000, Kiick's $700,000. Each player would also receive a luxury car every year and a three-bedroom luxury apartment

That is what it looked like on the surface, but behind the scenes, the WFL was in shambles. Mark Speck pointed out things such as the false paid attendance numbers as the fledgling football organization was handing out free tickets like popcorn to fill stadiums, and failure to get one of the big three television networks to cut a deal to air their games. Bassett though was doing his part to give the WFL some substantial footing by tossing his own money at the problem, but even his big trio of signings could save the league, which folded during the middle of its second season. The 1975 Grizzlies finished 7–4; in their last WFL game, they were shut out by the Birmingham Vulcans, 21–0. Kiick led the team with 10 touchdowns, as well as points scored at 75. Kiick finished second on the team in rushing, with 121 carries for 462 yards and nine touchdowns, and tied for second with Warfield in receiving, with 25 catches for 259 yards and one touchdown. 

After the WFL folded Kiick returned to the NFL as a backup runner on the Denver Broncos and later with the Washington Redskins. Warfield made his reentry to the league with the Cleveland Browns where he played for a couple of years before retiring. As for Csonka he eventually made his way back to the Dolphins but had a 3-year stint with the New York Giants before doing so. None of them enjoyed the success that they did earlier in their careers with Miami.

As for the Dolphins, well they suffered too from the departures. The team did go 10-4 in 1975 but that wasn’t quite good enough. They ended up tied for the division title at 10–4 with the Baltimore Colts. However, the Colts won the tiebreaker in 1975 with a sweep of both head-to-head meetings. There was only one wild card slot in those days in each Conference and that was claimed by Cincinnati with their better 11–3 record, so for the first time since 1969, the Dolphins missed the playoffs. The following season in 1976, Miami went 6-8.
The Memphis Grizzlies would rise again, well sort of when the NBA franchise from Vancouver relocated to the Tennessee town and what so far has been the only time in history where a Canadian pro sports team has had a relocation to US soil and kept the same nickname.

28 Jun 1975, Sat El Paso Times (El Paso, Texas) Newspapers.com

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites of Wikipedia, Newspapers.com and the Pro-Football-Reference.com as well as Mark Speck and his fantastic works of research including his awesome books on the WFL.