Kentucky Colonels: The ABA Dynasty the NBA Merger Erased

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Imagine a professional basketball franchise that literally won the most games in their league's entire history.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:07)
Okay, let's get started.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:08)
Right. A team that drafted multiple future Hall of Famers ran an active all-female board of directors and possessed so much swagger that they publicly challenged the established world champions to a million dollar winner-take-all showdown.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:27)
Oh, wow.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:27)
And they actually beat them on the court.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:29)
I mean, that sounds like a legacy franchise, you know? Like the kind of team that would have a massive global fanbase today.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:35)
Yeah, and billion dollar television deals.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:37)
Yeah, exactly.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:38)
That is the logical assumption. But not only do they not have a billion dollar TV deal, you cannot even buy a ticket to see them play today.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:45)
Wait, really?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:46)
Yeah. Because despite doing everything right on the court, they were just completely wiped off the map.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:51)
That is wild.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:52)
It is. So welcome to today's Deep Dive. We are looking at the sources detailing the history of the Kentucky Colonels. Yeah. They were a cornerstone franchise in the American Basketball Association, the ABA, from 1967 to 1976
Our mission today is to figure out how a team can build an absolute sporting juggernaut only to be systematically erased from existence by the very industry they were dominating.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:19)
It's honestly a phenomenal look at the cold realities of corporate leverage.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:23)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:24)
We're tracing a narrative here that starts with literal, um, carnival style showmanship.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:30)
Oh, absolutely.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:31)
And evolves into high stakes financial warfare against a monopoly.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:34)
I really want to start with that showmanship because in the late 1960s, the ABA was this brand new entity trying to compete with the firmly established NBA.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:44)
Right, the National Basketball Association.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:45)
Exactly. And if you are the upstart league, you have a massive visibility problem.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:50)
Yeah, you don't have legacy fans.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:51)
You don't have primetime TV slots. And the local sports reporters are barely giving you any column inches.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:56)
The environment completely dictated the strategy. So the Colonels were founded in 1967 in Louisville, Kentucky. And the original owners, Joe and Mamie Gregory, they understood they were operating in an attention economy.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:07)
They had to.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:08)
Yeah, they couldn't sell a historic rivalry, so they sold visual disruption instead. They actually outfitted the team in these chartreuse and white uniforms.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:18)
Chartreuse! That is so incredibly jarring. I mean, you're used to seeing traditional reds, blues, greens on the floor, and suddenly you have a team running around looking like neon highlighters.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:29)
Like literal highlighters, yeah. And they paired that visual shock with another deliberate choice.
The players' last names on the back of the jerseys were written entirely in lowercase letters.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:40)
No way, really.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:42)
Yeah, which in the rigid traditional world of pro sports, where block capital letters are practically mandated, it was a subtle but clear signal that they were rebelling against the norm.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:52)
They were just screaming for attention. And they didn't start with the graphic design either.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:55)
Oh, definitely not.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:56)
They actually had a prize-winning Brussels Griffin dog named Ziggy as their official mascot.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:01)
A dog.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:02)
A literal dog. But the stunt that really illustrates the desperation of this era happened in 1968

**SPEAKER_2** (3:10)
Oh, the signing of Penny Ann Early.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:12)
Yes.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:12)
She was already a pretty significant figure in the sports world, having just become the first licensed female horse racing jockey.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:19)
Right.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:20)
So the Colonels just go ahead and sign her to a professional basketball contract.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:23)
Which is wild.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:24)
In November of 1968, she checked into a regular season game, took the floor, inbound to the ball, and then a timeout was called exactly one second later.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:34)
Just one second.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:35)
One second of game time, just so she could be substituted out. But it made her the first woman to play in the ABA or NBA.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:42)
It honestly reminds me of modern minor league baseball. For sure. Like you see teams today selling tickets by having fans playing kilts or bringing in reality TV stars for an inning. When you are the underdog competing against an established giant, you cannot rely on the purity of the sport to draw a crowd.
You are selling a circus where a basketball game just happens to break out, you know?

**SPEAKER_2** (4:04)
The catch is though, a novelty act has a very short shelf life. The dog and the one-second substitutions, I mean, they get your name in the Sunday paper.