The franchise that’s now known as the Cubs started as the Chicago White Stockings in 1870. In later years, they were also known as the Colts and the Orphans (team nicknames often being less official in those years, and sometimes a matter of what local sportswriters stuck on the teams). Local newspapers started to unofficially call the team the Cubs by 1902, though the team did not formally adopt that name until 1907.
The franchise that’s now the White Sox had played under other names in Sioux City and St. Paul, before owner Charley Comiskey moved them to Chicago in 1900, and renamed them the White Stockings. I’m going to guess that Comiskey was appropriating a familiar name that had since been abandoned by the team that was then known as the Orphans; regardless, Comiskey’s team’s nickname apparently was soon shortened to White Sox.
“What was the original name of the New York Yankees?” is one of my favorite trivia questions. Most people will say “the NY Highlanders,” but the franchise actually started in Baltimore as the Baltimore Orioles in 1901-1902 before moving to NY the following year.
And my favorite followup question is “What was the original name of the Baltimore Orioles?” Most people will say the St. Louis Browns, but they were actually the Milwaukee Brewers for their first year in 1901 before moving to St. Louis.
Actually, baseball-reference now considers those Orioles to be distinct from the Highlanders-Yankees through some technicality, but in the end, make the same kind of sense as the NFL’s pretending that the current Cleveland Browns, rather than the Baltimore Ravens, are the continuation of the pre-1996 Cleveland Browns.
What I think the OP is asking is what’s the oldest team that’s a member of a long running independent professional sports league that is not one of the “big 5”.
The best answer I have there is probably one of the surviving teams from the ABA. They only existed as a independent league for 9 seasons, but succeeded by forcing a merger with the still young-at-the-time NBA. They didn’t last that long as an independent league but graduated as much as one can.
Pretty much the only way a team can last a long time as an independent league is to eventually become a “big league”.
(1) Their reasoning is inconsistent and, to me, illogical
(2) I resent the idea that someone out taking it upon themselves to declare “official” fact in these ambiguous situations. History is ambiguous, and it should be left unresolved, and
(3) Seems suspiciously motivated by the reluctance to give the New York Yankees a few extra wins. Round-number milestones are arbitrary anyway.
And, yes, that Browns/Ravens dealio is a pile of doo-doo. We all know what happened. The Browns moved to Baltimore. The whole corporate cover story is like a nation-wide attempt at gaslighting.
The Charleston Battery and Richmond Kickers both started playing in the USISL (third-tier soccer) in 1993, predating Major League Soccer by a couple of years. They’re both still around, both independent, and both minor – the Battery in the USL Championship (tier 2) and the Kickers in USL League 1 (tier 3). They’re the oldest continually operating, currently existing soccer teams in the US.
The NBA was formed from the Basketball Association of America, which had its first season in 1946-47. Four of the six remaining ABA teams (the Pacers, Spurs, Nets, and Nuggets, leaving out the Spirits of St. Louis and the Kentucky Colonels) merged with the NBA after the 1975-76 season. The NBA was not young in any sense of the word by then.
I apologize for that I think Kimble has provided the best answer so far. Not looking for current or defunct MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, MLS teams or minor league teams they fund.
My examples would be teams from more unstable leagues like Indoor Lacrosse, Arena Football, Indoor Soccer, USL, World Team Tennis etc etc “fringe leagues”.
At second glance, the CFL is a bad example as it’s a league with teams and history that go back to the 1950s and beyond.
It seems most teams in these other sports are “fly by night” but Kimble provided two examples of franchises that seem to be not the case.
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While minor-league baseball is predominantly farm systems for the MLB teams, in the past 25 or so years, there’s been a resurgence in independent minor leagues. The longest-running of those appears to be the Frontier League (founded in 1993), and the longest-surviving Frontier League team is the Evansville Otters (founded in 1995).
Whoa, their team colors were “Streetwalker Red”, “Dig Black”, and “Snow White”. I bet it was the kind of team that smokes while out on the field and goes for a baseman’s legs on a slide.
Snake Plissken (actor Kurt Russell) even played for them for a month their first year. This sounds like the most badass baseball team ever.
Honestly, this is somewhat of an oxymoron. You can can either be long lasting franchise, or you can be a “fly by night” franchise. You can’t really be both. Kimble’s 2 example are less than 30 years old and both are absolutely still in the “fly by night” category, they just happen to be a bit more stubborn than most.
What it comes down to is that the “major league” (that is, the franchise-based monopoly/cartel) is the most stable type of sports business in the United States, and, by definition, the most long-lived franchises are the ones that are part of the most stable and successful major leagues–so pretty much all the leagues you ruled out in your OP.
