The Shreveport Pirates Collection — Royal Retros Shreveport CFL Fan Shop

Heritage Tribute Gear From the CFL's Two-Season Louisiana Experiment. Custom Sizes S–5XL.

The Shreveport Pirates played two professional football seasons — 1994 and 1995, the Canadian Football League's short-lived push into the United States — and Royal Retros carries the deepest Pirates throwback collection anywhere online. Three products built around those two Louisiana seasons: a jersey in the team's purple and white, a T-shirt available in four colorways, and a mini helmet. The jersey is $84.99, tees are $29.99, and the mini helmet is $54.99. Sizes run Small through 5XL on the jersey and most tees. There is no current Shreveport Pirates store to buy this from — this is heritage tribute apparel built for a franchise that set a professional football record for futility in its first year and then nearly turned the whole thing around in its second.

What You Can Shop in the Shreveport Pirates Collection

Shreveport Pirates Jersey — The Pirates jersey in purple or white, sewn twill lettering built to the team's on-field look across both Louisiana seasons. Runs Small through 5XL. $84.99.

Shreveport Pirates T-Shirt — The Pirates tee, offered in Black, White and Athletic Heather (S–5XL) and Team Purple (S–4XL). Soft pre-shrunk cotton, vintage Pirates graphics. $29.99.

Shreveport Pirates Mini Helmet — A Riddell Speed mini helmet in the Pirates' purple, silver and black scheme. $54.99. A shelf piece for anyone who remembers Independence Stadium in 1994 or 1995.

Sizes — Small through 5XL on the jersey and on Black, White and Athletic Heather tees; Team Purple runs S–4XL. No big & tall upcharge on any style.

Shop by Colorway — Purple, White and Black

Purple and White — The Pirates' primary jersey colors, worn home and away across both seasons. The jersey is built in both. This is the look from the Independence Stadium photos and the Billy Joe Tolliver highlight reels of the 1995 turnaround.

Black and Athletic Heather — Everyday colorways for the tee that pull from the Pirates' full purple, silver and black identity without needing the full uniform look. Shop the Pirates tee for the full four-colorway lineup.

Why Royal Retros Is the Home of Shreveport CFL Gear

• The only team that ever wore this uniform. Two seasons, 1994 and 1995, and nobody has worn a Pirates jersey competitively since. There is no current club to buy from.
• Full wardrobe from a two-year franchise. A jersey, a four-colorway tee and a mini helmet — most short-lived CFL American expansion teams get a single generic design if they get anything at all.
• Flat, honest pricing. $84.99 for the jersey, $29.99 for tees, $54.99 for the mini helmet. No "rare team" markup.
• Sizes S–5XL on the jersey. True family sizing, no big & tall upcharge.
• Deep coverage of the CFL's American experiment. Cross-shop the Pirates with the Birmingham Barracudas, Memphis Mad Dogs, San Antonio CFL and Baltimore Stallions — the five clubs that made up the CFL's mid-1990s push into the United States.
• A genuinely rare piece of Louisiana football history. Most fans outside Shreveport have never heard of the Pirates, and most sellers don't carry them at all.

Quick Buying Questions

What sizes does the Shreveport Pirates jersey come in?

Small through 5XL. Tee sizing runs S–5XL in Black, White and Athletic Heather, and S–4XL in Team Purple.

Is Shreveport Pirates gear officially licensed?

No. The franchise folded in 1996 and no license currently covers this defunct CFL club. These are heritage tribute reproductions, built to look and fit like the real 1994–95 uniforms, not officially licensed merchandise.

How fast does it ship and what's the return policy?

Stock items ship within 3–5 business days. Standard items follow our return policy at /pages/returns.

Which Pirates jersey color should I pick?

Purple was the Pirates' primary color both seasons; white was the road alternate. Either is period-correct for either year — the design didn't change meaningfully between 1994 and 1995.

