ORIGIN
In 1922, during one of the first roller skating fads, the Chicago Tribune announced and reported on the results of two "roller derby" events. These derbies were multi-day events during which roller skating races were held on a flat track.

In 1929, as the Great Depression began, a struggling film publicist named Leo Seltzer felt that dance marathons were undermining attendance at his Oregon cinema chain, so he began holding his own dance marathons. Hundreds of unemployed people participated, hoping to win a $2,000 cash prize. Since dance marathons usually ended up with people lazily shuffling around, he soon changed the events to "walkathons". The contests were emceed by celebrities like Frankie Laine and Red Skelton, and grossed $6 million in three years.

In 1935, the novelty of walkathons wore off, but a roller skating fad arose again, and Seltzer decided to combine the two concepts as Transcontinental Roller Derby, an event more than a month long, staged at the Chicago Coliseum. It was a simulation of a cross-country roller skating race in which 25 two-person teams circled a track thousands of times, skating 11½ hours a day, to cover 3,000 miles—the distance between Los Angeles and New York City. Teams were disqualified if both members were off the track during skating times. Sixteen teams dropped out due to injuries or exhaustion, but nine teams finished, and the winning team, Clarice Martin and Bernie McKay, held the lead for the last 11 days of the event.

Over the next two years, Seltzer took the Transcontinental Roller Derby on the road, holding similar races throughout the U.S. with a portable track that reportedly cost $20,000, for daily crowds averaging 10,000 in number, who paid 10 to 25 cents admission. Occasionally, massive collisions and crashes occurred as skaters tried to lap those who were ahead of them. Sportswriter Damon Runyon realized this was the most exciting part, and encouraged Seltzer to tweak the game to maximize physical contact between the skaters and to exaggerate hits and falls. Seltzer bristled, wanting to keep the sport legitimate, but agreed to the experiment, which fans ended up loving. Over time, the spectacle evolved into a sport involving two teams of five skaters, with a team scoring points when its members lapped members of the other team, which is the basic premise of roller derby to this day.

Transcontinental Roller Derby rapidly grew in popularity as a spectator sport. Matches were held in fifty cities in 1940, for more than five million spectators, some of whom formed fan clubs and newsletters like Roller Derby News (later renamed RolleRage). Teams began to represent and compete in other U.S. cities, although some teams were actually the same traveling group that would just change names depending on where they were playing, and all were part of the Seltzer-owned Roller Derby league.

The entry of the United States into World War II at the end of 1941 interrupted the sport's ascent; many skaters enlisted in the armed forces, crowds dwindled, and the fledgling league was reduced to one team skating mainly for the entertainment of soldiers.

After the war's end in 1945, Seltzer successfully resumed growing the sport, although a 1946 attempt to bring it to New York's Polo Grounds failed due to twelve straight days of rain. In 1947, well before television was in widespread use, Roller Derby debuted on the ABC television network. Seltzer changed his residence to Encino (Los Angeles) that same year, a westward move that foreshadowed changes to come. By 1949, Roller Derby games were being televised live throughout the U.S., and Seltzer was grossing $2 million a year. In 1949, the National Roller Derby League was formed, and the season playoffs sold out Madison Square Garden for a week.

Meanwhile, from 1946 through 1948, flat-track roller derby was enjoyed as an intramural sport at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

JAM ON, JAM OFF
In 1950, Leo Seltzer moved the base of operations to New York, where it was easier to produce Roller Derby's first wave of televised popularity. Broadcasts centered on the New York Chiefs, who enjoyed nationwide appearances on CBS and ABC. At one point, Roller Derby could be seen on ABC several times a week. Besides the Chiefs, teams in the National Roller Derby League included the Chicago Westerners, Brooklyn Red Devils, Jersey Jolters, Washington Jets and the Philadelphia Panthers, with these 6 clubs affectionately considered by fans as the ancestors of all incarnations of Derby teams through 1973.

Off television in the fall of 1951 due to overexposure and declining ratings, the Derby suffered a dramatic fall in attendance. In July 1953, citing the effects of the Korean War and a dearth of venues, Leo Seltzer moved the Derby from New York to Los Angeles and created the L.A. Braves for their debut at the Rose Bowl. The Braves became the first international team when a tour of Europe was launched in 1953.

However, this was not the first time audiences outside the U.S. had seen the game played live. A renegade league, International Roller Speedway, known in some countries as Roller-Catch, formed in 1937 and toured Europe and the Philippines. Roller Speedway was a modified version of the sport and normally featured two teams, representing Europe (the "home" team) and USA. The 1950 film The Fireball, starring Mickey Rooney, was based on the life of one of the league's stars, Eddie Poore, who skated under the name Eddie Cazar. Roller Speedway ceased operations in 1952.

In 1954, the Derby established the most fabled team in the history of the sport, the longtime champion San Francisco Bay Bombers. Stars on this team eventually included Charlie O'Connell, Joanie Weston, and Ann Calvello.

