The KFBA took shape in the summer of 1999, after the Colonel and friends lost a Hoop-It-Up qualifier in Philadelphia to a team of diabetic midgets. "Since we can't play basketball," the Colonel suggested, "we should control the fates of those who can." Then he spent seventy-two sleepless hours developing Kentucky Fried basketball.
A word to the wise: never bet a game-maker at his own game. The Colonel fleeced seven of us for $50 a pop that first season, as his Valley Forge Howler Monkeys went 15-1 and rolled through the playoffs. It might not have been such easy going for the Monkeys had Schottsie's New York Millenium (since renamed the Schottsies) not lost star forward Charles Barkley to a career-ending tear of his quadriceps tendon early in the season and his replacement in the starting lineup, Tom Gugliotta, to an ACL tear before the playoffs. This after Gugs almost died from a seizure on an airplane earlier in the year. Crippling injury has become a theme for Schottsie's teams through the years. He owned Paul Pierce when he was stabbed outside a night club and Alonzo Mourning when his kidney went bad. Rumor has it that when LeBron James found out he was Schottsie's first round draft pick this year, he hired that action figure from the Sprite commercials to test his food for poison.
With greed in his heart and $350 in his wallet, the Colonel decided to expand the KFBA to sixteen teams for its second season. Unfortunately for the Colonel (and the rest of us), one of the new owners was Antonio Delgado, a professional fantasy hustler who made a small fortune winning Ultimate Fighting and dog show rotisserie leagues. His team-building skills translated very well to Kentucky Fried Basketball, as evidenced by the championship his San Juan Baboons won in 2001.
With one championship a piece and the third and fourth highest all-time winning percentages respectively, the Howler Monkeys and Baboons (nee Goatsuckers) are two of the greatest teams in league history. The only franchise that has been categorically better is the Trinidad National All-Stars, who won the 2002 and 2003 Original Recipe championships. The All-Stars, led by their free-dealin' GM Doug and coach-for-life, "Big Smooth" Sam Perkins, have won three divisional titles and made the playoffs in each of the league's six seasons.
Other successful franchises include the Brooklyn Brewers, who succumbed to Trinidad in the 2002 championship but captured the title in 2004--thanks to a late-season trade with San Juan that brought Allen Iverson for Michael Redd with tenth-round keeper rights, becoming the prototype for the stars-for-keepers deals that proliferated throughout the Association in 2005--and the Kalamzoo Knish, who recently changed their name to the Krackers. Perhaps they should have picked the Bridesmaids. Despite having the league's all-time best winning percentage (.719), Kalamazoo has only been to one title game, which it lost to the All-Stars in 2003.
The most recent league champs, the Baltimore Brocheese, rose from the depths of mediocrity to record the first perfect season in KFBA history. This achievement has led to allegations that Baltimore owner, the Broham, supplied anabolic steroids, methamphetamines, and male enhancement herbs to his players. As a result, the Colonel has promised stiffer drug testing policies will go into effect next season. "For the players," the Colonel clarified at a recent press conference. "The owners can do any drugs they want."
Perhaps more than its success stories, the Original Recipe is defined by its failures. Who could forget colorful franchises like the West Virginia Spittoons, who were forced to play in flannel shirts by owner and "Good Morning, Morgnatown!" host, Clayton Morris? Or the Washington Strung-out Republicans, whose players went on strike after discovering that management was funneling their pension money into a Bush family charity designed to bring Apartheid back to South Africa? Or the Seriously Hallucinating Bill Parcells, whose GM Joe Springer would prowl the stands with strings of Mardi Gras beads for any buxom fan willing to flash her breasts?
The Penn View Pretties is the newest team to have passed into retro-land. Six years ago, owner Paul Slegowski scoffed at the notion that Reading, Pennsylvania, a dying city of 80,000, couldn't accommodate a Kentucky Fried team. And he was right. The city wasn't too small for the team-simply indifferent to it. At least until Paul moved his squad from the Geigle Complex to a newly-built gymnasium behind the notorious Penn View motel just west of the city. "They'll come for the hookers; they'll stay for the basketball," Paul proclaimed at the ground-breaking ceremony in the summer of 2003. For awhile they did. But midway through last season an undercover sting operation killed the motel's flesh trade and thus, interest in the Pretties. New ownership (ciwasko) will undoubtedly rename and move the team, depriving fellow owners of one of the KFBA's great road stops.
