Colorado Caribous

0

Full name

Caribous of Colorado

place

Denver , Colorado

Founded

1978

Dissolved

1978

Club colors

light brown, dark brown, black

Stadion

Mile High Stadium

Top league

North American Soccer League (NASL)

successes

no

home

Away

The Colorado Caribous (also called The Caribous of Colorado ) were an American football team from Denver , the capital and most populous city of the US state of Colorado , which participated in the game of the North American Soccer League (NASL) in the game year 1978 . After a financially and athletically unsuccessful year in the top North American football league, the franchise was relocated to Atlanta and continued under the name Atlanta Chiefs until 1981.

history

The story of the reindeer from Colorado, the German translation of the English team name, began at the end of 1977, when the future owner of the football team, the future governor Booth Gardner and the owner of the Caribou Ranch recording studio , Jim Guerico , paid a million US dollars . Dollars invested in the league's expansion rights and the establishment of the franchise. Before that, the unsuccessful Denver Dynamos had participated in two seasons of the North American Soccer League from 1974 to 1975. The game year 1978 was not very successful for the Caribous, after 30 championship games, in which eight wins were faced with 22 defeats (there were no draws at this time, as they were absolutely uncommon in other US sports, no such games were decided in so-called "Shoot-Out", similar to the penalty shootout in ice hockey), fourth and thus last place in the Central Division of the National Conference . This gave the team the worst seasonal record of all 24 teams this season and one of the lowest attendance figures in the entire league. For example, there was only once more than 10,000 spectators in the stadium at the Caribous games, with the Mile High Stadium , home of the Colorado Caribous, being able to hold a multiple number of spectators. An average of 7,418 viewers attended the Caribous games, which meant 18th place in the 24-team league this year.

The squad of the team from the Mile High City consisted largely of players of various nationalities, but also had many US players or players with dual citizenships, one of which was the US. The Colorado Caribous consisted of 22 squad players, as well as the coaching team Dave Clements , a Northern Irish international who had spent his previous career mainly in England and played in 15 Caribous league games before he was released in June 1978, and Dan Wood , who had just got his doctorate at Cornell University , whose men's soccer team he coached for a few years from the early 1970s, and had acted as his assistant coach before Clements left. The best-known players during this period included goalkeeper Arnie Mausser , defender Matt Bahr , who shortly thereafter began a 17-year long and successful career as an American football player in the National Football League (NFL), and Jomo Sono , the so-called black prince of South African football , as well as some other (later) American ( Greg Makowski , Louis Nanchoff , Fred Pereira and Steve Ralbovsky ), Canadian ( Brian Budd ) and Yugoslav ( Sead Sušić ) national players. In order to attract attention and attract visitors to the stadium, not only the idiosyncratic dress of the players and their appearances in the stadium contributed; Thus, among other things, advertisements were placed in the newspapers in whose cities the Caribous played in order to attract visitors to the stadium for away games. The jerseys and hats with the slogan The Caribous Are Coming! pictured.

The owners were known for throwing players out of the squad at random and also fired coach Dave Clements during the current season and hired his previous assistant coach Dan Wood as head coach. Before the debut season even ended, the two owners lost interest in their team and sold it to Atlanta , Georgia , in August 1978 , where it continued under the name from 1979 to 1981.

Dressen

Even today, especially among US football fans, the franchise is known primarily for its jerseys, which are often scorned and ridiculed. These were produced by the manufacturer Sand-Knit , which has been based in Chicago , Illinois , since 1921 , and had fringes on the lower chest and back, as well as on the sleeves , as they are known from the county and western areas. The players' names and their numbers on the back were sewn and not, as is common today, printed. The numbers on the back were available in different versions, including a part of the club logo, a reindeer with a football in the antlers, in the lower part of the number or completely without the club logo only with the number sewn on. However, the color of the numbers on the back also varied; so on the home jerseys they were once black with a light brown border, sometimes they were light brown with a black border on the same shirts. In addition, the player's number was also visible on both sleeves, which in turn only existed in a light brown version with a white border on the home jerseys. The entire logo of the franchise could be seen on the front of the shirt. On the right side was the name the Caribous of Colorado designed as a logo , on the left side again the second part of the logo, Ren with the football in the antlers, as well as the number of the player, which was thus contained in four copies on the jersey. There were also different variations of the Caribous away jerseys. While one version with the Caribou was on the player number, the other variant only had the player's number sewn on and the name the Caribous of Colorado designed as a logo only on the right chest area . Furthermore, the material of the numbers was different in both variants. Sometimes the numbers on the sleeves were missing and were only visible on the chest and back, as well as on the left side of the shorts.

According to the then partner Jim Guercio, the fringes were even longer at the beginning, but had to be shortened because opponents often pulled the caribous players to the ground by the fringes. However, the jerseys, the use of which required a special permit from the league, also served the Caribous players as a "weapon", whereby they could hit their opponents in the face with the long fringes, which was only possible after being shortened by around two inches (about five centimeters). no longer succeeded. The original design had fringes about ten inches long that came together at the back in a V-cut, similar to the shirts worn by Roy Rogers in the 1940s. The logo of the Caribous with the football in the antlers was created by the graphic artist Gary Nichamin , who already worked as a graphic designer for Caribou Records . But even at public appearances and appearing on the field, the players had to wear cowboy hats with their clothes , according to instructions from Guercio, who always wanted to attract attention . On April 1, 2014, the major league soccer franchise Colorado Rapids announced that they wanted to wear the jerseys that were believed to be lost and found in a future game, which shortly afterwards turned out to be an April Fool's joke . The jerseys have often been referred to as the worst and ugliest game wear in US sports; for example in 2009 from uni-watch.com .

Squad for the game year 1978

Back number	nationality	position	Surname	Games	Usage minutes	Gates	Assists	Scorer points
1	United States	goalkeeper	Arnie Mausser	28	2580	0	0	0
2	Ghana	Defender	George Lamptey	6th	277	0	0	0
2	England	Defender	Bernie Fagan	-	-	-	-	-
3	United States	Defender	Matt Bahr	24	2049	0	3	3
4th	United States	Defender	Greg Makowski	30th	2645	2	5	9
5	Yugoslavia Socialist Federal Republic	midfield player	Branko Radović	29	2512	0	1	1
6th	Northern Ireland	midfield player	Dave Clements	15th	1357	1	3	5
7th	England	striker	Brian Tinnion	24	2226	4th	2	10
8th	South Africa	striker	Jomo Sono	30th	2553	8th	5	21st
9	Yugoslavia Socialist Federal Republic	striker	Sead Sušić	15th	936	6th	2	14th
10	Yugoslavia Socialist Federal Republic United States	striker	Louis Nanchoff	23	1591	4th	3	11
11	Portugal United States	striker	Fred Pereira	12	660	2	2	6th
12	United States	striker	Bob Rohrbach	26th	2040	6th	2	14th
14th	Ireland United States	Defender	Tommy Lang	13	989	0	0	0
15th	Scotland	midfield player	Pat McMahon	25th	2120	0	1	1
16	Yugoslavia Socialist Federal Republic United States	midfield player	Steve Ralbovsky	23	1500	0	4th	4th
17th	United States	midfield player	Scott Strasburg	13	941	0	1	1
18th	South Africa	Defender	Phillip Jones	10	413	0	0	0
19th	Canada	striker	Brian Budd	2	?	0	0	0
20th	United States	midfield player	Carl Strong	8th	453	0	1	1
22nd	Germany United States	goalkeeper	Tad DeLorm	2	180	0	0	0
23	Northern Ireland	midfield player	Ronnie Blair	18th	1437	1	1	3