In 1958, Leo Seltzer gave up on the sport in favor of real estate interests, and his son Jerry Seltzer took full control of Roller Derby. Within a year, he moved the operation to the San Francisco Bay Area. He syndicated Roller Derby to 120 television stations, and he changed some of the rules. For the first time, skaters were required to wear helmets, and at the behest of KTVU television announcer Walt Harris, he made the game more TV-friendly by making jammers' helmets easier to spot.

A more theatrical imitation called Roller Games was started in 1961 in Los Angeles featuring retired Roller Derby skaters who chose not to make the move to San Francisco. Owned by Bill Griffiths, Sr. and Jerry Hill, Roller Games was the only viable rival organization to the original Roller Derby, and actually consisted of several separate leagues, including the (U.S.) National Roller Derby (NRD), soon renamed to National Roller League (NRL) since the "Roller Derby" trademark was aggressively protected by the Seltzer organization. The NRD/NRL consisted of the Northern Hawks (sometimes billed as the Chicago Hawks), New York Bombers, Texas Outlaws, Detroit Devils, Los Angeles Thunderbirds (nicknamed "T-Birds"), and Philadelphia Warriors (sometimes billed as the Eastern Warriors). There were also several attempts in markets that failed quickly, with teams such as the Baltimore/Washington Cats, the Florida Jets, and the Western Renegades. Roller Games also encompassed the Canadian National Roller League (CNRL) and Japanese National Roller League (JNRL). Some former Roller Derby stars found new fame in the Roller Games, and a handful of skaters simply went back and forth between the two organizations. After 1968, however, the Roller Derby to Roller Games defections were quite few; instead, a handful of Roller Games skaters returned to their roots and began skating for the Derby again.

1961 also saw the advent of a short-lived New York City area rival league, the American Skating Derby (ASD), promoted by Joe Morehouse and Mike O'Hara. ASD debuted two teams of ex-Roller Derby skaters — one team representing "New York" and the other representing Brooklyn — at Long Island Arena in Commack, New York, around April 1961, with plans to appear throughout the Tri-State Region. A league split later that year resulted in the formation of another league, the Eastern Skating Derby (ESD), which lasted until mid-1964 and skated only in New York, sometimes at the same venues as the ASD. As with Roller Speedway, none of these splinter groups are remembered today by anyone outside the most dedicated fans and the skaters who participated in them.

To the media, there was only one Roller Derby, and from Jerry Seltzer's takeover in the late 1950s the game reached new heights of popularity with a 120-station television network where taped games from the Bombers' home, Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco, were shown weekly. Television made fans of thousands and the Bombers packed arenas from coast to coast on cross country tours, regularly selling out arenas such as Madison Square Garden, Boston Garden, Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis and dozens more. The indoor record for Roller Derby was set at 19,507 at Madison Square Garden in 1970; it was broken by the outdoor record at the Oakland Coliseum a few months later at around 28,814 for a game between the Bombers and the Northeast Braves. The following year that record was topped again with 34,418 for a Bomber game at the Coliseum; their rival, the Midwest Pioneers, broke that record with 50,118 fans in 1972 for a game at Comiskey Park in Chicago. At this point, the Bombers home-team concept was duplicated with the New York Chiefs representing the Eastern U.S. and the Pioneers based in Chicago (but really everything west of Philadelphia). A one season run in 1971 by the Cincinnati Jolter team in the Midwest (Ohio, Kentucky and other areas) was not financially successful and the team became a road franchise once again. The Bombers were briefly a Southwest team moved from the Bay Area, but potential new owners couldn't come to terms with the Seltzer family and so the Bombers were returned home. (In an unusual move, the Chiefs were a "replacement" team for the Bombers during the period that franchise was supposedly based in Texas).

In the early 1970's,a Roller Derby participant was depicted in the children's program, ZOOM, in a segment called, As the World Zooms, this was a main character of the segment who continued through the entire run of that incarnation of the program.

In 1973, high overhead and other factors led Jerry Seltzer to elect to shut down Roller Derby. In a 2005 interview, Ann Calvello mentioned gas shortages during the 1973 oil crisis as a contributing factor because teams could not travel. Some of the IRDL star skaters were recruited to skate for Roller Games' International Skating Conference (ISC), which quickly eliminated all Derby teams except for the Chiefs to again focus on the Los Angeles Thunderbirds.[18][19] However, within two years, the wrestling/circus-like approach doomed all of Roller Games; many Roller Derby skaters quit and fans deserted the arenas. Cultural historian Paul Fussell, perhaps editorializing, attributed the collapse of the sport to the declining economic class of its fan base in its final years; fans were ultimately unable to support the sponsors that had been keeping the sport on television.

IRSL REVIVAL
Several attempts were made in the late 1970s and 1980s to revive the sport.

The most successful of these was the International Roller Skating League (IRSL), operational from 1977 to 1987. IRSL games were held mostly in Northern California, but a handful of games were skated in the Northeastern United States, the Midwest, and Canada. Many skaters from Roller Derby were in the IRSL, and some of the team names were the same as in Roller Derby.

