The USFL - And What the UFL Can Learn From It

UFL

This article is part two of a three part series. The first part can be found here. When the UFL broke into the public consciousness last May in the New York Times Magazine, one of the biggest surprises was that this new attempt on taking on the NFL goliath was going to play in the fall. Why was this a shock to anyone? After all, the most successful challenger, the American Football League of the 1960’s, played in the fall in many non-NFL markets and met success - the next challenger was the World Football League in the 1970’s which also played in the fall, tried to go the same route, and failed in large part due to financial instability and careless owners. So it certainly wasn’t odd for an alternative football league to go in the fall - even back in the old days when we didn’t have a million channels to cover sports.

Although the NFL wasn’t nearly as powerful then as it is now, I would argue the potential to take on the NFL might be greater today than it was then due to the expansion of wealth in this country and the expansion of television coverage and the power of the internet.

 At any rate, it wasn’t until 1982 that anyone conceived of the idea of spring football. Since then no challenger that has played or been formally announced (to my knowledge) has gone with anything other than spring football. It provides the challenger, after all, with the ability to capture media attention and sports fan attention in a time of year during which indoor sports are wrapping up and the only outdoor sport is Major League Baseball.

The person who conceived of spring football was David Dixon, an antiques dealer from New Orleans. He spent a lot of time planning the league and eventually conducted a study that showed that interest existed in spring football. In the spring of 1982 the league was announced at the 21 Club with teams in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Tampa, Oakland, Denver, Washington, Philadelphia, Birmingham and San Diego (eventually switched to Phoenix after they couldn’t secure a stadium deal). The league was announced with high hopes and with a television deal through ABC/ESPN.

The original plan called for a tight hold on expenses and slow, gradual growth. That plan went out the window rather quickly as Herschel Walker left UGA a year early to join the New York team - which marked an early sign of what would soon become very high spending by many of the owners.

The league averaged 24,000 fans per game in year one (around the expected attendance for the UFL in year one according to Michael Huyghue) and captured a lot of initial interest. All in all it was a successful first season - although most teams lost money. The league decided to add six teams for year two, in large part for the expansion fees which would lead to a few non-financially viable ownership groups being added. The teams added were the Houston Gamblers, Memphis Showboats, Pittsburgh Maulers, San Antonio Gunslingers, Oklahoma Outlaws and the Jacksonville Bulls. Also added was Donald Trump - another wild card who would sign players at larger contracts than ever before, further driving up costs. So, while attendance remained solid (as did the television ratings) the costs were rapidly rising and so the red ink continued to bleed for the United States Football League.

After 1984 the USFL - led by the new guard and Trump - turned away from its roots and announced that it was going to move to the fall and they filed an antitrust lawsuit against the National Football League. All of a sudden some of the old guard folded or merged teams and the USFL would have been down to eight teams in the fall of 1986 - although fourteen teams played in 1985. The headlines were bad that year as instability plagued a few of the teams and the red ink continued to pour in. Tragically, the football was quite good that year according to even the USFL critics (since I never saw a game live I can’t tell you one way or the other).

Ultimately the USFL won the anti-trust lawsuit but the damages awarded amounted to a whopping three dollars. Some of the owners wanted to go on, but at the end of the day the league faced too many challenges to carry on.

It is too bad, because the USFL achieved moderate success and was heading towards being successful in my opinion. Had they held on to the original spending projections and plans put in place by the league founding fathers then they may well have been in existence today - greed got the better of them though.

I think that apart from the AFL the USFL might be the best league to look at for lessons on what to do right. Initially the ownership groups were well financed, they had no teams fold or move mid-season, they went after talented players and pursued new markets, and they embraced a new media form – ESPN – that allowed them to gain more fan interest and attention.

What we ought to learn from the USFL – and what the UFL should learn – is to avoid over-expansion for expansion fees and to avoid getting greedy. The USFL tried to get too big too fast after a relatively successful first year and the expenses became too much for the owners to deal with – that is a lesson the United Football League will need to learn from. They have learned from the World Football League since they intend for every owner to put up the funding for three years before a single down is played, and since the league will have the funding to take over a team if something occurs to an ownership group or even to run a team for a while if they want to go into a market but can not find an owner.

Huyghue wants to get to ten teams by year two and expand to sixteen by year five – in other words double the size of the league within five years of founding. That doesn’t seem too rushed although I believe the rumored international expansion could bring in additional costs the league might not be able to handle in the long term.

We will see how the UFL proceeds now that a challenger is entering the fall football market again.

Nation Hahn @ February 29, 2008