Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 163

mm "We had to have the secretaries call the players and tell them not to report to Belle Isle," Boisture said. "They would have rioted p3 wmit JlVif fA "A I 1 experience in running a football team. One owner even suggested the team train on Belle Isle and be housed in tents, a prospect that brought looks of horror and disbelief from the coaches. The Wheels opened the season in a carnival atmosphere in Memphis on July 10, with balloons and fireworks and over 30,000 fans celebrating the birth of a new professional football league. In those surroundings it seemed inconse-.

quential, even funny, that one of the club's secretaries had flown down from Detroit in the first class section of the same airplane that had its coach section jammed with Wheel owners. But when the Wheels' home opener drew just 10,631 to enlarged Rynearson Stadium, the following Wednesday, many of the owners began to panic. They had invested more than $300,000 in enlarging the stadium to 22,169 seats and intalling a lighting system. Now the season was underway and they found themselves virtually alone in the' stands. Still it was not evident to anyone outside their group just how serious the trouble was.

Indications of serious trouble cropped up rapidly after that, though. First the Edmonton Eskimos sued to keep the Wheels from using, linebacker Sam Britts because the Detroit team failed to come up with the $25,000 it had agreed to pay for his contract. Calgary sued to keep the Wheels from using halfback Jessie Mims, supposedly for the same reason, then Detroit sold halfback Warren McVea, whom they had suspended after he reported Vh weeks late to their 4-week camp, to Houston for $15, 000 just what they had invest in him (a $10, 000 bonus and $5,000 advance), but at least that added folding money to the bank account for a few days, and enabled them to pay for Mims' contract. The last hope of keeping the franchise a-float intact was through the public stock offering, which the group had planned from the beginning. That plan abruptly collapsed without explanation, but probably because of the generally poor financial condition of the club.

That brought the Wheels' problems to a head. The league had deferred the $230,000 entry fee from the original due date of July 10' to Sept. 1, but that was done with the understanding the public offering would generate new revenues for the team. With that prospect now gone, the league office began to get anxious for its money. Continued on Page 14 The 'People9 eont, about preparing the team for the season, laughing ofT questions about tack of money hurting recruiting.

"It's a matter of knowing how much a player is worth to you," Boisture said when he lost some of his top choices. "We weigh what they'll mean to us and if they don't want to play for that, that's too bad." Grandelius said almost the same thing when the Wheels lost out in their bid to pry Steve Owens, the fullback and highest-paid player on the Lions, away from the NFL. "We know what his value is to us and we're not going to get into a bidding war with anybody Grandelius offered, shrugging off the loss. the Wheels had also selected Lions Mike Wcger, Ed Flanagan and Mickey Zofko in the WFL's pro draft and never made a serious effort to land any of them even though it would have been a public relations coup of gigantic proportions. Greg Reed, representing three players including former Michigan State sprinter and wide receiver Herb Washington, broke off negotiations with the team, saying: "The Wheels are offering sandlot salaries." And they signed just one of their top 12 draft choices fifth round pick Peil Pennington, a quarterback from Masschusettes, who was compared to Greg Landry but who was quickly traded to Chicago.

They failed to get tight end Paul. Seal, running back Ed Shuttles-worth and wide receiver Clint Haslerig, all of Michigan, or defensive back Bill Simpson of Michigan State all drafted in the first seven rounds. And, though everyone denied it at the time, the only reason they did not get them was lack of funds. Offensive linemen Paul Costa and Joe O' Donnell, who had played side by side in Buffalo's offensive line for eight seasons were both drafted by the Wheels but refused to deal seriously with the Detroit club and were eventually traded to Birmingham in a deal that helped the Americans become the strongest team in the WFL. The men who had sunk their money into the club were businessmen, or sons of businessmen who had stepped right into a business.

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