American football franchise
The Sacramento Surge was a professional American football team that played in the World League of American Football (WLAF) in 1991 and 1992. The team played its first season at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento, and the second season in Hornet Stadium on the Sacramento State University campus. It was owned by Managing General Partner Fred Anderson and the General Manager was Michael F. Keller. In charge of Special Projects was Jack Youngblood, who also partnered with Joe Starkey and Ronnie Lott on Surge radio broadcasts on Sacramento radio station KRAK.
The team was coached by former Buffalo Bills quarterback–head coach Kay Stephenson. Charlie Sumner was the defensive coordinator and Jim Haslett was a defensive assistant coach.
The inaugural 1991 season was disappointing for the seven North American teams as none had a winning season, but 3-7 Sacramento managed to provide the only winning record over a Europe based team, 2-0 versus Frankfurt Galaxy, as this was the team they played twice, with the second win at the end of the regular season helping to eliminate Frankfurt Galaxy from the play-offs. Considered the WLAF's second best team, and having just won in Barcelona to secure the tie breaker, all 7-2 Frankfurt had to do was to beat the Surge at home in front of a sell-out crowd of 51,653. Yet, both the clouds and the Surge rained on the Galaxy parade into the semifinals. Two days later, the 9-0 London Monarchs dropped their home match against the Barcelona Dragons which made the Dragons clinch the play-offs instead. After winning the semifinals on US soil, both European franchises met again in Wembley for the World Bowl and a Monarchs shut-out over the Dragons.
The Surge won the World Bowl in 1992, the only United States based team to do so, as the WLAF was discontinued after 1992, returning in 1995 as NFL Europe. On this championship team were future professional wrestler Bill Goldberg and investment guru Pete Najarian.
After the WLAF ended its American presence at the end of the 1992 season, Anderson continued Sacramento's presence in professional football by acquiring a Canadian Football League expansion franchise for 1993. The new team was named the Sacramento Gold Miners; Stephenson and several Surge players were retained in the change, as were the team colors of aqua and yellow. After 1994, with new US-based CFL expansions, the franchise moved to Texas into the Alamodome. After the 1995 season the CFL presence in the US ended, and so did the San Antonio Texans.
Since 2021, the "Surge" name is used in a franchise for the "Stuttgart Surge" in the newly established "European League of Football" which sees itself as a continuation of WLAF and NFL Europe, having an agreement with the NFL to use "old" franchise names, logos and colors. With the Sacramento Surge having both a 3-0 all-time winning record against the "old" Frankfurt Galaxy name that was revived, and Surge being in line with the S alliteration of team names Stuttgart Scorpions and "Stuttgart Stallions" that were established in the early 1980s as amateur clubs, the Stuttgart fans and members haven chosen to use "Surge" in the EFL, and to continue as Scorpions in the national GFL.
