Glory suffers shutout in storm-filled game at Riders

Ohio Glory Head Coach Larry Little couldn’t keep mistakes from continuing to pile up on his team, as six turnovers, eight penalties and just 129 yards of total offense all contributed to a 17-0 road loss against the San Antonio Riders. Ohio finished the first half of the 1992 season at 0-5.

The 0-4 Ohio Glory wasn’t likely to find the sledding any easier in Week 5, as it was traveling to play the San Antonio Riders, the co-leaders in the North American West division.

When looking at the final score – 17-0 – it might seem as if the Glory played a decent game, but simply continued to have trouble offensively.

As was the case with the Glory, it wasn’t that simple.

A little more than six minutes into the game, Glory quarterback Pat O’Hara threw a 53-yard “pick-six” to Riders cornerback Gary Richard. What made this particular interception noteworthy was O’Hara was on his back at the time.

O’Hara had fallen after being stepped on by center Curtis Wilson and was on his back, but still chose to throw the ball in the field of play, rather than throw it away or simply take the loss.

"I fell down, but still thought I could make the pass even from where I was sitting," O'Hara said following the game. "It was a horrible mistake on my part, but one I'll have to live with it."

Twenty years later, Glory Head Coach Larry Little recalled the play this way, "I didn't know what to think. I just asked him, 'Why?’ ”

O’Hara’s second and final interception of the day came when the ball bounced off a Glory player’s helmet.

Backup quarterback Babe Laufenberg also threw two interceptions, and two Glory lost fumbles rounded out the team’s six turnovers.

Ohio’s defense, easily the team’s bright spot in the first half of the season, held San Antonio to one offensive touchdown and one field goal despite all of the Glory offense’s foibles. The Glory “D” also kept the score from being much, much worse by getting multiple key takeaways inside of its own 7-yard line.

While the Glory defense was doing its best to keep the game competitive while being on the field for nearly 41 minutes, just 129 total yards of offense, the six turnovers and eight penalties kept Ohio from getting any traction.

The game was stopped for 23 minutes late in the second quarter due to a hailstorm, and much of the first half was contested in a driving rainstorm.

The Glory finished the first half of its expansion season at 0-5. If it was going to avoid the same completely winless fate of its predecessor, the Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks, it was going to have to improve in a hurry.

Luckily, it did.

Glory falls behind big at Machine, rally too late

Ohio Glory offensive coordinator Wally English, middle, didn’t see eye-to-eye with Head Coach Larry Little on play-calling. After a disagreement with Little on the sidelines in the Glory’s 31-20 Week 4 loss at the Montreal Machine, English didn’t coach again during the 1992 season.

There was plenty of blame to go around for the Ohio Glory’s 0-3 start to its expansion season.

That blame, unfortunately, was starting to become public. And during the Glory’s 31-20 Week 4 loss at the Montreal Machine, that blame ended up costing one assistant coach his job.

Glory Head Coach Larry Little favored a running attack, one like what resulted in running back Amir Rasul setting a World League of American Football single-game rushing yards record in Week 1. Offensive coordinator Wally English was more of a pass-oriented coach, having tutored the likes of Dan Marino and Jim McMahon in college.

Those differences came to a head in Montreal.

Little, in an interview two decades after his and the Glory’s only season, said he didn’t know English before hiring him, only of him, since English coached under Little’s old Miami Dolphins Head Coach, Don Shula.

It was clear Little and English weren’t on the same wavelength. And English didn’t coach for the Glory after the Montreal game, as running backs coach Joe Viadella called the plays for the rest of the season. According to reports, English had been hospitalized the week after the Machine game due to fatigue.

To this day, both Little and English blame each other for the failure to get along – as was evidenced by a 2012 Columbus Dispatch story.

Little said, “The players would come to the sideline and (English) would try to say something to them and they’d keep walking. They were loyal to me, I believe.”

English said, “Larry didn’t know anything about a passing offense.”

