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Do IT this week: Layering
Akron's football aspirations shattered with disappointment
By Bill Lilley
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Tuesday, Nov 04, 2008
But even the grand old bowl isn't without its dirty laundry, and the Rubber Bowl served as home of the most infamous con job in Akron's long and illustrious sports history.
Just mention two words — Akron Vulcans — and old-time Akron businessmen and athletes first wince and shudder, then laugh.
The team that was supposed to bring big-time professional sports to Akron in 1967 as a member of the Continental Football League lasted only four regular-season games.
The stench of bad checks, IOUs and unpaid bills amassed by owner Frank Hurn lingers on today as a reminder of Akron's fatal fling with professional football.
Hurn lost the team to the league after three games and managed to amass more than $100,000 in debt in slightly more than two months in operation, according to news accounts at
the time.
''I would give anybody 1,000-to-1 odds that they couldn't find a bigger con man to hit Akron sports than Frank Hurn,'' said Clay Hill, longtime area roofing contractor who played linebacker for the Vulcans. ''And his wife at the time, who was his second of four wives, is probably No. 2 right behind him.
''It was unbelievable how they pulled the wool over everybody's eyes in Akron. There wasn't a soul in Akron who he came in contact with that he didn't owe money. And there were a lot of intelligent, well-to-do people, along with Kent State, on that long list,'' Hill said.
Hurn invested only $2,000 of his own money in the Vulcans. Chicago mobsters put up the $50,000 to the Continental Football League for the transfer of the Brooklyn franchise papers to Hurn.
His construction company didn't have any of the 65 heavy pieces of equipment he claimed it did, nor did it reside in the downtown Chicago office building he listed as its home office. Hurn simply was a rough-and-ready 41-year-old guy who drove an excavator and told big stories.
And Akron, which was flourishing financially then as the Rubber Capital of the World, was more than willing to listen, especially when he talked pro football and championships.
''He wore black shark-skinned suits with white shirts and black ties and always looked like he needed a shave,'' said former St. Vincent and Notre Dame standout lineman Bob Meeker, who had a tryout with the New York Giants in 1966 before starring as a 245-pound guard with the Vulcans.
''It simply came down to the fact that everybody was so excited about having a pro football team in Akron, nobody bothered to check him out.
''I know I was excited about the team and thrilled to have a shot to play pro football,'' Meeker said. ''I was in my second year of law school at Akron and figured playing pro football was a great way to work my through law school.
''He had former All-American Sonny Gibbs from TCU at quarterback and brought in some big-name players from around the country and Akron. And he put together a fabulous coaching staff.''
Former Mayor John S. Ballard thought the climate, both in an economic and an emotional sense, was perfect in Akron for pro football at that time.
''I think we felt at that time that we needed some identity in Akron, and a pro football team would have given us that,'' said Ballard, 86 who splits his time between a summer home in the Adirondack Mountains in New York and a home by Granger Lake in Medina County.
''You have to understand that it was a vastly different Akron at that time than it is today. The rubber companies were making and selling tires, which was the lifeblood of Akron, at a great rate. They were thriving, so there was money available all over town.
''The way Hurn got away with what he did was he was a smooth talker, just not particularly well advised, and the people in Akron accepted what he told them,'' Ballard said. ''They really believed that they were going to have a pro football team here. And they really wanted to have a pro football team here.''
Famous staff
The Vulcans achieved instant name recognition when Hurn hired former Heisman Trophy winner Doak Walker as coach and former Detroit Lions standout Tobin Rote as general manager and quarterbacks coach. Each got inflated salaries of $20,000.
Neither received a nickel.
To make matters worse, Walker and Rote together invested more than $30,000 of their own money in the Vulcans, according to news reports.
''He was definitely a crook, Hill said. ''But you have to give him credit. He was a first-class crook all the way.
''We lived really well in the new dorms at Kent State and ate steak three meals a day during the three weeks of training camp. And he had a DC-10 with the Akron Vulcans logo on it sitting at the Akron airport, supposedly for us to fly on.
''There was only one problem: The guy didn't have a dime in his pocket.''
Meeker said he got his first clue something was wrong on the first payday.
And the next.
And the next.
''Every time it was payday, there was another problem,'' Meeker said. ''We couldn't figure it out because we drew more than 14,000 for an exhibition game at the Rubber Bowl, so there had to be money coming in. But we had about 35 guys and nobody was getting paid because all the checks were bouncing.''
Walker and Rote finally caught on to Hurn by the end of the three-game exhibition season.
They confronted him about the money problems.
Both quit, or were fired, depending on whose story you believed.
CFL officials summoned Hurn to league offices at United Nations Plaza in New York City on Aug. 23 to explain his financial situation. He persuaded league owners to give him more time.
Three weeks later, the CFL finally had had enough and took over the team.
It all came to a head for the players in the fourth regular-season game at Moundsville High Stadium in Moundsville, W.Va.
''The players weren't going to play unless they got paid,'' Meeker said. ''In cash. Right then.''
There was a delay in starting the game while CFL Commissioner Sol Rosen got Wheeling owner Mike Valan to scramble and pull $6,000 out of the gate receipts. Valan then laid out 30 piles of $200 each — all in $10s and $20s — on the benches in the locker room so that each of the Vulcans would be paid for the first time that season.
