Posted on 05/15/2012 7:43:05 AM PDT by ConservativeStatement
The first time the United States Football League was established in 1983, it gave a quick scare to the NFL. The USFL owners signed players like Reggie White, Steve Young, Jim Kelly and Herschel Walker, players the NFL actually wanted, by giving them big-time contracts.
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They are only going to pay players $3000 per game, and only play in cities without an NFL franchise.
Who is really going to watch a bunch of Arena League rejects when the Memphis Mugwumps travel to take on the Toledo Green Hornets?
Oh no! Not again! Locally (Birmingham) we have had the USFL Stallions, AFA Vulcans, Areana league Steeldogs, WFL Fire, XFL Bolts, and CFL Barracudas. All promised that “this time it will be different, we’re hear to stay”.
Bull crap
Will Doug Flutie come back?
Then I guess Fun City is in line for a team.
Who’s going to watch? NFL Scouts and Football Junkies like me. I can’t stand the Football Down Time from the end of the Super Bowl until Late August. I used to watch the NBA and Major League Baseball, but now find them both boring and predictable. I don’t expect the USFL to draw a lot of fans, but it might be a diversion away from an otherwise boring Spring/Summer.
Heh.. I can break out my old Philadelphia Stars shirt.
Maybe now they could do what the English Premier League does, bring in Promotion/Relegation. I guess that idea wouldn’t go over very well in St Louis.
TV Contract? I seem to remember ESPN used to televise the USFL. But that was back when ESPN used to televise tiddly-wink tournaments.
This is sure to bring back memories.
I had season tix to the Philadelphia Stars at old Franklin Field. That was fun. Spring football. Weather got better each week (rather than the reverse).
The interesting idea was that each franchise had “geographic rights” to undrafted players. Consequently there where a ton of Penn State players on the Stars. Players that I had watched on the ‘83 National Championship team were still playing for the Stars.
IMHO, Donald Trump killed the league. He wasn’t on board with the vision of the league as not being competitive with the NFL. He wanted an NFL franchise and when he couldn’t get it, he started bidding wars for top college players. Other owners followed suit, and the league failed.
If the USFL had stayed with the original vision of complementing the NFL, they might have survived. We’ll never know.
People forget or don’t know that ABC/ESPN offered the USFL a TV contract of a couple of hundred million I believe(in 1986 dollars too) but the USFL turned it down to move to fall and sue the NFL.
Donald Trump killed the USFL
Oh no!
That means LA will have a team and NFL teams won't be able to threaten to move there so they can extort taxpayer money for more new stadiums from existing NFL cities.
Will this team be resurrected?
People in Toledo. The same kinds of folks really that watch D league basketball, and minor league hockey and baseball, regular folks in small towns. Minor league sports are a lot of fun, tickets tend to be cheap, there tends to be a lot of “side” entertainment during breaks in the game, there’s a strong community atmosphere. On a dollar value of entertainment basis minor league sports kicks the crap out of big league.
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