1974 World Football League PDF
Digital version of our printed set. Full color team sheets for all twelve teams, over 300 players individually rated, presented in team colors and a new "retro" design. Also includes season summary, instant results grid, fringe player ratings and individual team profiles.
• This page is for the PDF version. Click here for the printed version.
Digital version of our printed set. Full color team sheets for all twelve teams, over 300 players individually rated, presented in team colors and a new "retro" design. Also includes season summary, instant results grid, fringe player ratings and individual team profiles.
• This page is for the PDF version. Click here for the printed version.
Digital version of our printed set. Full color team sheets for all twelve teams, over 300 players individually rated, presented in team colors and a new "retro" design. Also includes season summary, instant results grid, fringe player ratings and individual team profiles.
• This page is for the PDF version. Click here for the printed version.
Hard to believe, but true: it's the 50th anniversary of the late, great World Football League! Well, maybe it wasn't so great, but it certainly was a memorable league for anyone who was a football fan when it launched fifty summers ago.
The World Football League had the benefit of a running head start: the summer of 1974 arrived with the established league's players on strike, so the WFL had the pro football stage all to itself. Cool new uniforms and nicknames, familiar players, exciting new rules. It generated a huge splash, with cover stories in Sports Illustrated and pretty much every other major sports publucation. Early on, things felt amazing. Huge crowds at games, major pro stars like Daryl Lamonica, Ken Stabler, and the Miami trio of Larry Csonka, Paul Warfield and Jim Kiick signing futures contracts to join the league once their NFL contracts were up.
But by the middle of the season, teams were shifting cities, players were going without paychecks and, with the established league's strike resolved and mostly forgotten, fans were drifting away. Most of the World Football League's problems were of their own doing, with cash-poor ownership and a meager small-time TV deal.
Still, the '74 World Football League represents an interesting and noteworthy chapter in pro football history. The league did complete it's season (albeit with ten teams instead of the original twelve), and many of its rules innovations were adopted as pro football standards, such as...
• Goalposts moved 10 yards back to the rear of then end zone.
• Kickoffs from the 30-yard-line.
• Missed field goals returned to the line of scrimmage (except when within the 20-yard-line).
• Offensive holding penalties reduced to 10 yards instead of 15.
We've rated the league relative to the established pro league so that realistic inter-league play can happen on your game table. When WFL teams play against each other, it will be competitive and fun, albeit somewhat ragged. Played against teams from the "other" league, the WFL's top clubs will match up respectably against the established league's bottom tier.
NOTE that this is a re-working of our original '74 WFL team sheet set, which was released in 2001, discontinued a few years ago. We've taken advantage of improved statistical and biographical resources for this release, and have also added finder columns, team tendency ratings and team colors in a new "retro" design.