The Chicago Owls were a professional

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

team based in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. They were members of the

Professional Football League of America The Professional Football League of America (PFLA) was an American football minor league that operated in the Midwest region of the United States from 1965 through 1967. With franchises based in the Midwest, the league played three seasons before ...

(PFLA) in 1967 and, after the leagues merged, the

Continental Football League The Continental Football League (COFL) was a professional American football minor league that operated in North America from 1965 through 1969. It was established following the collapse of the original United Football League, and hoped to beco ...

(COFL) during the league's last two years (1968–1969). The club was owned by Marty O'Connor and initially coached by

Don Branby Donald Jerome Branby (December 29, 1928 – March 8, 2010) was an American football player. Branby played college football at the end position for the Colorado Buffaloes football team. During the 1952 season, he recovered seven fumbles, had ni ...

1968 season

After spending three seasons with the

Montreal Allouettes The Montreal Alouettes ( French: Les Alouettes de Montréal) are a professional Canadian football team based in Montreal, Quebec. Founded in 1946, the team has folded and been revived twice. The Alouettes compete in the East Division of the Cana ...

of the

Canadian Football League The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...

, former Arlington High School and

Northern Illinois University Northern Illinois University (NIU) is a public research university in DeKalb, Illinois. It was founded as Northern Illinois State Normal School on May 22, 1895, by Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld as part of an expansion of the state's system ...

Huskies star

George Bork George Bork (born February 8, 1942) was an American football player in the 1960s. The 6–1, 185 pound Bork rewrote the Northern Illinois University football record book with some help from end Hugh Rohrschneider during his junior and senior ye ...

returned to Chicago as the Owls' starting quarterback for their inaugural season in 1968. The new club raised some eyebrows when they announced they would play in Soldier Field, which had been unused by pro football since the

Cardinals Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, the ...

moved out in 1959 (the Owls' tenancy on the lakefront preceded the NFL's Bears by three years). Offensive lineman

Bob Kuechenberg Robert John Kuechenberg (October 14, 1947 – January 12, 2019) was a National Football League guard for the Miami Dolphins for 14 seasons between 1970 and 1983, spending the 1984 season on injured reserve. He was a mainstay in a line that inclu ...

, younger brother of Bears linebacker Rudy Kuechenberg, began his professional career with the Owls; the younger Kuechenberg would go on to a 14–year career with the

Miami Dolphins The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football team based in the Miami metropolitan area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member team of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The team pla ...

. After dropping four of their first five games, the Owls fired Branby and replaced him with Bob Webb, who was also the Owls' back-up quarterback. Webb led Chicago to a 5–2 record the rest of the year, enough to even up the Owls' record at 6-6, third place in the Central Division. Playing primarily on Saturdays, the club drew only 35,835 fans to cavernous Soldier Field all season, or less than 6,000 a game.

1969 season

Things did not improve for the Owls in 1969, as their record slipped to 5–7 and continued to draw small crowds: just 21,403 paid their way to their games this season, barely 3,500 a contest and a small fraction of their stadium's capacity. The team was practically invisible amid the crowded Windy City sports scene, with a

running gag A running gag, or running joke, is a literary device that takes the form of an amusing joke or a comical reference and appears repeatedly throughout a work of literature or other form of storytelling. Though they are similar, catchphrases are not ...

in the Chicago press that mentions of the Chicago Owls brought a response similar to an owl's hoot: "Who?" The CoFL revoked their franchise on December 15, 1969 for failing to meet the league's financial obligation. Despite this setback, the

Trans-American Football League The Texas Football League (TFL) was a low-level American football minor league that operated in primarily in the United States from 1966 through 1968, and again between 1970 and 1971 as a new incarnation called the Trans-American Football Leagu ...

announced it would include the Chicago Owls on its schedule for 1970, but the team folded prior to the start of the 1970 season.

References

{{Continental Football League Continental Football League teams

Owls Owls are birds from the Order (biology), order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly Solitary animal, solitary and Nocturnal animal, nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vi ...

Soldier Field 1968 establishments in Illinois American football teams established in 1968 Sports clubs disestablished in 1969 1969 disestablishments in Illinois Professional Football League of America teams