Football season is nearly upon us, and 40 years ago, the World Football League was launched with 12 franchises, including one right here in Honolulu. The team was dubbed The Hawaiians.
Gary L. Davidson, who founded the American Basketball Association and World Hockey Association, was ready to challenge the NFL with his new upstart league. This month we look back on the 1974 Hawaiians.
Hawaii sports fans in 1974 had a lot to choose from. We had a professional baseball team, the Hawaii Islanders (the San Diego Padres’ Triple-A minor league team); a professional tennis team, the Hawaii Leis; a University of Hawaii basketball team coming off recent NCAA and NIT appearances; and a new UH football coach in Larry Price.
Aloha Stadium was being constructed at the time so there was excitement and anticipation for the future. In came the WFL Hawaiians franchise owned by Chris Hemmeter and Sam Battistone Jr.
Hemmeter, who developed Kings Village, the Hyatt Regency and eventually the Hilton Waikoloa Village, owned 50 percent of the team. Battistone owned 44 percent of the team as well as the NBA’s New Orleans Jazz franchise, and was CEO of the Sambo’s Restaurant chain. The remaining percentage of ownership was in team management, including Hawaiians head coach Mike Giddings.
Giddings was a former head coach at the University of Utah and longtime assistant at the University of Southern California and the San Francisco 49ers.
The general manager of the team was Danny Rogers. It was Rogers who actually secured the Hawaiians’ entry into the WFL when he purchased the rights for $50,000 from Winnipeg Jets owner Ben Hatskin.
On March 14, 1974, a "name the team" contest winner was announced. "We picked the Hawaiians because it’s an easy name to identify with and on a national basis describes our team," Rogers said in a 1974 Honolulu Advertiser article.
Tryouts drews 109 prospective players to the Hawaiians training camp starting June 1, 1974, at the University of California, Riverside. Seven former UH players and four other players who attended high schools in the islands also tried out for the team.
The first starting quarterback for the Hawaiians was Norris Weese, who came from the University of Mississippi. Another quarterback, Jim Fassel, also served as an assistant coach and later became the head coach of the NFL’s New York Giants.
The very first game the Hawaiians participated in was July 10, 1974, against the Florida Blazers in Orlando. The Blazers won a low-scoring affair, 8-7.
KITV HAD a contract to air Hawaiians home and road games as well as a weekly show hosted by Giddings. The games were announced by Jim Leahey, but only five games were televised before KITV dissolved its contract with the Hawaiians on Aug. 14, 1974. K59 radio (KGMB) picked up the rest of the games with Mel Proctor doing the play-by-play.
A rare fog and constant rain kept most of the fans away from the old Honolulu Stadium for the first game. A crowd of more than 10,000 was announced, but less than half that number likely were in actual attendance. The Hawaiians won their very first game, a 36-16 win over Detroit, with Weese throwing two touchdowns.
Starting the season at 1-2 for its first year, the team’s prospects seemed bright, but they came crashing down the next month as the Hawaiians lost their next five contests. The team was 1-7 and was outscored 99-8 in two of those games.
The youngest team in the WFL needed some changes and it came in NFL players being released during their training camps and the start of season. Quarterbacks Edd Hargett and Randy Johnson along with several veteran running backs were signed to help the offense. Wide receiver Tim Delaney would record the most WFL receptions during the regular season.
Suddenly the Hawaiians went from a young franchise to a more experienced team and it began to pay off at the right time.
The Hawaiians went 8-4 to finish the season at a respectable 9-11, which was good enough to make the WFL playoffs. The team would defeat the Southern California Sun in Anaheim with a 32-14 win.
The Hawaiians 1974 season ended with a 22-19 playoff road loss to the Birmingham Americans. The WFL World Bowl was played Dec. 5, 1974, with Birmingham winning 22-21 over the Florida Blazers.
The Americans would be the only champions ever crowned in the WFL.
In my column next month, I’ll cover the 1975 Hawaiians season, which, along with the rest of the league, was never completed.
A.J. McWhorter, a collector of film and videotape cataloging Hawaii’s TV history, has worked as a producer, writer and researcher for both local and national media. Email him at flashback@hawaii.rr.com.