Gift Ideas for the Shreveport Pirates Fan

• For anyone who was at Independence Stadium in 1994 or 1995: The purple or white jersey is the exact look from either Louisiana season.
• For the CFL completist: Pair the Pirates with the Birmingham Barracudas or Memphis Mad Dogs for a set from the league's American expansion era.
• For the "team that turned it around and still folded" collector: Few pro franchises have a stranger two-year arc than the Pirates — a historically bad debut followed by a near-playoff season, and neither result saved the team.
• For the Louisiana football fan who wants something different: A pro team that actually called the city home for two seasons, not a repeat of the usual local gear.
• Year-round demand. Two-season novelty franchises like this move steadily for birthdays, Father's Day and the start of football season.

About the Shreveport Pirates

The Shreveport Pirates were a professional football team that played two seasons, 1994 and 1995, in the Canadian Football League — part of a short, aggressive attempt by the CFL to expand into the United States. They played their home games at Independence Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana, and their story runs from one of the worst debut seasons in modern professional football to a genuine near-playoff turnaround the following year, with an unusual origin story connecting them to a Canadian franchise on the other side of the border. Three decades later, the Pirates remain a niche but real piece of Louisiana sports history — a team most casual fans have never heard of, and one whose single season of CFL-record futility still shows up in the league's history books.

Why Was There a CFL Team in Shreveport? The American Expansion Gamble

Shreveport was part of the same wave of CFL American expansion that produced the Birmingham Barracudas, joining the league a year ahead of Birmingham as the CFL's second American club after the Sacramento Gold Miners. The league's pitch to American ownership groups was the same one it made in every city over those years: buy in cheap relative to NFL or MLB expansion prices, inherit a stadium and a football-hungry market, and get in early on a "new" pro sport before anyone else could claim it. The CFL itself was motivated by shrinking Canadian television revenue and several money-losing Canadian franchises, and it hoped expansion fees from new American ownership groups would help stabilize the league at home even if the American clubs themselves struggled. For the full story of why the CFL tried this multi-city gamble and why it collapsed everywhere at once, see the Barracudas collection, which carries the league-wide history in depth. What follows here is Shreveport's own, unusually strange version of that same story.

The Gliebermans, Ottawa, and a Very Unusual Expansion Franchise

The Shreveport franchise did not begin as a blank-slate expansion team the way most of the CFL's American clubs did. Bernard Glieberman and his son Lonnie Glieberman owned the Ottawa Rough Riders, one of the CFL's oldest and most storied Canadian franchises, and by early 1994 the Gliebermans were talking openly about moving that struggling club to the United States outright. The CFL rejected an outright relocation of a historic Canadian franchise, but engineered a compromise instead: the Rough Riders were effectively split in two. A new ownership group took over the Ottawa name, colors and history and kept the Rough Riders in Canada, while the Gliebermans received a brand-new American expansion franchise of their own — which became the Shreveport Pirates. Five players came over from the 1993 Ottawa roster as part of the arrangement, giving the new Louisiana club an odd degree of institutional continuity with a Canadian team it had never actually been.

Forrest Gregg Takes Over Before a Single Snap

General manager J.I. Albrecht initially hired John Huard as head coach to run the new franchise. The Gliebermans overruled that decision before the team ever took the field and installed Forrest Gregg instead — a Pro Football Hall of Fame offensive lineman from his playing days and a former NFL head coach with stops leading the Cleveland Browns, Cincinnati Bengals and Green Bay Packers, including a Super Bowl appearance with Green Bay. Gregg's name gave the expansion Pirates a level of football pedigree that few CFL American clubs could claim at the coaching level. It did not translate to early success.

1994 — The CFL-Record Losing Streak

The 1994 Shreveport Pirates were the second American club in CFL history and, by the end of their debut season, one of the least competitive. Shreveport finished last in the East Division at 3–15, scoring just 330 points — worst in the league — while allowing 662. Somewhere in the middle of that season the Pirates set a Canadian Football League record for the longest losing streak in league history, fourteen consecutive games. Quarterback duties were split between Mike Johnson, who threw for 1,259 yards, and Terrence Jones, one of the five players who had come over from the 1993 Ottawa roster. It was, by any measure, one of the roughest debut seasons a professional football expansion franchise has ever had.

