The National Women's Football League

In 1967, a Cleveland talent agent named Sid Friedman decided to capitalize on the popularity of football in the rust belt by launching a women’s football league, which he envisioned as entertainment, complete with mini-skirts and tear-away jerseys. The women he recruited had other ideas, and soon they were playing competitive tackle football, not in skirts but in football uniforms.

In 1974, the owners of several teams around the country, some from Friedman’s WPFL and some independent of it, formed to create their own league: the National Women’s Football League, the NWFL, which started with 7 teams and grew within a few years to 14 teams across three divisions. The league faced financial difficulties from the beginning and finally folded in 1989, but the desire of women to play professional football lives on.

I’m joined in this episode by Frankie de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D'Arcangelo, authors of Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Photo Credit: Brenda Cook, Brant Hopkins, and Baby Murf, Houston Herricanes. January 1979, Safety Valve, Published Monthly by Houston Natural Gas Corp., original photo provided by Brenda Cook, Houston Herricanes.

Additional Sources:

• “Revolution on the American Gridiron: Gender, Contested Space, and Women’s Football in the 1970s,” by Andrew D. Linden, The International Journal of the History of Sport (2015), 32:18, 2171-2189.
• “The Unusual Origins of the Dallas Bluebonnets, the Trailblazing Women’s Football Team: An excerpt from the new book Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League,” D Magazine, November 2, 2021.
• “Remembering Toledo’s Troopers: Film to tell story of ’70s female football team,” by Tom Henry, The Blade, June 16, 2013.
• “Almost Undefeated: The Forgotten Football Upset of 1976: How the Toledo Troopers, the most dominant female football team of all time, met their match,” by Frankie de la Cretaz, Longreads, February 19, 2019.
• “How sexism and homophobia sidelined the National Women's Football League,” by Victoria Whitley-Berry, NPR Morning Edition, November 3, 2021.
• “The Forgotten History of Women’s Football,” by Erica Westly, Smithsonian Magazine, February 5, 2016.

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