Sacramento Gold Miners

The Sacramento Gold Miners were a Canadian football team based in Sacramento, California. The franchise was the first American team in the Canadian Football League. The Gold Miners were originally the "descendants" of the Sacramento Surge from the defunct World League of American Football. The team played its home games at Hornet Stadium.

1993 season
When the WLAF suspended operations in 1992, Surge owner Fred Anderson received a franchise in the CFL after that league expanded to the United States in 1993. The two teams could be seen as one and the same. The two entities had the same colors (aqua and yellow) and head coach (Kay Stephenson). Additionally, several players and administrators made the switch from the WLAF to the CFL. These players included starting quarterback David Archer, Rod Harris (WR), George Bethune (DT), Mike Oliphant (RB) and Mike Pringle (RB). One notable team administrator was Jack Youngblood, who was the Gold Miners' Director of Marketing in 1993 and 1994, which was a similar post he held with the Surge in 1991 and 1992. Rick Mueller, the team's wide receivers coach (after serving as a defensive assistant with the Surge) and later director of player personnel, later would become general manager of the Omaha Nighthawks in the United Football League.

When the 1993 CFL season started, the Gold Miners, with an all-US staff, took some time to learn the intricacies of Canadian football. But the team was fortunate enough to have leadership from Archer and got great plays from Harris. In their first season, the Sacramento Gold Miners entered the CFL history books by:


 * Becoming the first American team to play in the CFL.
 * Becoming the first American team to host a CFL game, against the Calgary Stampeders (losing 38–36) on July 17.
 * Becoming the first American team to record a win in the CFL, against the Saskatchewan Roughriders (winning 37–26) on July 24. (However, they were not the first American team to win against a CFL team-- see below.)

It is sometimes stated that the Gold Miners were the first American team to play against a Canadian team and to play on Canadian soil when they were the guests of the Ottawa Rough Riders (losing 32–23) on July 7. This is not true. In the 1950s and 1960s the National Football League and the CFL (and its predecessor, the IRFU) played a series of exhibition games, all in Canada, with the NFL team winning all of those matches. The American Football League also played one game in Canada against a CFL team in 1961, with CFL's Hamilton defeating AFL's Buffalo, 38–21. Prior to that, the Columbus Bullies of the American Football League (1940) played the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 1941 in a three-game series, which Columbus won, 2 games to 1.

The Sacramento Gold Miners also entered the CFL record books by recording the most wins by an expansion team with 6 wins (the record was eventually broken in 1994 by the Baltimore Stallions). The Gold Miners finished the season with a 6–12 record, which placed them in last place of the West Division. The positives for the franchise were the facts that they had a 5–4 home record and were ranked 5th in team defense. Harris was also selected as a member of the 1993 CFL All-Star Team, which showed signs that the team had a good mix of players and staff to improve on for the following season.

1994 season
In their second season, the Gold Miners were no longer the lone American team as the CFL introduced three new teams: The Las Vegas Posse, the Shreveport Pirates and the Baltimore Stallions (who were known as the CFLers when the NFL did not allow the Colts name to be used). The Gold Miners were once again a part of CFL history when they played against the Las Vegas Posse in Sacramento on July 8, 1994. The game was the first-ever game that involved two American-based teams in the CFL. Las Vegas won the game, 32–26.

The Gold Miners made a decided improvement from their 1993 inaugural season with a 9–8–1 record. They had a 5–3–1 home record and a 4–5 road mark. Sacramento was ranked fourth in team defense, behind Calgary, Edmonton and Baltimore — who were the top teams in the league. But the record was only good enough for fifth place in the tough West Division. The Miners would have finished fourth with a 10–7–1 record, if not for a poor call by the officials in the team's last game of the season in Edmonton, where an erroneous "incomplete" ruling negated an apparent game-winning touchdown. Replays showed that Archer's pass did not short-hop into Baysinger's hands. As it was, the Gold Miners finished one point behind the 10-8 Saskatchewan Roughriders for the last playoff spot in the West. As it turned out, this would be the last game the team would play in Sacramento.

Off the field
Despite a mediocre on-field record, the Gold Miners represented a serious attempt to form a viable professional football organization. Anderson and Baltimore Stallions owner Jim Speros were considered the only truly dedicated US CFL owners. Anderson's sidekick Tom Bass oversaw the operation, run by coach Kay Stephenson and GM Tom Huiskens. As with the team, it took Stephenson some time to adapt to the Canadian game, but he was eventually successful.

However, the Gold Miners were hobbled by substantial off-the-field problems that ultimately proved too much to overcome. Since the San Antonio club that was also supposed to be a part of the 1993 expansion had folded, the Gold Miners were the only American team in the CFL during the 1993 season. They had to market themselves, receiving no assistance from the CFL. Competition from the San Francisco 49ers hurt attendance. Another drag on attendance was Hornet Stadium, which was well below the standards expected for a professional football team. It only had threadbare amenities, and fans were forced to use port-a-potties. This was a completely untenable situation for a professional football team. Attendance did hover around 15,000 per game, but it was widely known that as many as 2,000 of those 15,000 were given free tickets. In 1993 the average home attendance was 16,979, but in 1994 the average home attendance fell to 14,226.

Unable to persuade Sacramento State to upgrade Hornet Stadium to something approaching professional standards, Anderson tried to get the city to build a new stadium for the Gold Miners and his minor-league baseball club. He planned to complete a project that had been started several years earlier to lure the Raiders to Sacramento, but had ended up being mothballed. Anderson, however, could not come to terms with the local governments.

Move to San Antonio
The team moved to San Antonio and became the Texans for the 1995 CFL season. Anderson decided to fold the team at the end of the season after Memphis, Shreveport and Birmingham all folded and the Stallions relocated to Montreal to become the new Alouettes. Anderson did not want to be the only remaining American CFL owner.

Radio and television
Gold Miners games were broadcast on KFBK radio and KRBK-TV with Tim Roye and Lee Grosscup on radio and Grant Napear and Jack Youngblood on television. Roye replaced Youngblood as TV analyst in 1994 and former San Francisco Giants announcer David Glass became the Miners' radio play-by-play announcer.

Retired

 * David Archer
 * Kerwin Bell
 * George Bethune
 * Tony Burse
 * David Diaz-Infante
 * Malcolm Frank
 * Rod Harris
 * Bobby Humphery
 * Mike Kiselak
 * Troy Mills
 * Mike Oliphant
 * Mike Pringle
 * James Pruitt
 * Kay Stephenson