As for the game itself, Montreal had a 24-0 lead after three quarters. Ohio scored three fourth-quarter touchdowns behind backup quarterback Babe Laufenberg (starter Pat O’Hara suffered a concussion late in the first half), but the damage already had been done.

“When you’re 0-3 and you fall behind 21-0 in the first half on the road, it’s easy to lay down. Our guys didn’t do that,” Little said after the game. “They showed a lot of character. They kept fighting.”

Rasul ran for 102 yards and a touchdown in 18 carries, and wide receiver Walter Wilson caught 10 passes for 113 yards and a score.

The team statistics from the game were bizarre – the Glory held the ball for 37:44 and Ohio’s defense kept Montreal to just 215 yards of total offense while forcing two turnovers. But the Glory also coughed the ball up twice and committed 10 penalties for 110 yards in markoffs.

Special teams continued to haunt the Glory, as a chip-shot field goal try by kicker Jerry Kauric was blocked, and three consecutive bounced punt snaps by Mike Graybill ended in a wobbly Tom Rouen punt, a Rouen scramble for a first down and Rouen being tackled deep in Glory territory.

And when Laufenberg found wide receiver Melvin Patterson for a successful two-point conversion with 18 seconds left in the game, it marked the first time the Glory had successfully scored on a conversion after a bad hold on a kick in Week 1, a blocked extra point in Week 2 and two failed two-point tries earlier in the game vs. the Machine.

For the second week in a row, a Glory player tried to diagnose the team’s problems in the press. This time, it was Laufenberg’s turn.

“We looked at the films today, and we’ve got guys that at times just flat-out didn’t hustle,” he said to the Dispatch. “To me, there’s no excuse for that and I wouldn’t want that guy on my football team. I don’t care if it’s flag football, high school football, college ball, pro ball. I wouldn’t want them lining up. I know I can’t count on the guy.

“A guy who doesn’t hustle, to me, that’s a loser.”

Little, however, disagreed, saying, “It’s not like the guys are dogging it out there because they’re not. We’re giving up the football, and we’ve gotten a lot of bad breaks, too.”

Going into the rematch with the San Antonio Riders, the team which may or may not have run the score up against the Glory in the teams’ lone preseason game earlier in the season, the Glory still was winless and looking for answers as to why.

      Unfortunately, those answers weren’t going to come in the Lone Star State.

Mitchell, Thunder too much in Week 3 rematch

Ohio Glory quarterback Pat O’Hara (6) made his first professional start in Week 3 at home against the Orlando Thunder, and was 26-for-39 for 284 yards and an interception. The Glory offense, however, couldn’t muster a touchdown in a 28-3 loss which dropped Ohio’s record to 0-3.

The Ohio Glory found itself on the short end of its first two games, despite allowing just two total touchdowns on defense.

In Week 3 at home against the Orlando Thunder, however, the cracks were starting to show in all phases of the game.

In a rematch of the heartbreaking Glory loss in Week 1 in Florida, the dam was starting to bust everywhere:

-     Orlando quarterback Scott Mitchell torched the Glory defense by going 20-of-28 for 273 yards and touchdowns of 51, 30 and 15 yards. He later was named World League of American Football’s Offensive Player of the Week for Week 3.

-     Mitchell’s performance, along with Thunder running back Roger Vick’s 90 rushing yards, helped Orlando to rack up 399 yards of total offense – 97 more than in the teams’ first meeting.

-     Ohio’s offense notched just a 25-yard Jerry Kauric field goal to close out the first half, despite gaining 318 total yards. Running back Amir Rasul, who set a WLAF single-game record for rushing yards against the Thunder two weeks earlier, ran the ball just eight times for 29 yards.

-     Ohio turned the ball over three times and took the ball away from Orlando just once, giving the Glory a minus-6 turnover ratio in the season’s first three weeks. Two of the Glory’s turnovers were fumbles by tight end Randy Bethel – one inside the Orlando 20 on the first drive of the game and the other inside the Thunder 30 late in the first half.

