35 years before the (second) XFL, the USFL brought football into the springtime
Aux Features Wiki Wormhole
We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 6,016,226-week series, Wiki Wormhole.
This week’s entry: United States Football League
What it’s about: The only kind of football fans can’t get from the NFL: More football! In 1983, New Orleans businessman David Dixon launched the USFL, not to compete with the venerable National Football League, but to complement it, playing a season in the spring and summer, the offseason for both pro and college football. It was a winning formula… until the league collapsed after just three seasons.
Biggest controversy: Dixon built a strong model for a league—if only his fellow team owners had followed it. Dixon had helped steer the NFL’s expansion into New Orleans in 1967 (and was an initial co-owner of the Saints). That same year, he co-founded World Championship Tennis, a pro men’s tennis tour that ran until 1990. But two years before either, he had the idea of a spring/summer football league, and he spent decades planning and recruiting team owners.
His outline for the league was called the Dixon Plan. In it, teams would play in NFL-caliber stadiums, the league would secure a national TV contract, and teams would tightly control spending. The first two more or less worked out—the NFL did pressure some stadiums into not leasing to the USFL, which left a few teams scrambling for a home field. With NBC and CBS broadcasting NFL games, rival ABC (and its corporate sibling, the nascent ESPN) ponied up $13 million to broadcast the first season. But controlling costs was part of the league’s undoing.
Some sports leagues have a salary cap—a hard limit on how much teams can spend on players. The Dixon Plan was merely a suggestion, so some teams began trying to outbid the NFL (and their USFL rivals) for players, and even the fiscally responsible teams felt like they had to overspend to be competitive. So while the USFL quickly drew fans and, “was regarded as a relatively good product,” most teams were spending money faster than it was coming in. In frustration, Dixon sold his share and quit.
Making things even worse, the league got into business with the worst businessman in America. After the first season, the New Jersey Generals franchise was bought by a man who once lost a billion dollars running a casino. New owner Donald Trump immediately began agitating to move games to the fall to compete directly with the NFL. Trump openly admitted that his plan was for the USFL to fail, in the hope that the NFL would absorb a few franchises from the wreckage, as it had when it merged with the (far more successful) AFL in 1970. The original owners were largely opposed, but Dixon was out, and the most vocal supporter of the status quo, Tampa Bay Bandits owner John F. Bassett, had to sell his stake in the team when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The owners voted to move to the fall.
Trump’s plan half-succeeded: Moving to the fall season did destroy the league. By abandoning its original schedule, the USFL turned down $175 million from ABC for four more seasons of spring football, and had no TV deal lined up for the fall season. Half the USFL’s teams played in NFL markets, and a few folded rather than try and compete for attendance with storied franchises like the Detroit Lions or Pittsburgh Steelers. Finally, an increasingly desperate USFL sued the NFL for antitrust violations, hoping a cash settlement would help finance the flailing league through its first fall season. A jury found that the NFL was an illegal monopoly, but that the USFL’s financial woes had been brought on by the league’s own poor decisions, the move to fall chief among them. The jury awarded the USFL three dollars, and the league folded. Neither Trump nor any of the other USFL owners were welcomed into the NFL, although the league would eventually place its own teams in USFL markets like Jacksonville, Tennessee, and Arizona.
Strangest fact: There’s a fairly straight line from Trump’s running the USFL into the ground to his presidency, which goes through Buffalo. No NFL team benefited more from the USFL’s collapse than the Buffalo Bills, as rookie quarterback Jim Kelly and star running back Joe Cribbs opted to play for the USFL instead. After two years, both players returned to Buffalo, which built a braintrust around two other USFL alum: general manager Bill Polian, and coach Marv Levy. The Polian/Levy braintrust built a Kelly-led team that would advance to four Super Bowls (and lose all four). The Bills had one more USFL connection in 2014—when original team owner Ralph Wilson died, Trump attempted to buy the team. He was outbid by energy magnate Terry Pegula, but the NFL was also prepared to reject his bid because of his past with the USFL. His failure to buy the Bills “was cited as a major factor” in Trump moving on to a new project: an unlikely run for the presidency. (Along similar lines, there’s an alternate timeline where George W. Bush got the job he really wanted—Commissioner Of Baseball—and never ran for president).
