Good to see Farrukh Quraishi back in an official capacity with the latest iteration of the Tampa Bay Rowdies, even if it is a second-tier North American Soccer League franchise playing in St. Pete’s 7,500-capacity Al Lang Field. The 63-year-old Quraishi, one of the good guys of local sports, is the Rowdies’ president and general manager, as well as consummate community-relations asset.
He’s also forever embedded into the sports culture of Tampa Bay. His early tenure–1975-80–overlapped the elevation of this area as a sports market. He was a charter member of the original Rowdies.
The Iranian-born Quraishi was the number-one overall collegiate draft choice of the first-year Rowdies in 1975. Back then the nascent NASL was the big leagues of U.S. soccer. Quraishi, who was raised in England, had been collegiate player of the year at Oneonta State in New York. He was an NASL all-star his rookie year. He was that good.
Forty years ago, the Rowdies were the only big-time professional sports franchise in the Tampa Bay market. They went on to win their only championship in the original NASL. The NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers–and their number-one overall draft pick Lee Roy Selmon–didn’t debut until 1976. They didn’t win a game until 1977.
For a while, the Rowdies owned this market, playing in front of Tampa Stadium crowds that approached 50,000 when the New York (Pele-featuring) Cosmos came to town.
And nobody marketed better than the Rowdies.
They were an international bunch, who identified with the community. They were a diverse, likeable, societal hit, with players of various hues and foreign dialects showing up at Hillsborough County schools for clinics and at Hyde Park Village’s Boneshakers for pints with their fans, aka “fannies.” But no matter the PR effort, you can’t fake “nice.”
They also had one of the best-ever bumper stickers: “The Rowdies Are a Kick in the Grass.” And the NASL even helped out with rule changes, considered sacrilegious by FIFA, that included “shootouts” to settle ties.
It was a coming-of-age period for this market. It was also the forum for a classic primer in how to market a foreign, perceptively boring, sport to Americans enamored of baseball, basketball and football.
Farrukh Quraishi was a major part of it. He belongs here.
And lest I forget, the Tehran native had a wry, apolitical sense of humor. I still recall his answer to the question of how he handled Americans’ inquiries about where he was from–in the context of the Iranian (Nov. 1979-Jan. 1981) hostage-taking crisis.
“I just tell people I’m from Persia,” he said. “And they just nod.”