-     Ohio committed nine penalties for 90 yards, and one – a roughing-the-punter call against cornerback Aaron Ruffin – led to the Thunder’s first touchdown pass. Ruffin also committed a personal foul penalty which led to Orlando’s first touchdown of the game.

-     Kauric had a 47-yard field goal blocked in the first quarter, and he missed another 47-yarder in the second quarter.

“Right now, we’re our own worst enemy,” Glory Head Coach Larry Little said after the game. “It’s not that other teams are stopping us. We’re stopping ourselves.”

Two of the bright spots for the Glory came in the form of quarterback Pat O’Hara and wide receiver Walter Wilson. O’Hara, making his first professional start, was 26-for-39 for 284 yards and an interception. Wilson caught 11 of O’Hara’s passes for 112 yards.

The Glory had its second straight strong home crowd, following up 37,837 fans in Week 2 with 31,232 fans in Week 3. But the results on the field weren’t getting any better – and players were starting to get testy. One of those players was starting middle linebacker Jono Tunney.

In an article in the Columbus Dispatch in the week leading up to the Week 4 contest at the Montreal Machine, Tunney said, “I have no doubt there’s some selfish players on the team, and I think it’s hurting us. You can’t find out what kind of heart a guy has by watching him practice. You have to be first-and-goal and your back’s against the wall.

“I’m not completely sold on some of the character we’ve got on the team. But I am sold on some of the guys. For the most part, we’ve got an outstanding club. It’s just going to take time to get the chemistry together.”

Some 20 years later, Tunney expanded on his frustration with the team’s winless start.

“I guess I was just getting used to the lack of passion in the professional game,” he said. “Most people on our team, including myself, were really trying to get back in the NFL so, yes, selfish to some degree. I think the way the article came out, I wasn’t happy about. It was just a young inexperienced guy talking, and I wish I could have taken what I said back.

“I’ve subsequently learned that when things go wrong, in football and in life, pointing fingers only works when you get your own house in order.”

Unfortunately for the Glory, the house would continue to crumble north of the border.

Defense stifles Surge, but miscues lead to 0-2 start

Ohio Glory quarterback Babe Laufenberg is sacked late in the second quarter by Sacramento Surge safety Louis Riddick, leading to a fumble which was recovered by Surge defensive end George Bethune for a 1-yard touchdown.

Despite many mistakes in a Week 1 loss at the Orlando Thunder, there was plenty of positives going into the Ohio Glory’s first home game at Ohio Stadium against the Sacramento Surge.

The Glory was much more than competitive in its 13-9 loss to the Thunder, and it was going against a Surge team which, at that point, still was an unknown commodity despite obvious improvement following a 3-7 record in 1991. Sacramento was coming off a 20-6 opening win at home against the Birmingham Fire, but it had committed nine penalties and two turnovers in the victory.

That optimism was buoyed by the opening drive of the game, when the Glory marched 79 yards in 11 plays and took an early 6-0 lead on running back Amir Rasul’s 1-yard touchdown plunge.

The beginning of the end to those good feelings amongst the team and the 37,837 fans in the stands came on the extra point. The first Jerry Kauric kick was good, but a holding penalty on just-activated linebacker Eric Snelson led to the second PAT kick being blocked by Surge defensive tackle Nate Hill.

Late in the first quarter, the Glory was burned by a long wide receiver screen touchdown for a second week in a row. Surge veteran quarterback David Archer found wide receiver Eddie Brown for a 48-yard catch-and-run score to put Sacramento ahead 7-6.

The score remained 7-6 until just inside of the two-minute warning of the first half. On second-and-12 from its own 6-yard line, a play-action pass was called. Ohio veteran quarterback Babe Laufenberg was a sitting duck in his own end zone, and Surge safety Louis Riddick came in on a blitz for a blind-side sack and forced fumble.

