The W.F.L. Blowout

Five months ago, Ted Wheeler quit as a lineman for the B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League, sold his home and furniture business in Vancouver, and returned to the U.S. to join the Detroit Wheels of the new World Football League. "Wheeler of the Wheels," club officials beamed. "With a name like that you're just what we need." The admiration was mutual. Wheeler, 29, thought that the Wheels offered the chance he wanted to end his career playing in his home town. It did not work out that way. Midway through the season the Wheels went bankrupt, and until he was picked up by the Chicago Fire last week, Wheeler had no career at all.

The case of Wheeler of the Wheels is not unique in the W.F.L. With the exception of thriving franchises in Birmingham and Memphis and solvent operations in Hawaii and Chicago, the fledgling league is reeling. Jacksonville, like Detroit, has gone out of business. The New York franchise has moved to Charlotte, N.C., leaving the league without a team in the nation's biggest TV market. The Houston Texans have shifted to Shreveport, La. Attendance at some games is dismal: 750 recently turned out at Philadelphia's 100,000-seat J.F.K. Stadium on a rainy night to see the Bell play, and fan support league-wide has fallen sharply below expectations. Reports of overdue paychecks are rampant; members of the Florida Blazers have gone six weeks without salary.

League owners met in Los Angeles last week, and in an effort to stabilize the W.F.L., they announced that a new team would be formed in New York in time for the 1976 season and the reopening of Yankee Stadium. They also held a special draft for Wheel players--16 members of the 37-man squad were picked up--and promised to honor all other contracts signed by now defunct teams. "We feel while we have had our problems, we have not ignored them," says League Founder and Commissioner Gary Davidson. "I feel very positively we have turned the corner."

Despite Davidson's optimism, an embarrassing question remains: What happened to a league that kicked off four months ago with solid attendance figures, some exciting play, and promised to cause a mass defection of N.F.L. superstars next year? The answer: bungling management and stiff competition from the N.F.L. once it started regular-season play in September.

Ambitious Plans. The demise of the Wheels is a case in point. Last spring Detroit seemed to be the perfect site for a new pro team. The N.F.L. Lions are abandoning downtown Tiger Stadium next fall for new quarters in Pontiac, 25 miles from Detroit, and fans were already saying, "Let the Pontiac Pussycats go." The Wheels rolled into town with ambitious plans; they drafted such top college stars as Tennessee State Defensive End Ed ("Too Tall") Jones (the N.F.L.'s first draft choice) and set out to hire John Merritt away from Tennessee State as head coach.

Then the Dallas Cowboys outbid Detroit for Jones, and Merritt could not come to terms with the team's owners, an unwieldy ensemble of 32 citizens, including Motown Singing Star Marvin Gaye. Instead of Merritt, the Wheels hired Dan Boisture, coach at Eastern Michigan University. The Wheels also brought in a defensive coordinator, David Brazil, who, one Wheel player reported, had coached his high school team to a 0-7 record. Worse still, the team could not use Tiger Stadium because the Lions held exclusive football rights there; the Wheels had to play in Ypsilanti, 35 miles from downtown. Finally, the public stock offering owners had counted on to raise capital fell through when the Wheels were declared too risky a venture to go public.

It was not long before the financial problems seeped into the locker room. The team had to prepare for games without scouting reports or films, laundries refused to deliver uniforms until bills were paid, and even towels disappeared from the clubhouse. "It was pretty bush," recalls Kicker Chuck Collins. "I once had to use two T shirts to dry off after practice."

Unsalvageable Situation. When the son of Receiver Jon Henderson was treated in a hospital, Henderson was told that the Wheels' hospital insurance was worthless and was billed $500. When paychecks stopped coming, the families of players doubled and tripled up in houses to save rent.

Three weeks ago the team's situation became unsalvageable. With a 1-13 record, paid attendance averaging 7,500, compared with 50,000 paying to see the Lions, and a stack of unpaid bills, the franchise went bust. Not surprisingly, the players were furious. "I'd like to hang the owners by their thumbs," says Collins. "They're just 32 jerks who thought they'd be millionaires overnight. They only told us one truthful thing out of 50,000 lies. That was the fact that we were going bankrupt."

Today Collins, who was bypassed in the draft of Wheel players, spends his days doing chores around his future in-laws' house in Ann Arbor. Soon he will take a job with Vic Tanny. And Ted Wheeler? As he heads to Chicago, he is just glad that his football activities will no longer be confined to watching the B.C. Lions on TV. They are fighting for first place in the Western Conference of the Canadian league.

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