''It was crazy,'' Meeker said. ''Guys grabbed their pile of money and were stuffing bills into their jock straps, shoulder pads, shoes, anywhere they could stuff money. We weren't about to let any money out of our sight.''
The Vulcans lost to the Wheeling Ironmen 28-21 and fell to 1-3.
The end
The Vulcans, who were the brainchild of a Chicago man who took many from Akron to the cleaners, mercifully were closed by the cleaners four days later.
''The laundry that did our uniforms had a huge bill,'' Meeker said. ''The uniforms were brought in to be cleaned after the fourth game and [the cleaners] refused to give the uniforms back to the team until they got paid.''
The Vulcans met with former Browns player Lou Rymkus, who had been promoted to head coach when Walker abdicated, at noon Sept. 21, at the St. Vincent practice field. They were told it was all over.
Meeker ultimately did manage to get his No. 65 jersey. He spent $7.50 for the keepsake, which cost $18 new, when the team's assets were auctioned the following April.
Hurn was nowhere to be found at the end of the fiasco. He had bolted for Florida.
He returned in May 1968 and pleaded guilty in Summit County Common Pleas Court to eight counts of defrauding an innkeeper of $1,800. That represented the bills the Vulcans ran up at the Akron Tower Inn and the team's headquarters at the Brown Derby Motor Inn in Cuyahoga Falls.
Hurn failed to appear for his sentencing five months later. A nationwide manhunt, led by legendary Akron bail bondsman Whiskey Dick Percoco and Sheriff Robert Campbell, ensued. Hurn was arrested in Miami.
''I didn't know I was supposed to turn myself in,'' Hurn told FBI agents, according to published reports.
The FBI agents shipped him back to Akron.
Hurn, who had served four months in Summit County Jail before his trial, was sentenced to three years in prison by Judge Evan J. Reed, but served only 10 months (Jan. 2, 1969, to Nov. 7, 1969) at Chillicothe Correctional Institute before his sentence was suspended. He also was on probation for five years.
''I met some good people in Akron, but something went wrong,'' Hurn told a reporter from the Beacon Journal.
Laying blame
The fine folks of Akron finally figured out what was wrong: It was Hurn.
''In the end, everybody in Akron felt we had been taken,'' Ballard said. ''And we should have been more careful, but we weren't because we wanted it [pro football] so badly.
''We were had in a big way. What was supposed to be a bright time in Akron's history turned out to be a total blackout.''
That wasn't the end of Hurn's legal escapades.
He later was involved in a hit-and-skip accident in Lakeland, Fla., and bad-check incidents in Tampa, Fla., and Yancey County, N.C.
He saved the biggest for last.
Hurn was convicted Aug. 31, 1979, in U.S. District Court in Huntington, W.Va., of two counts of interstate transportation of stolen coal.
Make that 2,400 tons of coal that he stole while his company, Pioneer-Harrison Coal Co., supposedly was cleaning it.
Instead of processing it to the proper buyer, Hurn's company shipped it to a company in Roanoke, Va., and Hurn pocketed $38,000.
He also was charged with attempting to sell a coal mine he didn't own.
Hurn was sentenced to five years in federal prison camp at Eglin Air Force Base in Pensacola, Fla., and fined $5,000. Judge Maurice Taylor also sentenced Hurn to serve five years supervised probation at the end of his prison term.
Hurn was paroled from the prison camp at Eglin on Sept. 14, 1983, according to prison records.
After that, nobody could say what happened to Hurn.
Reports indicate he lived in Miami and other parts of Dade County in South Florida after he was released from prison until 1994, when he moved to Arizona. Hurn reportedly is living in a gated community in Sedona, Ariz., about 35 miles southwest of Flagstaff.
''All I know is that I've represented some real big ones in my career,'' said Meeker, who has been one of the higher-profile criminal defense attorneys in Akron over the past four decades, ''but Frank Hurn was without a doubt the biggest con man I ever met.
''After all, how many guys can defraud an entire city? He took everybody he met to the cleaners.''
Bill Lilley can be reached at 330-996-3811 or blilley@thebeaconjournal.com.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Akron, OH
Posted 10:46 AM, 11/04/2008
As one of the 14,000 in the Bowl for that exhibition against the Orlando Panthers, I well remember the initial excitement generated by the Vulcans. But the fact that, instead of a game program, we were only offered a printed paper with the rosters, made me a little suspicious.
It was fun listening to Jerry Healy doing the play-by-play on WAKR. Besides the road game near Wheeling, I also recall a broadcast from Toronto (versus the Rifles).
This piece really brings to light the profound difference between Akron of 1967 and today. Didn't need whopping school levies and political looting schemes when there were multiple thousands of good-paying manufacturing jobs.
Posted 12:58 AM, 11/05/2008
Twenty-seven years ago I went on the first date with my husband to the Rubber Bowl. It was Thanksgiving morning, and we were at the Turkey Day game. Today we still live in the Rubber Bowls backyard, and walk over to see the Zips play or watch fireworks from our front porch. It will be very sad not attending games there, but we are looking forward to visiting the new stadium! Go Zips!!
Posted 01:13 PM, 12/13/2008
This brought back a few memories. My father "Big O" was one of the trainers part-time. I also travel to a few away games with the team. Wild, crazy and great bunch of guys who really got handled because they loved football! I still have an old warm-up jacket. They had to get rid of all of them the first time they sent them to the laundry because they all shrunk. Just the beginning of the problems to follow.