Sacramento defensive end George Bethune – ironically the No. 1 overall pick in the 1992 World League of American Football draft with a choice acquired from the Glory – picked up the loose ball, scored from a yard out and gave the Surge a 14-6 halftime lead.

On the next drive, Laufenberg was sacked on a fourth-and-four play from the Surge 40. That prompted Glory head coach Larry Little to make the move from Laufenberg to untested National Football League allocation quarterback Pat O’Hara in the second half.

O’Hara was 13-for-17 for 95 yards in the second half, but the closest the Glory got to scoring in the second half was a missed Kauric 42-yard field goal late in the third quarter.

Laufenberg was 11-for-19 for 110 yards, but the late-second-quarter mistakes cost him his starting job. And in a sideline interview during the ABC Sports telecast, he showed his displeasure with the play call which led to the Surge’s defensive touchdown.

“I was against it,” Laufenberg said. “Not my decision. I didn’t like the play from the get-go. I said so on the sideline. I run what they tell me to run.”

Wide receiver Walter Wilson caught nine passes for 80 yards, but Rasul gained just 28 yards on 14 carries and didn’t get many chances in the second half while Ohio was playing catchup.

Ohio gained just 162 yards on offense after the opening drive of the game.

“Our first drive was really a thing of beauty,” Little said after the game. “But it seemed like right after we got that holding penalty on the extra-point try and then had the next one blocked, we went downhill.”

The Glory defense yielded just 10 points and 228 total yards to Sacramento’s offense. Ohio had allowed just two touchdowns on defense in the first two games of the season, and had given up just 3.4 yards per carry through the first two contests.

Riddick, thanks to his sack/forced fumble, five tackles and a pass defensed, was named WLAF Week 2 Defensive Player of the Week.

Bad breaks overshadow effort, Rasul’s record day

Running back Amir Rasul was a workhorse for the Ohio Glory in its first-ever regular-season game. Rasul carried the ball 24 times, scored the franchise's first touchdown in the third quarter on a 5-yard run and gained a World League of American Football-record 152 rushing yards.

In the end, the Ohio Glory lost its first-ever regular-season game to the Orlando Thunder.

Given how many things went wrong for the Glory in the contest, it’s amazing the team came as close to winning as it did.

The Glory did fall to the eventual World Bowl runner-up, 13-9, at the Florida Citrus Bowl, but factoring in how many breaks went Orlando's way, it is a wonder Ohio had a chance to win the game in the final seconds.

·         On a late-first-quarter Thunder field goal attempt, Glory cornerback Aaron Ruffin came in for the block, but the play was stopped due to an inadvertent whistle. It appeared the Glory would have scored a touchdown had the whistle not blown.

·         Immediately following a 50-yard field goal by Jerry Kauric to give the Glory its first-ever points and first-ever lead, Kauric landed the ensuing kickoff out of bounds. Orlando scored four plays and 65 yards later on a Scott Mitchell-to-Grantis Bell 46-yard screen pass touchdown.

·         Still down 7-3 and establishing the running game, the Glory attempted a halfback option pass with starter Amir Rasul with the ball at the Thunder 37. Rasul didn’t sell the play well, then threw the ball up for grabs – and it was picked off.

·         Down 13-3 late in the third quarter, Rasul scored the Glory’s first-ever touchdown on a 5-yard scamper to the left pylon. The extra point snap, however, wasn’t handled by holder and backup quarterback Pat O’Hara, and the PAT was aborted – something that would come into play in the fourth quarter.

·         Early in the fourth quarter, Glory speedy wide receiver Patrick Jackson ran 27 yards on a perfectly-executed reverse. Had he not been slightly tripped up on the play, he may have given Ohio the lead.

·         The Glory went back to the Jackson reverse well again later in the fourth, but he fumbled (and may have been down on the play) – giving Orlando the ball with 4:07 to go in regulation. That bad break, however, was negated by a rare good break – an interception by Ohio dime cornerback Nigel Codrington just two plays later.

