Skyhawks

Roman Gabriel took the sideline job in Raleigh. There was no history to build on. The World League of American Football had just been formed, and the Skyhawks existed for one purpose: fill that stadium with a spring team while the Wright brothers' home state got its name on a jersey for the first time.

The roster mixed NFL fringe players with recruits pulled from far outside the usual pipeline — Nicolay Aslaksen arrived from Norway, Vladimir Georgiev from the Soviet Union, part of the league's experiment in spreading the game beyond American borders. Linebacker Quentin Riggins led the team in sacks that year and went on to the NFL with the Saints, one of a handful of Skyhawks who made a career out of what turned out to be a dead end in Raleigh.

The dead end came fast. The 1991 season produced ten losses and no wins, last place in the North American East Division, no title of any kind to hang the year on. Kelly Green and red jerseys, a mascot pair named Orville and Wilbur, cheerleaders billed as the Kittyhawks — the branding leaned hard on the Wright brothers' flights near the coast, and it outlived the football. One season was all the franchise got before it folded, and the World League handed its spot to the Ohio Glory the following year.

Owner George Shinn, who ran the Charlotte Hornets at the same time, had no second season to build toward. What's left of the Raleigh–Durham Skyhawks is a single 0–10 line in the World League's first year, and a stadium that moved on to other tenants once the Kittyhawks stopped showing up.