Thing we were happiest to learn: Some NFL greats got their start in the USFL. Alongside Kelly, fellow quarterback Steve Young, defensive end Reggie White, and tackle Gary Zimmerman are all in the NFL’s Hall Of Fame (as are Levy and Polian). The USFL had made waves by signing three consecutive winners of the Heisman Trophy, college football’s top honor. Of those three, Herschel Walker was an All-Pro best remembered for a trade that sent him to Minnesota for a bushel of draft picks that allowed the Dallas Cowboys to build a team that won three Super Bowls; Doug Flutie had limited success in the NFL, but became perhaps the greatest player in Canadian Football League history. (The third, running back Mike Rozier, was a modest success with the Houston Oilers and Atlanta Falcons.)
Thing we were unhappiest to learn: Even during the league’s early success, stability was not its strong suit. Dixon’s plan called for the league to expand from 12 teams to 16 in the second year, but the owners decided to go to 18 so they could collect two more franchise fees. But by year three, they were back down to 14. The Michigan Panthers, one of the league’s winningest and best-attended teams, folded after a year because ownership was adamantly against the move to the fall season. The expansion Pittsburgh Maulers followed suit. The Chicago Blitz couldn’t peel fans away from the Bears even in the offseason, and the Arizona Wranglers couldn’t get fans to show up in the heat of summer, and those teams folded as well (although the Oklahoma Outlaws then moved to Arizona immediately after. It’s a dry heat, after all).
Had the league played a fall season in 1986, it would have done so with only eight teams, three of which were in Florida. Every team that shared a city with an NFL franchise but one folded, rather than have to not only compete directly with a more established team for fans, but also find a stadium not already occupied by the NFL. Only the Tampa Bay Bandits were willing to go head-to-head with a crosstown rival, as they were one of the USFL’s most successful and popular teams, and their NFL counterparts, the Buccaneers were among the NFL’s least successful at the time.
Also noteworthy: The NFL eventually adopted many of the USFL’s on-field innovations. Instant replay, the two-point conversion (already a staple of college football), a salary cap (although the USFL cap was ignored by owners), and scheduling a marquee game on Sunday night were all adopted by the NFL not long after the USFL folded.
Strangest fact: The USFL both helped and hurt one NFL team in particular: the Buffalo Bills. No NFL team benefited more from the USFL’s collapse than the Bills, as rookie quarterback Jim Kelly and star running back Joe Cribbs opted to play for the USFL instead. After two years, both players returned to Buffalo, who built a braintrust around two other USFL alum, general manager Bill Polian, and coach Marv Levy. The Polian/Levy braintrust built a Kelly-led team that would advance to four Super Bowls (and lose all four).
Further Down The Wormhole: Donald Trump made one more run at professional football. When the Buffalo Bills’ owner, AFL co-founder Ralph Wilson, died in 2014, Trump attempted to buy the team. He was outbid by energy magnate Terry Pegula, but the NFL was also prepared to reject his bid because of his past with the USFL. His failure to buy the Bills “was cited as a major factor” in Trump moving on to a new project: an unlikely run for the presidency. (Along similar lines, there’s an alternate timeline where George W. Bush got the job he really wanted—Commissioner Of Baseball—and never ran for president). Trump—an oft-bankrupt businessman with no experience in politics whatsoever—was an unlikely candidate for the White House. But he was far from the most unlikely candidate. That honor goes to Trump’s 2020 primary challenger Rocky De La Fuente, who vied for the Democratic nomination in 2016 while also running for Marco Rubio’s Senate seat as a Republican, before running for Senate in nine different states in 2018. We’ll gear up for Super Tuesday by looking at De La Fuente’s quixotic career as a candidate next week.
59 Comments
A chunk of text is duplicated between “Strangest Fact” and “Further Down The Wormhole”:…Trump attempted to buy the team. He was outbid by energy magnate Terry Pegula, but the NFL was also prepared to reject his bid because of his past with the USFL. His failure to buy the Bills “was cited as a major factor” in Trump moving on to a new project: an unlikely run for the presidency. (Along similar lines, there’s an alternate timeline where George W. Bush got the job he really wanted—Commissioner Of Baseball—and never ran for president).
The copy editors all worked for Deadspin.(anybody who ever read Deadspin knows I’m kidding)
Fact so strange you got to write about it twice.
They really has to mention it twice because it’s so fucked up
I’m seeing double! Four awful presidents!
And each one is doubly bad, so it’s like there’s eight of them!!
Sorry about that. I switched next week’s topics at the last minute (when I learned of the existence of Rocky De La Fuente), so I cannibalized the Trump section of “Strangest Fact” to rewrite the ending. I rewrote “Strangest Fact,” but editorial only swapped in one section. Oops!
It was like watching the Bills lose the Super Bowl, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Thanks for the memories!
sure. but where’s your editor? editors help, man..
