Artemis Apostolopoulou
Matt Biggers

No other team in sports has had to endure the relocation odyssey that the New Orleans franchise has lived through. The Hornets were born when North Carolina businessman George Shinn was awarded one of four NBA expansion franchises on April 1, 1987, and began play in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1988. As the owner of the team from its inception and the subsequent 14 seasons in Charlotte, Shinn officially filed an application with the NBA on January 17, 2002, to move the Hornets to New Orleans, Louisiana, beginning with the 2002-03 season. Four months later, the NBA’s Board of Governors...Read more

Steve McKelvey
David Heim

The landscape of second-tier professional sports is littered with leagues and teams that have folded—a reality that has become even more prevalent due to the recent economic downturn. For instance, this past August, the National Lacrosse League’s (NLL) Orlando Titans announced that it would not field a team for the 2011 season … after having substantially completed its 2011 season ticket campaign (“Titans confirm,” 2010). In March 2010, the Los Angeles Sol, the most highly-publicized team in the newly formed Women’s Professional Soccer League (WPSL), folded after just one season (Tripp,...Read more