·         Finally, the Glory took the Codrington pick and moved 46 yards to the Orlando 7 in the final minutes. On a first-and-10 play, veteran Ohio quarterback Babe Laufenberg threw a pass into the end zone intended for wide receiver Melvin Patterson – one that was picked off by Thunder cornerback Malcolm Frank.

The interception – Ohio’s third and final turnover of the game – was bad enough. But it didn’t have to happen. First, had the extra point following Rasul’s touchdown been good, the urgency for a TD in the final minute wouldn’t have been there – the team could have tried for the win but kept a potential tying field goal in its back pocket.

Second, it was a first-down play with time to run more. Laufenberg didn’t have to force the throw into Patterson.

But finally, and perhaps most importantly, the replays show Laufenberg may have been able to run straight ahead for the winning touchdown, instead of trying to force the throw.

ABC Sports’ microphones on Glory Head Coach Larry Little caught Little’s very apt instant exclamation – “OH NO!” - at the point Frank caught the ball.

Here are Little’s quotes about the final play, both at the time and 20 years later:

After the game – “He didn’t have to throw the ball. It was there for him to take off and run, but he opted to throw the ball.”

20 years later – “Babe could have walked in the end zone.”

Rasul finished the day with a World League of American Football-record 152 rushing yards on 24 carries, an effort which earned him Week 1 league Offensive Player of the Week honors. The Glory offense gained 294 yards (216 on the ground), and kept the ball for 31:20.

Defensively, Ohio kept what would be one of the league’s top offenses to one touchdown and 302 total yards.

First shot at Glory ends in preseason rout vs. Riders

Six turnovers kept the Ohio Glory offense from making much headway in game which was second World League of American Football postseason tiebreaker.

The Ohio Glory’s first shot to make a good impression came on March 15, 1992, in a preseason game against the San Antonio Riders at Bobcat Stadium.

Not only was the exhibition weekend each World League of American Football team’s lone shot at getting some fine-tuning in before opening day, the league also made it so the result of the exhibition games would be the second tiebreaker for division championships and/or wild card playoff spots.

The first tiebreaker was head-to-head competition.

And, of course, like most everything involved with the Glory, this wasn’t your garden variety preseason game.

The result probably wasn’t unexpected, with the home-standing and more cohesive Riders winning, 33-7. But it was the game’s final touchdown which rubbed Glory Head Coach Larry Little the wrong way.

With the Riders ahead 26-7 late, San Antonio third-string quarterback Craig Kupp threw a 26-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Darrell Colbert with 38 seconds left in the contest.

Little, who talked to Riders Head Coach Mike Riley about the late score afterwards, said, “They were trying to send us a message. We’re the new kids on the block, and they might have been trying to show us something.”

Ohio was down just 10-7 early in the second quarter after a 13-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Pat O’Hara to wide receiver Walter Wilson. But the Glory offense turned the ball over six times and ran for just 53 yards, and the Riders racked up seven sacks.

Defensively, free safety Darren Willis had two interceptions, and cornerback Jason Wallace added a pick.

“There were some good things that happened out there,” Little said. “But when you turn the ball over as much as we did, that has to come back to haunt you.”

The Glory and Riders were scheduled to play each other in Texas again during the regular season in Week 5.

“I have a long memory,” Little said.

The preseason roster – starting from scratch

Journeyman National Football League quarterback Babe Laufenberg (11) was the Ohio Glory's first-ever draft pick, second overall in the 1992 World League of American Football draft. Tackle Ben Jefferson (64) was the team's other first-round pick, 11th overall. Linebacker George Koonce (59) and cornerback Aaron Ruffin (33) were back-to-back picks in later rounds.

The Ohio Glory didn’t have the benefit of much time to get everything put in place for its inaugural season.

It also didn’t have the benefit of starting with any players.

When the Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks folded, the World League of American Football decided to have whatever franchise replaced it get extra choices in the 1992 WLAF draft, rather than allow it to keep a core group of players from the 0-10 Skyhawks.

