In case you missed it–and based on attendance and TV ratings you did–the USFL is back again. People older than 40 remember the United States Football League from our youth–as the much-ballyhooed spring and summer alternative to the National Football League. The league launched in 1983 in 12-cities–most of which were in NFL markets with established football fan bases and large stadiums. The original owners had a plan in place for slow growth, controlled expenditures, and staying in the spring and summer to avoid direct competition with the NFL–which economic advisers had told them would be akin to suicide. For two years, the USFL followed the plan–expanding as expected to 16-teams in their second season and seeing slow growth in attendance and TV ratings. But that plan for steady progress and financial prudence was blown up in 1984 thanks primarily to one man–Donald Trump.
Trump purchased the New Jersey Generals of the USFL after being rebuffed a couple of times by the NFL in buying one of their franchises. So The Donald hatched a scheme that would give the NFL no choice but to accept him. He thought that he could almost single-handedly force a merger of the USFL with the NFL–or to at least make it so expensive to operate an NFL team that they would just bring him on board to end the economic bloodshed. So Trump stomped all over the plans of the other USFL owners and did only what he thought was best for him–and his dreams of owning an NFL team.
Trump started by signing high-profile players that had been expected to play in the NFL–like Doug Flutie and Herschel Walker–to contracts higher than any paid to NFL stars. In order to compete, other USFL owners tried to follow suit. And while it brought bigger name players to the league–it also extended a lot of the teams financially to points in which their operations were no longer viable. Some even ran out of money in the middle of the season–and the league itself had to take over operations of those franchises just so players got paid and didn’t quit.
Trump also did what he does best: belittle and bully those he was working with. He described the USFL plan to remain a spring and summer sport “small potatoes” and immediately began to push for the league to move to a fall season to directly compete with the NFL. But here again, there was–as there always is with Trump–an ulterior motive. Trump knew that the TV networks were never going to sign a contract with the USFL–as it would cost them their far more lucrative NFL contracts. So when that scenario played out, Trump convinced his fellow owners to sue the NFL for anti-trust violations–claiming the established league “coerced” the networks to deny the USFL revenue. Again, it was never Trump’s goal to actually have a separate football league with network TV contracts. He just wanted to make it too expensive for the NFL to continue to compete–and either bring in his franchise as part of a merger, or to let him buy an existing team or an expansion team.
But the NFL decided to call Trump’s bluff–and the anti-trust lawsuit actually went to trial. And the USFL actually won (a rare court win for Donald Trump) as the jury decided that the NFL did violate its anti-trust status by threatening to take away TV contracts from any network that signed on with a fall USFL season. But, when asked to decide upon the damages to be awarded to the USFL owners, the jury settled on one-dollar–citing the fact that the league had a viable product in the spring and summer–but by deciding to directly compete with the NFL in the fall, they had created the very situation that led to their economic “harm”. Because of anti-trust laws, the amount awarded by the jury was tripled to three-dollars. The law firm that represented Trump and the USFL still has that three dollar check from the NFL–as no one ever wanted to cash it.
And so, with the economic future of the entire league relying on Trump’s hare-brained scheme to get money from the NFL–or a merger into a much more profitable entity–now dashed, the USFL folded after just three seasons–having lost hundreds of millions of dollars–and leaving hundreds of players, coaches, front office personnel and other staff without jobs.
As for Trump, he walked away from the carnage practically unscathed. He simply wrote off his losses on his taxes, stuck a bunch of other people with the debt, called his fellow USFL owners “losers” in books and interviews, and moved on to his next schemes: failed casinos and an airline. This latest version of the USFL is owned entirely by Fox Sports and exists strictly as a “television show”–with franchises given city names–but playing all of their games in Birmingham, Alabama–so Fox doesn’t have to ship broadcast equipment all over the country. Hopefully a petty, vindictive, ex-president doesn’t get it in his head that he wants to be a professional sports owner again–or I would hold off on buying that Michigan Panthers gear.
