Sport: The W.F.L. Blowout

Five months ago, Ted Wheeler quit as a lineman for the B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League, sold his home and furniture business in Vancouver, and returned to the U.S. to join the Detroit Wheels of the new World Football League. "Wheeler of the Wheels," club officials beamed. "With a name like that you're just what we need." The admiration was mutual. Wheeler, 29, thought that the Wheels offered the chance he wanted to end his career playing in his home town. It did not work out that way. Midway through the season the Wheels went bankrupt, and until he was picked up by the Chicago Fire last week, Wheeler had no career at all.

The case of Wheeler of the Wheels is not unique in the W.F.L. With the exception of thriving franchises in Birmingham and Memphis and solvent operations in Hawaii and Chicago, the fledgling league is reeling. Jacksonville, like Detroit, has gone out of business. The New York franchise has moved to Charlotte, N.C., leaving the league without a team in the nation's biggest TV market. The Houston Texans have shifted to Shreveport, La. Attendance at some games is dismal: 750 recently turned out at Philadelphia's 100,000-seat J.F.K. Stadium on a rainy night to see the Bell play, and fan support league-wide has fallen sharply below expectations. Reports of overdue paychecks are rampant; members of the Florida Blazers have gone six weeks without salary.

League owners met in Los Angeles last week, and in an effort to stabilize the W.F.L., they announced that a new team would be formed in New York in time for the 1976 season and the reopening of Yankee Stadium. They also held a special draft for Wheel players—16 members of the 37-man squad were picked up—and promised to honor all other contracts signed by now defunct teams. "We feel while we have had our problems, we have not ignored them," says League Founder and Commissioner Gary Davidson. "I feel very positively we have turned the corner."

Despite Davidson's optimism, an embarrassing question remains: What happened to a league that kicked off four months ago with solid attendance figures, some exciting play, and promised to cause a mass defection of N.F.L. superstars next year? The answer: bungling management and stiff competition from the N.F.L. once it started regular-season play in September.

Ambitious Plans. The demise of the Wheels is a case in point. Last spring Detroit seemed to be the perfect site for a new pro team. The N.F.L. Lions are abandoning downtown Tiger Stadium next fall for new quarters in Pontiac, 25 miles from Detroit, and fans were already saying, "Let the Pontiac Pussycats go." The Wheels rolled into town with ambitious plans; they drafted such top college stars as Tennessee State Defensive End Ed ("Too Tall") Jones (the N.F.L.'s first draft choice) and set out to hire John Merritt away from Tennessee State as head coach.