From Matt Schudel in the Washington Post
Part 2
He was loved by some of his teammates, loathed by others, but he had an uncanny ability to inspire confidence. Everywhere he went, his teams won. In 1967, with a club called the Waterbury Orbits, he won his first Atlantic Coast Football League championship. His Lowell (Mass.) Giants were undefeated in 1968, when he was called up for his brief stint with the Patriots. In 1971, he piloted the Norfolk Neptunes — the remnants of the Firebirds — to yet another championship. In 1974, playing for the Philadelphia Bell, he led the upstart World Football League in touchdown passes.
“He told me, ‘You’re the best,’ and I played like it,” said Murphy, who was a wide receiver for the Lowell Giants and Boston Patriots. “He knew how to make you feel better about yourself more than anyone I have ever known. It rubbed off on everybody, the whole team. He exuded this total confidence.”
Mr. Corcoran had permission from his teams to drive to games on his own — “The King doesn’t ride a bus,” he said.
He would pull up in his custom-equipped Lincoln Continental Mark IV, with a mobile telephone, copier and bar. He had his own Coke machine in the trunk. The license plate read “King 9,” for his uniform number. He dressed like a dandy, with platform shoes, leather coats and capes.
“Seeing him walk around Pottstown,” recalled Miles, the lawyer, “was like watching Travolta in ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ “
When they were roommates in 1968, Murphy said, Mr. Corcoran told him to spruce up his wardrobe.
“He burned all my clothes — burned them,” Murphy recalled, “and said, ‘You can’t go out with the King looking like that.’ “
Few of Mr. Corcoran’s teammates at the time knew that, away from the football fields of Pottstown and Norfolk, he was leading the life of a gentleman squire in Potomac, with a wife and two children, and a real estate company called The Royal Group Ltd.
Mr. Corcoran retired from football in 1975 to buy and sell houses and land. In the early 1980s, despite never having ridden a horse, he took up polo and became a creditable amateur player.
His business dealings grew more complex and, at times, questionable. His wife and children moved to Florida, and he rarely saw them again. He never got a divorce.
“As time went on,” said Hugh Wyatt, former player personnel director with the Philadelphia Bell, “Jim Corcoran disappeared, and King Corcoran became the reality.”
Mr. Corcoran did not drink or smoke, but he enjoyed the high life and spent more and more time in Las Vegas. He told people he was working as a singer, which at least one of his friends thought was just another tall tale — until he went to Vegas and, sure enough, saw the King up on stage with Engelbert Humperdinck.
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