I wonder if repetition counts as sticking to sports?
I am old enough to remember that back in the 1960’s, after Richard Nixon lost the California governor’s election and told the public that they would’t have him to kick around anymore, there was talk of making him the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
The USFL made the WFL look like the ABA
“I agree”–WHA legend Gordie Howe
It is too bad that Steve Young lost two years to playing for their lousy, cash-strapped LA franchise, which lured him with a $40 million contract that he ended up taking pennies on the dollar for in a settlement just to be let out of it so he could jump to the NFL.
But, he ended up as Joe Montana’s back-up, eventually got the starting job as 49ers quarterback, and won a Super Bowl.
Yeah, I feel like of all the players left out in the cold when the USFL folded, Young’s probably the one who we should be shedding the fewest tears over. It all worked out pretty well for him in the end.I’d argue the only person who things worked out better for was Kelly, as historically the Buffalo Bills had never developed a quarterback until the current guy (Kemp came from the Chargers; Kelly from the USFL; Bledsoe from the Pats; Flutie from the CFL; even Tyrod Taylor who broke the playoff drought came from the Ravens). Throwing for nine million yards over those two USFL seasons was probably better preparation than playing as a rookie for terrible Bills teams would have been. Plus, the Bills got so many good draft picks from the two last-place seasons when Kelly was away, they were able to surround him with a couple of other Hall of Famers.
To say nothing of losing a year or two as a Tampa Bay Buc….
That pennies on the dollar settlement was still more than what the Bengals offered him which was 5 years at 500k + $1 million signing bonus he made out ok.
So, Trump deliberately sank the USFL to try to settle for an NFL team, but still failed at failing and ended up with nothing? I think this guy is not good at making deals or leadership!
I don’t really see the endgame for him here. Even if some of the USFL teams had moved to the NFL, they wouldn’t have wanted another New York area team. I guess he could have moved them somewhere, but it seems like it would have been easier to take teams that are already thriving in underserved markets.
It really doesn’t make a lot of sense, but keep in mind he’s very, very, very dumb.
you might have missed a couple more ‘veries’….i mean in the absolute most god damn fucking stupid, always failing upwards bastard i ever heard of…
I’m sure he would have moved the Bills to Toronto, because he loves breaking hearts.
Plus, Canada’s two borders away from Mexico!
I think this guy is not good at making deals or leadership!It’s a good thing he hasn’t been put in charge of anything important.
There were so many opportunities to stop this current timeline that I’m convinced we’re in an alternate one where someone fucked up when they came back in time and now we’re screwed
FRANCO!
I’m gonna blame Barry Allen.
It’s interesting to watch old clips of Trump. He’s still an idiot, but his vocabulary and speech patterns are much more coherent and sophisticated than anything from now.
His dad Fred Trump had Alzheimer’s for six years before he finally passed away. Just saying
20 years ago I moved into this house. The young teen-aged daughter was moving into Trump’s organization and the parents, who disliked Trump, were somewhat disturbed by this. I don’t even know if they talk to her anymore.
IIRC, the USFL had an interesting idea about restricting teams to drafting players only from certain schools, basically in their backyard. For instance the Philly team, the Stars, could draft from Penn State and a few other area schools. The real powerhouse schools, like Alabama, were open to all teams though, and some other schools that weren’t situated near any team were sort of randomly assigned. I know it led to the Stars fielding several former Penn Staters and since I was a PSU fan at the time I watched the Stars. Also, Trump is a tool.
The NBA up until 1965 allowed “territorial draft picks”—a team could forfeit its first round pick in order to select a player from a college within 50 miles of their home stadium. That is how Philadelphia drafted Wilt Chamberlain and Cincinnati got Oscar Robertson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_territorial_pick
ABC also had the NFL during the years of the USFL, the network was the home of Monday Night Football. Also in the mid-80s ESPN and ABC were not yet corporate siblings.
I guess I assumed ABC and ESPN were already together since they shared the TV deal. And I did know ABC had MNF, but surely one game a week wasn’t enough to satisfy their lust for ratings!
That was the way it was set up since the AFL-NFL merger CBS had the NFC rights NBC had the AFC and ABC had Monday night. There were no changes until ESPN got Sunday nights in 87 and Fox outbid CBS in 93.
Do maybe if they offer Trump the Jets he’ll drop out of the 2020 race???
Jets fan here…haven’t we suffered enough?
Give him the Knicks. Can he be worse than Dolan?
How about we get him to step down in exchange for part ownership of the Packers?
Crazy how our country would be so much better if Bush II and Trump had gone into professional sports.