When the draft came around on February 4-5, 1992, the Glory was the only team in the league which didn’t have a group of protected players from the year before. The WLAF’s solution was to give the Glory both the first and last (11^th) picks in each of the first 25 rounds of the draft.

But before the Glory made its first-ever draft pick, it made history a different way – pulling off the league’s first-ever trade with the Sacramento Surge. The two teams switched places atop the draft, and for moving down one spot, the Glory received center Curtis Wilson. Wilson started the entire 1991 season for the Surge, and was second-team all-league.

With the second overall pick, the Glory took journeyman National Football League quarterback Babe Laufenberg. At 32, Laufenberg was at the end of a football career which saw him play at three colleges (Stanford, Pierce Junior College and Indiana) and for four NFL teams (Washington, San Diego, New Orleans and Dallas).

Laufenberg, despite having more interceptions than touchdowns and a completion percentage well less than 50 percent during his NFL regular-season career, was expected to provide veteran leadership for a team whose players wouldn’t have much time to get acclimated to each other.

“I knew Babe had pro experience, and Peter (Glory General Manager Peter Hadhazy) said that it might be a good move, because there wouldn’t be a defense he wouldn’t have seen,” said Glory Head Coach Larry Little in an interview two decades later.

Said Chris Wolfington, Glory Assistant to the General Manager, of Hadhazy’s affinity for Laufenberg, “Peter had gone out and found a way to get him into the pool of players. So Peter had to really do more than the usual amount of work for a player he thought would be helpful.”

At the conclusion of the draft, the Glory ended up with 55 players to begin the task of putting together the opening-day roster:

RD-PICK         NAME (POS.)                                         COLLEGE

1-2*                 Babe Laufenberg (QB)                                Indiana

NOTE: Pick acquired from Sacramento with C Curtis Wilson for No. 1 overall pick (first trade in WLAF history)

1-11                 Ben Jefferson (T)                                     Maryland

2-1                   Mike Graybill (T)                           Boston University

2-11                 Jeroy Robinson (LB)                             Texas A&M

3-1                   Jason Wallace (CB)                                     Virginia

3-11                 Randy Bethel (TE)                               Miami (Fla.)

4-1                   Walter Wilson (WR)                           East Carolina

4-11                 Tom Rouen (P)                                        Colorado

5-1                   David Browndyke (K)                                       LSU

5-11                 African Grant (CB)                                         Illinois

6-1                   Eric Crigler (T)                                    Murray State

6-11                 Amir Rasul (RB)                                  Florida A&M

7-1                   Kent Wells (DT)                                       Nebraska

7-11                 Curt Mull (G)                                               Georgia

8-1                   Steve Williams (CB)                         Boston College

8-11                 Kerry Owens (LB)                                     Arkansas

9-1                   Rico Tyler (RB)                                   West Virginia

9-11                 Karl Coles (G)                                         Ohio State

10-1                 Tim James (S)                                          Colorado

10-11               Chad Rolen (DE)                                      Arkansas

11-1                 Patrick Jackson (WR)                  Stephen F. Austin

11-11               O’Neill Gilbert (DE)                                Texas A&M

12-1                 Ken Vines (C)                          Central State (Ohio)

12-11               Frank Griffin (TE)                                            USC

13-1                 Nigel Codrington (WR)                                     Rice

13-11               George Koonce (LB)                          East Carolina

14-1                 Aaron Ruffin (CB)                              Nicholls State

14-11               Chris Cochrane (QB)                                   Cornell

15-1*               Curtis Moore (LB)                                        Kansas

NOTE: Moore traded to London for LB Marlon Brown

15-11               Lydell Carr (FB)                                      Oklahoma

16-1                 Malcolm Showell (DE)                    Delaware State

16-11               Anthony Butts (DT)                        Mississippi State

17-1                 Anthony Spears (DE)                       Portland State

17-11               Archie Herring (RB)                   Youngstown State

18-1                 Michael Wallace (CB)                        Jackson State

18-11               Steve Harder (T)                                         Dayton

