30 for 30 running thread

1. Because they could never beat the Stars.

2. From what I've read, the decision to move to Baltimore for their final season was entirely based upon the anticipated move from the spring to the fall in 86. Apparently they would not have been able to use Veteran's Stadium in the fall and the idea of simultaneous head to head fall competition with the Eagles a bit daunting. Meanwhile, the Colts had just left Baltimore so there was a huge new market void and empty stadium there just waiting to be filled.

 

NFL
CFL
USFL

And.....?

 

Thoroughly enjoyed it. Besides giving Trump the metaphorical fuck you (always enjoyable), I was taken aback by the sheer love everybody seemed to have for that league.

 

Colts and Ravens

 

The Stars also shared the Vet with the Phillies, meaning they had to relocate postseason home games (remember the USFL postseason was in June and July) to Franklin Field in their second season.

So they moved to Baltimore, where the Colts had just left. But because of a condition in the settlement between the Colts and the city, no pro football team could play in Memorial Stadium until 1986. So the Stars actually played the 1985 season at Maryland's Byrd Stadium.

That team was loaded, though ... Irv Eatman, William Fuller, Sean Landeta, Sam Mills, Bart Oates all went on to great NFL careers, but their best player was running back Kelvin Bryant, who had some solid years with the Redskins before a neck injury ruined his career.

 

Pretty mundance doc. Can't imagine anyone other than those who watched some of the USFL being interested in it. There's really nothing in it that gives you the feeling that the league was anything special. Because it wasn't.

Really, the only thing noteworthy about the doc was the Trump stuff. Ask yourself this -- what if Trump was right? What if the USFL was headed for failure and would have crashed and burned much earlier if not for him? What if it really was small potatoes and was never going to be anything more than what it was?

Only Sean Landeta had anything interesting to say among the ex-players. He talked about how the USFL boosted player salaries immensely in just three years. That's the real legacy. Everyone else was just rah-rah about how great it was to play in the league and how much fun they had. Yawn to that.

 

Since the USFL folded, the NFL expanded to Jacksonville, Carolina, Cleveland/Baltimore and Houston/Nashville. That's four franchises.

If the USFL owners could have pulled off an ABA/NBA type of merger where four of the USFL owners would have had NFL franchises, that is a huge windfall.

 

Apparently Dan Snyder learned nothing from the Donald's failures.

Trump didn't give a shit about a championship team. He didn't give a shit about the USFL. All he gave a shit about is that signing Herschel Walker and Doug Flutie made him famous.

 

And you've also got to remember that the NFL in the early 80s wasn't the juggernaut it is now. They had just gone through a massive strike that killed almost half a season, and would have another work stoppage five years later.

The USFL was legitimate football, and legitimate competition. I think it was Steve Young who pointed out that 10 or 12 USFL veterans made the Pro Bowl in 1987, two years after it folded.

(And I looked that up just to check --- Jim Kelly, Mike Rozier, Herschel Walker, Kevin Mack, Anthony Carter, Gary Clark, Gary Zimmerman, Reggie White, Sam Mills and Gerald McNeil were the only ones I could identify as USFL veterans, though there might have been more. Still it's an impressive list.)

There's no reason to believe that the USFL couldn't have survived long enough to at least force a merger had it stayed in the spring. Arena Football, which not-coincidentally sprang up a year after the NFL/USFL lawsuit verdict was reached, lasted 20-plus years after all.

 

The point is that it didn't need to become much more than it already was if it had stuck to it's original business plan.

The original plan envisioned by founders like Bassett was to keep the budgets reasonable and play the games in the spring where they wouldn't have to face head to head competition with the NFL. And it appeared to be basically working after the first season. But they strayed far away from that, especially after Trump came in after the first season. Trump basically said "fuck that" to the original plan and declared that we're gonna outspend the NFL, steal their stars, and move to the fall to take the NFL on head to head, and he got other owners to foolishly follow him.

Small potatoes was fine for many. Would the league have found a niche and survived if they'd stuck to the original plan? Who knows, but it certainly would've lasted longer than it did. Overambition is what hastened the league's demise more than anything--overspending, overexpansion, prematurely moving to the fall. And Trump absolutely was the guy leading that charge. The idea that the league "would've crashed and burned much earlier" without Trump is utter nonsense. The best season the league had was the one without him and he changed its course in a suicidal direction.

 

I enjoyed the show, but it was extremely disjointed. It jumped from one point to the next with little or no transition.

It also glossed over the failure of several franchises, some pre-Trump, including the Boston Breakers, which they devoted an inordinate amount of time to otherwise, probably to give Bill Simmons face time. The whole Chicago Blitz-Arizona Wranglers and Michigan Panthers-Oakland Invaders merge sagas were never broached.

I don't understand the affinity felt by some for the league. It was a bullshit league that garnered some initial interest based on the public's low opinion of the NFL after the '82 strike (yes, the almighty NFL was not beloved at various times of its history, the game itself has always been), but it quickly fell off and was basically an annoyance for most of its existence.

 

I missed the show last night due to other commitments. Did they discuss the whereabouts of the $3 check? ESPN.com did a series on the USFL a few years ago and it was in the desk drawer of one of the Memphis Showboats officials (I think?) who kept it as a souvenier.