The Chicago Fire was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

team in the short-lived

World Football League The World Football League (WFL) was an American football league that played one full season in 1974 and most of its second in 1975. Although the league's proclaimed ambition was to bring American football onto a worldwide stage, the farthest the ...

for one season, 1974.

Formation

The team was founded in late October 1973, with building magnate Thomas Origer becoming the first owner to purchase a WFL franchise, for around $400,000. Chicago was also the first franchise to sign a player, former Notre Dame and

Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine ...

wide receiver Jim Seymour, and then added quarterback

Virgil Carter Virgil R. Carter (born November 9, 1945) is a former professional American football quarterback who played in the National Football League and the World Football League from 1967 through 1976. College career Carter was the first notable passing q ...

, who also had played for the NFL's Bears as well as the

Cincinnati Bengals The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional American football team based in Cincinnati. The Bengals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The club's home ...

and

San Diego Chargers The San Diego Chargers were a professional American football team that played in San Diego from 1961 until the end of the 2016 season, before relocating to Los Angeles, where the franchise had played its inaugural 1960 season. The team is now ...

. Another notable Fire player was punter Chuck Ramsey, who would later go on to play with the

New York Jets The New York Jets are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Jets compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The ...

Jim Spavital James J. Spavital (September 15, 1926 – March 7, 1993) was an American gridiron football player, coach and executive in six different professional football leagues. He served as the head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Foo ...

, one-time coach of the

Canadian Football League The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a c ...

Winnipeg Blue Bombers The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are a professional Canadian football team based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The Blue Bombers compete in the Canadian Football League (CFL) as a member club of the league's West division. They play their home games at IG Fie ...

, piloted the Fire. The radio announcer for the Fire was former Milwaukee Bucks play-by-play man Eddie Doucette, while ex-Chicago Bears lineman Mike Pyle served as the color commentator. Home games were played at Soldier Field in the Loop area.

1974 season

Fittingly, the Fire started out hot, winning their first four games and seven of their first nine. Chicago also drew decent-sized crowds to

Soldier Field Soldier Field is a multi-purpose stadium on the Near South Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Opened in 1924 and reconstructed in 2003, the stadium has served as the home of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL) since ...

, with an average attendance of 33,858 at their first five home contests. After Virgil Carter threw four touchdown passes in a 32-22 road win over

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban ...

, the Fire were 7-2 and competitive in the WFL's Central Division, which contained the loop's two strongest teams in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

(9-0) and Memphis (also 7-2). However, it turned out to be the last game the Fire would ever win, as a rash of injuries triggered a 10-game losing streak. Crowds also began to dwindle, as barely 20,000 showed up to watch the Fire's last home game, a 60-17 rout by the Hawaiians, the most points ever scored by one team in a WFL game. By late October, Fire owner Origer had had enough. Fed up by the team's collapse (as well as bankrupt), Origer said at an emergency meeting in Chicago on October 29 that his club would pull out of the WFL (with three games left in the schedule) if league commissioner Gary Davidson was not fired. Davidson quit, but two weeks later Origer still refused to fly the team to

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

for Chicago's final game, forfeiting the contest and giving the Fire a final record of 7-13. Soon after, the club disbanded.

Legacy

In 1975, the WFL tried again in the Windy City with the Chicago Winds, who attempted to sign legendary quarterback

Joe Namath Joseph William Namath (; ; born May 31, 1943) is a former American football quarterback who played in the American Football League (AFL) and National Football League (NFL) for 13 seasons, primarily with the New York Jets. He played college fo ...

. But Namath stayed in the NFL, and the Winds were disbanded after just five games (including one game at Soldier Field that drew a crowd of 3,470). The World Football League followed suit a few months later, passing into history. In 1981, another Chicago Fire club played in the minor-league American Football Association. Led by running back Billy Marek, the new Fire also played at Soldier Field, albeit in front of small crowds: the biggest attendance of the year was estimated at 8,500. Chicago did have a successful season on the field, winning the AFA's Western Division with a 8-4 record. In the playoffs, Chicago knocked off Jacksonville, 24-17, in front of 5,000 at Soldier Field, then played in the league championship game, a 29-21 road loss to the West Virginia Rockets on August 30, 1981. They even managed to get one of their games on local television:

WGN-TV WGN-TV (channel 9) is an Independent station (North America), independent television station in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is sister station, sister to the company's sole radio property, talk ra ...

, scrambling for summer sports programming during the baseball strike, broadcast a Fire game from Soldier Field on June 27, 1981. (Although ratings were higher than that of the

Chicago Sting The Chicago Sting (1974–1988) was an American professional soccer team representing Chicago. The Sting played in the North American Soccer League from 1975 to 1984 and in the Major Indoor Soccer League in the 1982–83 season and again from ...

soccer team on WGN, station officials declined to carry any more Fire games.) Financial losses, and the formation of the bigger-budget USFL in 1982, put the Fire out for good. Chicago's current professional soccer team, founded in 1997, also is named the

Fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition point, flames ...

Schedule and results

1974 regular season

References

* "Head coach WFL", ''Football Digest'', August 1974 issue

External links

Chicago Fire on FunWhileItLasted.net

1974 Chicago Fire stats & results at ultimate70s.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chicago Fire (American Football) Fire (football) Defunct American football teams Soldier Field American football teams established in 1973 American football teams in Illinois American football teams disestablished in 1975 1973 establishments in Illinois 1975 disestablishments in Illinois