Arizona Wranglers Totally Explained

Everything about The Arizona Wranglers totally explained

The Arizona Wranglers were a professional American Football team in the United States Football League in the mid 1980s. They played at Sun Devil Stadium on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe, a suburb of Phoenix.

History

Founding

The Wranglers were originally supposed to be in Los Angeles. However, the franchise's original owner, Alex Spanos, pulled out and bought into the NFL's San Diego Chargers. Jim Joseph, a Bay Area real estate executive and part-owner of the Oakland Invaders, won a coin flip and became the new owner of the Los Angeles franchise. A few months later, however, Bill Daniels and Alan Harmon were forced to move to Los Angeles after their initial bid for a team in San Diego fell through. The league forced Joseph to give up his franchise rights to Daniels and Harmon; it felt that Daniels and Harmon's roots in the cable television industry would be better suited for the country's second-largest market. Joseph finally settled on a move to Phoenix, bringing professional football to the city for the first time.

1983 season

Joseph held fast to the USFL's original blueprint, aggressively marketing the team in Arizona while keeping tight controls on spending (including player salaries). The result was a team very short on talent. The Wranglers were quite competitive at first, posting a 4-4 record over their first eight games. However, the strains of playing football in the desert took their toll, and they lost their last 10 games, finishing in a tie for the worst record in the league. Joseph lost millions of dollars, and wanted to sell.

Transaction with the Chicago Blitz

In a stroke of luck, Chicago Blitz owner Dr. Ted Diethrich, a Phoenix resident (he founded the Arizona Heart Institute), wanted a chance to move closer to his business interests. He was also angered at the Blitz' miserable attendance despite fielding a team considered to be an NFL-quality unit.
As the result of a deal between the two men, Diethrich sold the Blitz to fellow surgeon James Hoffman, and then bought the Wranglers from Joseph. Hoffman and Diethrich then engineered a swap of assets in which virtually the entire Blitz organization--including most of the players and the entire coaching staff (led by head coach George Allen)--moved to Phoenix while the old Wranglers organization moved to Chicago. The deal transformed the Wranglers from a cellar-dweller to a powerhouse almost overnight, but raised questions about the USFL's credibility. While the USFL was active, the league considered the 1983 and 1984 Wranglers to be the same franchise, even though all the players were different.

1984 season

The 1984 Wranglers finished in a tie for first in the Western Division. In the playoffs, they upset the powerful Houston Gamblers, then defeated the Los Angeles Express for the conference title. The game should have been played in Los Angeles since the Express held a tiebreaker, but the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was being set up for the 1984 Summer Olympics, forcing the game's move to Tempe. The Wranglers' run ended in the championship game with a 23-3 defeat by the Philadelphia Stars. The Wranglers wore their white uniform shirts over copper pants during the entire 1984 season, as the team's red home jerseys were never produced.
The Wranglers, despite having the worse record of the two participating teams, got to host the 1984 Western Conference championship game because the Los Angeles Express couldn't use their home field, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, because of preparations for the 1984 Summer Olympics. To accommodate the oppressive summer heat in the state, as well as the ABC Sports television schedule, the game kicked off at 8:30 p.m. local time (11:30 p.m. Eastern time).

Merger with the Oklahoma Outlaws

Diethrich, however, was highly perturbed at the Wranglers' low attendance, and was bleeding in red ink. Despite fielding a more competitive team, the Wranglers' 1984 attendance figures were almost the same as those of 1983. Finally, he merged his team with the Oklahoma Outlaws, who moved to Arizona as the Arizona Outlaws.

Single season leaders

Rushing Yards: 1207 (1984), Tim Spencer Receiving Yards: 1258 (1984), Trumaine Johnson Passing Yards: 3534 (1984), Greg Landry

Season-by-season

|- |1983 || 4 || 14||0 || 4th Pacific ||- |- |1984 || 10 || 8 || 0 || 2nd WC Pacific || Won Divisional (Houston)
Won Conference (Los Angeles)
Lost USFL championship (Philadelphia) |- !Totals || 16 || 23 || 0 |colspan="2"| (including playoffs)

Head coaches

Doug Shivley (1983)
George Allen (1984)

Further Information

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