1995 — Billy Joe Tolliver and the Turnaround That Wasn't Enough

Shreveport rebuilt around veteran NFL quarterback Billy Joe Tolliver for 1995, and the results were dramatically better. Tolliver completed 252 of 429 passes for 3,440 yards and 14 touchdowns, and the Pirates — realigned into the CFL's new American-heavy South Division alongside Birmingham, San Antonio, Baltimore and the departed Memphis franchise — finished 5–13. That record still missed the playoffs, but it represented a real on-field improvement over the historically bad debut season, built around a defense and passing attack that were both competitive by the league's American-club standards rather than historically overmatched. Notable names on the 1995 roster included running back Martin Patton, defensive back Joe Mero, linebacker Greg Stumon, receiver Wayne Walker, former NFL All-Pro defensive end Dexter Manley and kick returner Freeman Baysinger — a roster with real professional football pedigree even in a losing season.

Joe Horn's Very Brief Stop in Shreveport

One name on the 1995 Pirates roster went on to a much bigger football career than anyone in Shreveport at the time could have predicted. Wide receiver Joe Horn signed with the Pirates as a free agent in May 1995, after failing to make the Baltimore Stallions' active roster the year before. He was traded to the Memphis Mad Dogs a month later, before ever appearing in a game for Shreveport, and it was in Memphis that Horn broke out with a big rookie season that put him on NFL scouts' radar. Horn went on to seven seasons with the New Orleans Saints and four Pro Bowl selections. He is, technically, a former Shreveport Pirate — just one who never actually took the field in purple and white.

Independence Stadium and a Market That Never Fully Committed

The Pirates played their home games at Independence Stadium, a large multi-purpose venue that gave the team plenty of room to grow into if the market had responded the way ownership hoped. As in the CFL's other American markets during this stretch, Shreveport-area fans had a full autumn sports calendar already claimed by other football, and a Canadian-rules league fighting for a foothold in an American college and high school football market found it difficult to build the kind of sustained crowd a two-season franchise needed to turn a profit. Attendance never approached anything close to the stadium's full capacity, and the gap between a good CFL crowd and the building's overall size became harder to ignore as both seasons wore on. The improved 1995 record helped somewhat on the field, but it arrived too late in the CFL's broader American retreat to change the business math league-wide, and Shreveport's own numbers never separated the franchise from the four other American clubs heading toward the same outcome.

How Was CFL Football Different From the Game Louisiana Fans Already Knew?

Like every American CFL expansion club, the Pirates played on a 110-yard field with 20-yard end zones, fielded twelve players per side instead of eleven, and worked with only three downs instead of four — rules that rewarded exactly the kind of downfield passing attack that helped Billy Joe Tolliver post big numbers in 1995. The CFL also allowed a single point, the "rouge," for a missed kick that goes into the end zone and isn't returned out — a rule with no American equivalent that occasionally turned a close game on a single special-teams play. For the full breakdown of how CFL rules differed from the American game, see the Barracudas collection, which covers the rules story in depth.

The Collapse and the Ark-La-Tex Plan That Never Happened

By the end of the 1995 season, the CFL's American expansion was collapsing everywhere at once, and Shreveport's on-field improvement was not enough to change the financial picture. The Pirates ceased operations as part of that broader collapse, and in the aftermath a group of investors calling itself the Ark-La-Tex Football Association explored purchasing the Birmingham Barracudas and relocating that franchise to Shreveport as a direct replacement for the Pirates. The CFL rejected the plan in early 1996 and shut down its entire American operation instead — Birmingham included. Shreveport never got its replacement team, in any name.

What Happened to the CFL's American Experiment?

Shreveport's exit was one piece of a larger unraveling. In February 1996, the CFL formally ended its American expansion. Only the Baltimore franchise, which had won the 1995 Grey Cup as the Baltimore Stallions, survived in any form — relocating north to become the Montreal Alouettes for the 1996 season. Birmingham, Memphis, San Antonio and Shreveport all folded within weeks of each other. No CFL franchise has played in Louisiana, or anywhere else in the United States, since. Forrest Gregg's one CFL head-coaching stop remains a brief, unusual chapter in an otherwise NFL-defined Hall of Fame career, and the Pirates' own record — a historic 3–15 debut followed by a nearly-.500 turnaround the very next year — remains one of the stranger two-year arcs in the CFL's American expansion story.

