San Antonio Texans

The San Antonio Texans were a Canadian football team that played in the Alamodome for the 1995 CFL season. They had relocated from Sacramento, California, where the team had been called the Sacramento Gold Miners. The team still had the same ownership in Fred Anderson and the same staff like GM Dan Bass and Head Coach Kay Stephenson.

Ironically, in the 1993 season there were supposed to be two U.S. teams in the CFL with Sacramento and San Antonio; however, the original San Antonio franchise would fold when their owner, Larry Benson, ran out of money and was forced to withdraw before playing a down.

Franchise history

On the field

In their third season in the CFL and their first as the Texans, the team had the second-highest scoring offence in the league, which was led by veteran quarterback David Archer. The franchise finished the 1995 CFL season with a 12-6 record, finishing in second place of the South Division, which sent them to their first playoff berth. In the playoffs, the San Antonio Texans soundly defeated the Birmingham Barracudas, 52-9, in the Southern Semi-Final at the Alamodome. However, their playoff run and the franchise's last season would end after falling to the eventual champion Baltimore Stallions in the Southern Final by a score of 21-11.

San Antonio's two backup quarterbacks had connections to the Buffalo Bills. The first was 45-year-old former Bills quarterback Joe Ferguson, who had retired five years earlier. The second was Jimmy Kemp, son of Bills quarterback (and politician) Jack Kemp. Head coach Kay Stephenson was Jack Kemp's backup on the Bills squad in 1968 and served as head coach of the Bills in 1985; both stints were widely unsuccessful.

Off the field

The San Antonio Texans had respectable attendance with the average being 15,855. In one of their games at the Alamodome, attendance reached 22,043, in a 38-32 loss to the Stampeders.

However, at the end of the '95 season, the CFL decided to fold the Birmingham Barracudas, the Memphis Mad Dogs and the Shreveport Pirates. In addition, when it was announced that Art Modell would move the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, Stallions owner Jim Speros knew his franchise would not survive the NFL and moved the team to Montreal.

The end

With all this going on, it looked like Fred Anderson's franchise would be the only U.S.-based team in the CFL, again. However, Anderson did not want to go that path and decided to fold the San Antonio Texans after the '95 season, which ended the CFL's attempt to expand to the United States.

Malcolm Frank was the only remaining player from the team playing in the Canadian Football League with the Edmonton Eskimos in 2006. He retired after that season.

Players and builders of note

* Mike Kiselak
* Kay Stephenson
* David Archer
* Joe Ferguson
* Jimmy Kemp
* Malcolm Frank
* Guy Morriss (Former head coach at Baylor University)
* Mike Riley (Named head coach of initial CFL team in 1993 before the team folded.)

ee also

* Comparison of Canadian and American football
* 1995 CFL season
* Sacramento Gold Miners

External links

* [http://www.geocities.com/DGarcia879/SanAntonioTexansFOREVER CFL Texans Shrine]
* [http://www.oursportscentral.com/cflinamerica/sananton.htm San Antonio Texans History]