Buffalo Storm were an American professional soccer team. They played for one season (1984) in the United Soccer League, with home games at All-High Stadium.
The early 1980s were a lean and difficult time for professional outdoor soccer in the United States. The North American Soccer League was in significant decline following the "boom years" of the late 1970s, undone by a period of over-expansion and overspending that created an unstable environment in which teams were constantly folding or moving to new cities. By 1984, only nine teams were left in the league (down from a peak of twenty-four in 1980). The de facto second division American Soccer League had likewise doomed itself to instability and difficult economic realities when it expanded beyond the northeastern United States, where it had operated very modestly since 1933, and tried to establish a foothold on the west coast in the '70s and southern states in the '80s. These expansions produced a string of short-lived franchises, and the league had contracted to only six teams in 1983.[1] [2]
At the ASL's annual league meetings in January 1984, two of the remaining six teams announced plans to go "dormant" for 1984. Despite this, the league rejected a proposal for an expansion team in Fort Lauderdale, which prompted the owners of the Jacksonville Tea Men and Dallas Americans to break away and start planning a new second division league, which they named the United Soccer League. Their vision was a stable league in which teams could operate within their means and take a more "grass roots" approach to building a fan base in their communities. Year-round operation (with an indoor season in the winter), a strict salary cap, a focus on American players and a mostly regional schedule to reduce travel costs were all pillars on which this new league was to be founded. Three ASL clubs would end up coming directly to the USL, while two other clubs were re-organized and renamed for USL membership. Four new teams also joined the league, one of which would be the Buffalo Storm.
The new Buffalo team was led by two men whose history together dated back to the defunct Rochester Lancers of the NASL. Owner Sal DeRosa had been the Lancers' head coach for a few years in the '70s (including for their 1970 championship season), and he chose former Lancers all-star midfielder Francisco "Pancho" Escos to be the Storm's coach.[3] They officially announced their existence in April.
In between working together in Rochester and founding the Storm, DeRosa and Escos were both part of the Buffalo Stallions of the Major Indoor Soccer League (DeRosa as vice president and GM, Escos as a player), and they took advantage of this connection when assembling their new team. Eleven Stallions players joined the Storm's roster. The team was placed into the USL's Northern Division along with the New York Nationals and Rochester Flash. Buffalo's season began on May 19th with a 2–1 loss at Jacksonville. The Storm would be a "middle of the pack" team in the league as a whole, finishing with an 11–13 record. Rochester and New York would both post worse records, though, and the Storm ended up qualifying for the playoffs as division winners, earning them a best-of-three semifinals matchup with the Fort Lauderdale Sun. Sal DeRosa chose to surrender the team's right to host the first game in the series at home since it would mean a mid-week game at All High Stadium, which did not have lights. The Sun eliminated the Storm by scores of 3-0 and 5-1.[4]
The Storm faced two substantial challenges in joining the upstart USL. The first was that they only had about six weeks in between announcing their existence and the beginning of league play, leaving precious little time to drum up sponsors, investors or fans. The other was having to play all home games at a field without lights. Official attendance figures were not kept, but one contemporary media source listed the average attendance for Buffalo home games at less than 1,000 fans per game. Despite the USL's austere financial design, the Storm were not able to balance the books in these conditions. Most of the rest of the league was not faring much better. The indoor season that had been discussed at the league's founding never materialized. Shortly after discussions for a USL/NASL merger fell apart in February/March 1985, Buffalo was one of the five USL teams who chose to fold. The MISL's Stallions had "suspended" operations to re-organize the previous July but ultimately never re-started, so the folding of the Storm left Buffalo without any professional soccer until the formation of the Buffalo Blizzard in the indoor NPSL in 1992.[5]