I don’t even WANT to know where MLB would have started a war against Drugs of Performance Enhancement.
The first time Trump destroyed something beautiful for the sake of his own ego.
If only that were true.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90137202/hey-remember-when-trump-destroyed-precious-art-history
Years later, this became the plot of Bioshock.
“After the first season, the New Jersey Generals franchise was bought by a man who once lost a billion dollars running a casino.”And, he’s in charge of our economy. Seriously!? How do you lose money on a casino?
Well, this is the same guy who bought a team for $9 million from a guy who was hoping to pawn them off for $3 million, managed to bankrupt the league taking down all the other owners only to have Giants owner Mara troll him with a $1.00 payout in court. The podcast Business Wars series the NFL vs USFL is fun narrative of Donald Trump’s hubris. Well you know fun if he wasn’t POTUS.
No mention of the ESPN, 30 for 30 documentary of the same topic (“Who Killed the USFL?”)All about the wild years of when the USFL was at its height as a league. Then you get in-depth with how asshole Trump pretty much ruined everything. (Or at least made a slow bleed into a full-on hemorrhage).
Generally, if Wikipedia doesn’t mention it, I don’t mention it. But I maintain that the USFL could have righted the ship had Trump not gotten involved (and especially if Dixon had stuck around). Yes, they lost some money, but ABC/ESPN was about to give them a windfall, and every league — the NFL included — had a chaotic start where teams folded and moved around. Tonawanda (a suburb directly north of Buffalo) had an NFL franchise! They played one season, with no home games, and it’s likely they never even had a stadium! The USFL was pretty together compared to the early NFL!
I read Jeff Pearlman’s book about the USFL, “Football for a Buck” and it appeared that one of the league’s biggest problems from the beginning was that it either could not or would not sufficiently determine the actual financial status of the owners. Some of them stated that they had more assets than they actually did have. They even had a total fraud, William Oldenburg, owner of the L.A. Express who signed Steve Young to a multi-million dollar deal, who had no money, but put on a big front. The league would have had to get rid of that stuff in order to succeed.
And that’s after Dixon spent a lot of time searching for owners who he thought would be financially stable enough! You really need to find 12 very rich people who are willing to lose a lot of money in the short term, and you don’t get to be extremely rich by being willing to lose a lot of money.
Are you saying that because of Trump, the USFL had blood coming out of its eyes, coming out of its wherever?
Trump’s insistence in that doc that he did nothing wrong, misjudged nothing, screwed over no one, was a pretty great introduction to his presidency.
Little bit of bonus content: I happened to be a guest on a friend’s sports-talk radio show (in which I discuss a future WW topic I’ve been keeping in reserve!), and mentioned I was writing this week’s about the USFL, so he sent me this. He said he was obsessed with the USFL as a kid when it was running, but his mom wouldn’t allow him to watch the games on TV, because she didn’t want his first experience with football to be what she considered an inferior product!https://www.80sfootballcards.com/post/the-greatest-game-you-ve-never-seen-jim-kelly-outduels-steve-young-in-1985-usfl-classicAlso, here’s a link to the radio show (which is good until Wednesday at 7, when it gets replaced by this week’s episode!) in case anyone’s interested: https://www.ashevillefm.org/show/steve-sax-syndrome/And edited to add one post-script: the best NFL game I ever saw was also Jim Kelly outdueling Steve Young. The Super Bowl-era Bills played Young’s 49ers, and it was razzle-dazzle up and down the field with everything but the surprise return of Jim Brown. It was the only NFL game in history to that point (and maybe still) where neither team punted. It was just scoring all day long, like the world’s greatest game of street football. The Bills had the ball last, so they won.
I love a rebel league. Probably the last ‘successful’ rebel league (in the sense that some of the teams got absorbed into another league) was the WHA. The USFL was fun. I’m the only person I know who liked it.
How drunk was the person who edited this article?
The USFL’s level of play was much better than today’s XFL, period. The league also drew plenty of fans in more than a few markets, especially in Houston. Jim Kelly and the Gamblers put on a weekly clinic on the finer points of the run-n-shoot offense and the city loved it. They drew huge crowds in the Astrodome, even though they shared the stadium with the Astros.Houstonians were much more upset when the Gamblers left than they were when the Oilers did.
Other than the few top college stars they poached it was pretty much the same. The first couple of years there were a lot of retired CFL guys who signed and did quite well.
And as mentioned in the article, poaching those college stars—often for record contracts—was part of what ultimately doomed the league. But it was fun while it lasted!