What Makes Ours Period-Correct

Construction and accuracy. Sewn-on tackle-twill numbers and lettering where the original build called for it, era-correct fonts and colors, and true-to-original construction — every Shreveport Pirates design is checked against period references before it goes live.

More Frequently Asked Questions About the Shreveport Pirates

Who were the Shreveport Pirates?

A professional football team that played two seasons, 1994 and 1995, in the Canadian Football League as part of the league's attempt to expand into the United States. They played at Independence Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Why did the Shreveport Pirates only last two seasons?

The CFL's entire American expansion collapsed by early 1996 due to weak attendance and heavy financial losses across nearly every U.S. club. A planned relocation of the Birmingham Barracudas to Shreveport as a replacement franchise was rejected, and the CFL shut down its American operation entirely.

What was the Pirates' record?

3–15 in 1994, last in the East Division, including a CFL-record fourteen-game losing streak. 5–13 in 1995, missing the playoffs in the newly formed South Division.

Who was the Shreveport Pirates' quarterback?

Mike Johnson and Terrence Jones split time under center in 1994. Veteran NFL quarterback Billy Joe Tolliver started in 1995, throwing for 3,440 yards and 14 touchdowns.

How did the Pirates franchise begin?

It started as a compromise. Owners Bernard and Lonnie Glieberman wanted to move the Ottawa Rough Riders to the United States; the CFL refused to relocate that historic Canadian franchise but gave the Gliebermans a new American expansion team instead, which became the Shreveport Pirates.

Who coached the Shreveport Pirates?

Forrest Gregg, a Pro Football Hall of Fame lineman and former NFL head coach of the Cleveland Browns, Cincinnati Bengals and Green Bay Packers, was installed as head coach by ownership before the team's first season.

Does the Shreveport Pirates' losing streak record still stand?

The fourteen-game losing streak the Pirates set during the 1994 season stood as the longest in Canadian Football League history for years afterward and remains one of the defining statistical footnotes of the league's entire American expansion era — a record set by an expansion roster still finding its footing under a first-year coaching staff.

Did Joe Horn play for the Shreveport Pirates?

He signed with the Pirates in May 1995 but was traded to the Memphis Mad Dogs a month later before appearing in a game for Shreveport. His breakout rookie season happened in Memphis, not Shreveport.

What happened to Forrest Gregg after the Pirates folded?

Gregg's Shreveport stint was his only CFL head-coaching job. His broader résumé — a Pro Football Hall of Fame playing career and NFL head-coaching stops in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Green Bay, including a Super Bowl appearance — was already secure before he ever coached a down in Louisiana, and the two Pirates seasons remain a brief, unusual footnote in an otherwise NFL-defined career.

How many Shreveport Pirates products does Royal Retros carry?

Three — a jersey, a four-colorway T-shirt and a mini helmet. It's the deepest Pirates-specific collection on the open web.

Did any other American cities have CFL teams besides Shreveport?

Yes — Shreveport was one of five American CFL clubs in the mid-1990s, alongside Birmingham, San Antonio, Memphis and the league champion Baltimore Stallions. Only Baltimore's franchise survived the CFL's retreat back to Canada, relocating north to become the Montreal Alouettes.

Shop Related CFL American Expansion Collections

• Baltimore Stallions — The CFL's American flagship and 1995 Grey Cup champion, before relocating north to become the Montreal Alouettes.
• Birmingham Barracudas — The one-season 1995 CFL American club the Ark-La-Tex group hoped to relocate to Shreveport.
• Memphis Mad Dogs — Another short-lived 1995 CFL American club, and the team Joe Horn actually played for.
• San Antonio CFL — The relocated Sacramento franchise that shared Shreveport's South Division in 1995.
• International Football HQ — The full collection of CFL, WLAF and other international football apparel we carry.
• Custom Football Jerseys — The full football jersey catalog, S–5XL, free name and number on most.

The Shreveport Pirates at Royal Retros — Heritage Tribute Gear From the CFL's Two-Season Louisiana Experiment. Sizes S–5XL. 1994–1995, Once and Never Again.