Tulsa Tornado's

The Tulsa Tornado's were a professional outdoor soccer team from Tulsa, Oklahoma. They played in the 2nd division United Soccer League during the partially completed 1985 season.

The team was created when the owner of the Oklahoma City Stampede, David Fraser, announced that he was moving the franchise to Tulsa and changing their name in December 1984.^[1] The previous September, the North American Soccer League's Tulsa Roughnecks had announced that they were folding, and Fraser may have been hoping to take advantage of a fairly well-established fanbase that had enjoyed a championship run just one year prior.^[2] Before the team could begin playing in Tulsa, though, the situation for the team and the league changed drastically. Virtually all of the teams in the one-year-old USL had lost money in 1984, and most of them failed to post a performance bond to guarantee their return for 1985.^[3] In February a last-ditch set of USL/NASL merger discussions that hoped to bring a financial boost to the USL and a boost in membership to the flagging NASL ended without an agreement. In short order the NASL announced that there would be no 1985 season, and six of the nine USL teams either ended operations or withdrew from the league. Only Dallas and Fort Lauderdale (renamed South Florida) along with an expansion team in El Paso/Juarez joined Tulsa to attempt the USL's 1985 outdoor season.^[4] Further compounding the challenges of attracting fans and sponsors in a new town on short notice, the Roughnecks' former general manager, Noel Lemon, announced in January that he had been authorized to revive the Roughnecks for the 1985 NASL season. When the NASL was unable to get enough teams on board and cancelled the 1985 season, the "new" Roughnecks announced a 20-game exhibition schedule that was to start in the same month as the USL season, leaving the city of Tulsa with two hastily assembled and underfunded clubs competing for the attention of the town's soccer fans.^[2]

The USL re-arranged its schedule to open with a round-robin format "USL Cup" (each team was to play the other twice) to be followed by a twelve-game regular season. Play began on May 19th, and the Tornado's organization started to collapse almost immediately. Through the first three games of the USL Cup round, the team only attracted around 500 fans per game,^[3] and reports emerged of the owners facing lawsuits related to rent payments at their home field, Skelly Stadium, as well as missing payroll for the coaches and players. The unpaid team refused to take the field for a June 6th home exhibition game or travel to Dallas for a June 8th USL Cup game. Around this time, coach Brian Harvey resigned and several players began to take their leave.^[5][6][2] New investors led by Jimbo Elrod and Sammie Jo Cole engaged in discussions with the league to take over principal ownership, and the Tornado's did travel to Fort Lauderdale (albeit with a "substantially different" roster) to compete in the final game of the Cup round on June 15. However, the 1-0 loss would be their final match.^[7] The regular season opener scheduled for June 22 was cancelled due to still unresolved payroll and stadium rent issues, and a few days later creditors foreclosed on the USL and locked officials out of their offices. The season was suspended on June 25th. Elrod backed off his investment plan, which likely would have moved the team to Oklahoma City, when the league suspended operations.^[8]