Former Auburn standouts Larry Willingham (28) and Thom Gossom (9) played for the WFL's Birmingham Vulcans in the mid-1970s. (AL.com file photo)
EDITOR'S NOTE: The new Alliance of American Football announced last week that one of its eight franchises will play in Birmingham in 2019. The AAF's Alabama entry won't be the first professional football team to call Legion Field home. This story focuses on the Birmingham's only professional football championship team, the Americans and Vulcans of the World Football League.
Larry Willingham was an All-America safety at Auburn and played two seasons in the NFL, but said his most enjoyable time in football was the year-and-a-half he spent as a member of Birmingham's two World Football League teams in the mid-1970s.
Willingham, now 69, had been forced to retire from football in 1972 due to concussions after two seasons with the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals. But he recovered enough to be medically cleared by the time the Birmingham Americans of the World Football League -- which played its season from July-November and was set up as a direct competitor to the NFL -- was formed in 1974.
"I lived in Birmingham and had a job as an auditor for a trucking firm. I wasn't an auditor," Willingham said. "It was one of those things, where you found out there was going to be a team in town. There was already a league set up, and they were looking for players. I went down and talked to (Americans head coach and general manager) Jack Gotta. I had seen in the paper that he was heading up the thing from a management standpoint and coaching standpoint. I called him up and said 'y'all pay me to get examined again. If I come up like I did the last time, there's nothing there to be seen and I'll play again.' They were looking for Alabama and Auburn guys."
The Americans played their first game on July 11, 1974, beating the Southern California Sun in front of more than 53,000 fans at Legion Field. They got off to a 10-0 start before finally losing to the Memphis Southmen in early September.
In addition to Willingham, the Americans also included former Alabama stars Johnny Musso and Dennis Homan, as well as NFL veterans such as running back Charles Harraway and quarterback George Mira. Willingham said the WFL was especially attractive because the level of pay was far greater than that in the NFL, where free agency was still nearly two decades away.
"I was a fourth-round draft choice with the Cardinals," Willingham said. "I think my signing bonus was $7,400, and my first-year salary was $16,400. The next year was when (president Richard) Nixon froze all the wages, so you had to get around it somehow with bonuses to increase your yearly pay. I think I signed with the WFL for $28,000 the first year. That was $10,000-plus more than I made in the NFL."
The Americans finished the regular season 15-5 qualifying for the WFL playoffs as a wild card. They won their first playoff game 22-19 against The Hawaiians -- who were led by former Dallas Cowboys running back Calvin Hill -- setting up the World Bowl matchup against the Florida Blazers at Legion Field.
It was by that time that the financial cracks in the WFL had started to show. The World Bowl almost didn't get played, Willingham said.
"I was one of the player reps and we had basically voted not to play the game, because we hadn't been paid in five weeks," Willingham said. "The team had run out of money. We played five games without any paychecks. Gotta tried to convince us, if we didn't (play), we would question ourselves for the rest of our lives, which we probably would have. They worked up a deal where we got paid a percentage of the gate for all the playoff games and the World Bowl. So we voted back against ourselves and we played the game. I'm glad we did. We'd worked too hard not to play."
Birmingham won the World Bowl 22-21 behind Mira's MVP performance, but even then didn't get much time to celebrate. Alabama attorney general Bill Baxley had sued the team for back sales taxes, and a local sporting goods store confiscated the team's equipment immediately after the World Bowl because it had not been paid for. ("They had the sheriff's department and all that at the gate," Willingham remembered).
Incredibly, the World Football League would return for a second season in 1975, though with different ownership groups and different team names. The Birmingham team changed its name to the Vulcans, keeping many of the same players from the previous year, though Gotta relinquished head-coaching duties to former South Carolina head coach Marvin Bass.
The WFL owners had spent money even more wildly in Year 2 than they did in Year 1, with the Memphis team in particular going all-out and signing Miami Dolphins All-Pros Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and Paul Warfield. Birmingham tried to keep up by agreeing to a contract with former Alabama quarterback Ken Stabler for the 1976 season, after Stabler's contract was set to expire with the NFL's Oakland Raiders.
The Vulcans were again one of the better teams in the league, though by that time attendance had dipped below 25,000 for many of their home games. With rumors that the league was on the verge of folding, Birmingham beat Memphis 31-0 at Legion Field on Oct. 19, 1975, moving their record to 9-3.
"We came into practice the day after the game, to look at the film and all that," Willingham said. "They told us there was going to be an announcement that afternoon. ... That afternoon late, we heard on the radio that the league folded. It was like 'well, now I'm unemployed.'"
Willingham said there were initially rumors that the NFL would fold in at least two WFL franchises -- probably Birmingham and Memphis -- as expansion teams, but it never came to fruition due to bad blood over the previous year's player salary wars. Instead, the NFL expanded in 1977 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Seattle Seahawks.
Left with no immediate prospects, Willingham went to see friends at Auburn hoping he could remain involved in football in some capacity. It was at that point he heard back from the Cardinals, who were interested in his potentially playing in the NFL again.
Willingham said he traveled to St. Louis and met with team executives, and even spent time studying the Cardinals' playbook. But team doctors refused to clear him and he was permanently retired from football.
Willingham initially went into the real estate business, and later worked in industrial sales in Birmingham. He moved to Gulf Shores in 2003 and returned to real estate sales.
To this day, however, he maintains that the level of play in the WFL was as good as its NFL counterpart.
"I went back up (to the Cardinals) and learned all their defenses," Willingham said. "(All-Pro offensive lineman) Dan Dierdorf told me 'oh, you're up here playing with the big boys again.' I said Dan 'our team could have beat this one.' And I was serious about it.
"The World Football League, that was probably the most fun I ever had playing football. We had a good time. We had fantastic fans. It's something you never forget."