Best Team to Leave Town in the Past 12 Months

"I wept." With those simple words, Ray Hudson, the most quotable coach this side of Knute Rockne, confirmed what South Florida soccer fans had feared: The four-year-old Miami Fusion was dead, a victim of the money-lusting contraction fever that has gripped professional sports. The Major League Soccer team was killed by owner Ken Horowitz, who had steadfastly maintained he would support the Fusion for the long haul and then unceremoniously bailed out, insisting the action would make the sport stronger. That the death came less than six months after the Fusion completed a fairy-tale season only made the sting worse. In his first full year as coach, the always colorful Hudson led the team to its best record (16-5-5) ever, missing the MLS championship match by only one goal. The English-born Hudson, who first endeared himself to South Florida fútbol fans in the 1980s as a member of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, is now coaching D.C. United in the nation's capital. As for professional soccer in South Florida, with two failures on its record, fuhgeddaboudit.