19-1                 Jerry Kauric (K)                                      No college

19-11               Clarkston Hines (WR)                                     Duke

20-1                 Mike Sunvold (DE)                                  Minnesota

20-11               Jono Tunney (LB)                                      Stanford

21-1                 Robert Flory (G)                                          Arizona

21-11               Todd Millikan (TE)                                    Nebraska

22-1                 Deval Glover (WR)                                   Syracuse

22-11               Zack Dumas (S)                                     Ohio State

23-1                 Stacy Harvey (LB)                              Arizona State

23-11               George Swarn (RB)                            Miami (Ohio)

24-1                 Eric Snelson (LB)                                       Stanford

24-11               Chad Thorson (LB)                      Wheaton College

25-1                 Terence Barber (WR)                                  Florida

25-11               Darryl Gard (RB)                                         Bluffton

26-1                 Mike Estes (DE)                       Central Washington

27-1                 Chris Haering (LB)                             West Virginia

28-1                 Ray Jackson (S)                                     Ohio State

29-1                 Chris Stablein (QB)                                 Ohio State

Early in camp, the Glory took some hits with the retirements of Hines and Haering, and with Gilbert and Barber not reporting. Hines was ninth in the WLAF in receiving yards for Raleigh-Durham in 1991, and Haering finished tied for 28^th in the league in tackles.

The team signed wide receiver Phil Logan and defensive end Bob Curtis, leaving the roster at 53 players, but Gard, Swarn and Curtis Wilson all were placed on injured reserve prior to the February 20 NFL Enhancement Allocation, leaving the Glory with 50 active players in camp.

The Glory was awarded 11 NFL players in the WLAF’s Enhancement Allocation program:

NFL TEAM      NAME (POS.)                                         COLLEGE

CIN                  Antoine Bennett (CB)                          Florida A&M

GB                   Gene Cullinane (C)                    Washburn College

CLE                 John Hardy (CB)                                      California

CLE                 Eric Harmon (G)                                        Clemson

MIN                 Darren Hughes (WR)                  Carson-Newman

CHI                  Eric Ihnat (TE)                                           Marshall

CLE                 Larry Kinnebrew (RB)                  Tennessee State

PHI                  Melvin Patterson (WR)                Stephen F. Austin

CLE                 Dustin Quinton (T)                                         UNLV

MIN                 Scotty Reagan (DT)                       Humboldt State

KC                   Steve Starcevich (K)                 Philadelphia Textile

Of the 37 players who made the initial active roster for the Glory, five – defensive tackle Charles Jackson, quarterback Pat O’Hara, running back Adam Walker, cornerback Mike Adams and defensive end Joel Dickson – were acquired in the month leading up to the season.

And there was one key player the Glory acquired who never showed up. Strong safety Greg Coauette, a first-team all-WLAF selection in 1991 for Sacramento, was acquired from the Surge in a trade on March 8. He refused to report to Ohio, instead opting to retire and stay in California.

"People in football are always making decisions for you," Coauette said in 1998. "In this case, I was going to make my own decision. I wasn't going to Ohio and I was staying in Sacramento, even if it meant quitting football."

There was one player the Glory had interest in, but never had the chance to acquire - former Ohio State, NFL and Canadian Football League quarterback Art Schlichter. Schlichter, banned from the NFL for gambling and who hadn’t played in the NFL since 1985, turned down a chance to play in his former home collegiate stadium to stay with the Arena Football League’s Cincinnati Rockers.

Hadhazy said the Glory would have selected Schlichter had he chosen to play in the WLAF – and had Schlichter been cleared by the league to play, but Hadhazy also said at the time, "I would have felt like a prostitute had I taken him, because I know I'd take him to sell tickets. It would have been more a defensive choice.

“If I don't take him and somebody else took him and he comes back here and beats us, it would have made the organization look like a bunch of fools.”