That 70's Show

Published 02/10/2026, Substack

One of the benefits of age is there are moments when one can pull rank. “You had to have been there,” is the mantra. It is sometimes abused in a smug condescending way; other times it is a way to acknowledge that while you may have gotten the facts right, your account might be missing a few bits of flavor and context. This was the case listening to the It Was What It Was episodes about the North American Soccer League.

The show (hosted by Jonathan Wilson and Rob Draper) is a favorite of mine. And in these episodes they do an excellent jobs recounting the ups and down of the NASL. And yes, while they do make mention of the state professional sport in the US during the 1970’s, Wilson in particular seems to view the league and its failures too tightly through the prism of an English football historian. Shambolic. Why didn’t they build the league bottom-up, why all the gimmicks, why the bucking of Fifa with regards to the laws of the game? From Draper and Wilson’s point of view it easy to it see as shambolic venture. But here is where not being there matters-as I was during those years.

The NASL can’t be viewed simply through the lens of soccer. It has to be taken in as a symptom of a fever that swept through US pro sports in the 1970’s. You can’t overstate the gold rush mentality of the era. The American Basketball Association, the World Hockey Association, the World Football League, World Team Tennis, World Championship Tennis, the International Volleyball Association, The International Track Association… It was the Pets.com era of professional sport. Everyone thought they knew the next “big thing” (even Howard Cosell). The NASL-and soccer in general-fit this model.

It’s too easy now in 2026 to look back at this in the sometimes cynical way Wilson does (Draper seems a bit more open seeing it more in the context of the times and pushes back on occasion). Americans in 1977 may have been dubious about the viability of the NASL, but we felt that way about all the other leagues as well. “All these Mickey Mouse leagues!” my best friend’s dad called them. The interesting counterfactual is not what Wilson might propose-a more bottom-up, slow build approach-but a 1970’s US sports landscape devoid of the quick-buck, speculation fever of the period. That is a key to why MLS has continued to grow: Lamar Hunt, Robert Kraft, and Phil Anschutz were very different to the bunch in NASL. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Phil Anschutz, through his company AEG, controlled up to six MLS teams simultaneously, serving as a critical investor-operator who kept the league financially viable. And we think Warner Communications carried a lot of water for the NASL?

I still highly recommend listening to not just the NASL episodes, but subscribing to the podcast. They did a wonderful series on the development of women’s soccer in the US. And the podcast did bring back memories. In particular, getting to see Pele’s last game in Los Angeles vs the Aztecs. Two distinct memories: Steve David of the Aztecs scored a hat trick; Pele as he walked off the field, with me and a bunch of other kids hanging over the rail above the tunnel…gave his shirt to the referee. Now that to a 14 year old was shambolic.