Initially the league was composed of the San Francisco Bay Bombers, the Midwest Pioneers, the Eastern Red Devils and the Manhattan Chiefs. In 1979, the league was bought out and restructured by one of its owners, former San Francisco television producer Dave Lipschultz. At this time, two more teams, the Northeast Braves and Southern Jolters (later renamed the Southern Stars), were added, and the Chiefs were renamed the New York Dynamite and, eventually, the Eastern Express. A final team, the Northern Knights, representing Canada, was announced in 1986 but never competed. As before, most of the attention was centered on the Bay Bombers. After skating primarily in Northern California, a Midwest tour was launched in 1984, but flopped due to competition from baseball and football as well as weather related problems. In 1986 a tournament was carried on ESPN and the IRSL set up sporadic appearances in New York. ESPN dropped the contract in its pursuit of the more lucrative professional football market, and although talks were underway to broadcast IRSL matchups on USA Network, the IRSL was unable to survive without television support. Lupshultz shut down the league after its last game at Madison Square Garden on December 12, 1987. Around that time, Lipschultz and skaters were negotiating over how to keep it going. Lipschultz wanted to make it more like professional wrestling in an attempt to win over a fickle TV audience, but the players had different ideas. No agreement was reached, and potential sponsors lost interest.

The 1985 IRSL matches have been shown twice on ESPN Classic's sports comedy show Cheap Seats as ESPN retains the right to air those matches.

American Skating Derby, promoting the game as Rollerjam! formed in 1987 and played a spring season with two teams, the San Francisco Slammers and the Los Angeles Turbos. Its name was the same as the early 1960s New York based league but was unrelated. Composed of inactive Roller Derby and IRSL skaters, the ASD was formed primarily as a means to keep the game alive, and the two teams (with the Slammers being essentially replaced by the Bay City Bombers) skated around Northern California communities for high school charities. For the next decade, with sometimes as few as one game annually, the ASD attempted to keep the traditional game going.

ROLLERJAM REVIVAL
Between January 1999 and January 2001,[25] Knoxville, Tennessee television impresarios Ross K. Bagwell Sr. and Stephen Land, under the name Pageboy Entertainment, collaborated with CBS to stage another televised revival known as RollerJam or Roller Jam. Bagwell and Land recruited numerous stars from the Roller Derby of yesteryear, as well as newer stars from various athletic backgrounds, including nationally ranked speed skaters, to skate in the six-team World Skating League (WSL). Jerry Seltzer was named RollerJam "commissioner".

RollerJam games were televised out of "RollerJam Arena," situated on the grounds of Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. Initial teams, each consisting of seven men and seven women, were the New York Enforcers, the California Quakes, the Florida Sundogs, the Nevada Hot Dice, the Texas Rustlers and the Illinois Riot (Original names of the latter three teams were the Las Vegas High Rollers, Texas Twisters, and Illinois Inferno. These names were changed prior to the start of the first season). Despite strong funding and four seasons of broadcasts on The Nashville Network (TNN, now known as Spike TV), the venture never became a "live" attraction. As time went on, fabricated storylines and uncharismatic characters were being featured more than actual competitive skating. This did not go over well with many skaters nor die-hard roller derby fans. Two notable veterans from Roller Games, Rockin' Ray Robles and Patsy Delgato, were featured in the second season of RollerJam. When RollerJam was cancelled, many of the skaters found smaller leagues to skate in. 40 episodes of Roller Jam have been reversioned for UK television after successful televised seasons in other countries. Airing from October 2nd 2006 on Challenge TV much of the narrative has been removed with sex and violence toned down for a family audience.

One major rule difference between previous leagues was the legalisation of in-line skates, which the WSL required for younger players.

TODAY'S ROLLER DERBY
In the early 21st century, after two decades in relative obscurity, the sport began to experience a grassroots revival among women, with leagues forming in urban centers across North America. In 2001, Bad Girl Good Woman Productions (BGGW) was formed, creating the first all-girl roller derby game of the new generation. Founders formed four teams, and staged their first public match in Austin, Texas in summer 2002. Shortly after, the league split over business plans. The Texas Rollergirls embraced flat-track play, while the BGGW league (also known as the TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls or Texas Roller Derby) went on to skate banked-track roller derby. The revival then began in earnest, with over 50 such leagues in existence by late 2005, more than 80 by February 2006, and more than 135 by mid-August 2006. The sport's sudden growth spurt in 2006 is attributed to the exposure the sport achieved from the Rollergirls reality television show, which depicted portions of the lives of real skaters from the TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls. The show began broadcasting in January 2006, but was not picked up for a second season due to unsatisfactory ratings.

Nearly all contemporary roller derby leagues are all-female and are self-organized, formed in an indie spirit by relatively new roller derby enthusiasts. They all use traditional quad roller skates. Many are non-profit organizations, and most leagues compete on flat tracks. Each league typically features two or more local teams that compete in public matches, called bouts, for a rapidly growing fanbase. Members of fledgling leagues often practice and strategize together, regardless of team affiliation, between bouts.

This article was taken from Wikipedia and can be viewed in its entirety by clicking here.



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