My aggressiveness in signing NFL players also seemed to inspire other USFL owners. The second USFL draft was held on January 4, 1984. The Pittsburgh franchise drafted Heisman Trophy-winner Mike Rozier from Nebraska and signed him five days later. The team’s season-ticket sales immediately jumped from 6,000 to 20,000. Brigham Young quarterback Steve Young, a college superstar, signed a multimillion-dollar contract with the USFL’s Los Angeles Express. Don Klosterman, the president of the LA Express, also managed to sign fourteen other draft picks, every one of whom was a good NFL prospect. Altogether, USFL teams signed nearly half of the top college players we went after. Sports Illustrated posed the obvious question in an article about the success of our draft: “How many more players like Rozier and Young can the NFL afford to lose?”
When our owners met in New Orleans on January 17, I pushed again to move our season to the fall. Given our success in luring NFL players and signing top college prospects, the time couldn’t have been better. I suggested a fall vote right then and there, but the reluctant owners managed to vote through a compromise instead: appointing a long-range planning committee to study the spring-fall question. To me, committees are what insecure people create in order to put off making hard decisions. But at least I’d gotten the fall question on the table as a serious issue. I was made a member of the new committee and I was confident I’d ultimately persuade a majority of owners that the fall was our best hope.
Meanwhile, the NFL was beginning to run scared. The best evidence was a meeting the league held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in February 1984 to discuss its future—and specifically the threat of the USFL. The main seminar—which we didn’t learn about until much later—was conducted by a highly respected Harvard Business School professor named Michael Porter, who had prepared a forty-seven-page document entitled “The USFL vs. the NFL.” Some sixty-five NFL executives attended his presentation, among them Jack Donlan, executive director of the NFL management council, as well as numerous team owners.
Porter bluntly outlined a multipart plan for declaring total war on our league, by employing numerous anticompetitive strategies. His two-and-a-half-hour presentation was divided into sections such as “Offensive Strategies,” “Guerrilla Warfare” and “The Art of War—China 500 B.C.” Porter’s suggestions included trying to “dissuade” ABC from continuing even its spring television contract with the USFL; encouraging USFL players to unionize in order to drive up our costs; and attempting to co-opt the most powerful and influential USFL owners by offering them NFL franchises.
As we launched our second season in the spring of 1984, we weren’t yet aware of the NFL’s secret campaign to destroy us, but we were probably feeling its effects. Several of our more vulnerable owners—most particularly those in Chicago, Washington, San Antonio, and Oklahoma—had begun to experience severe financial problems. The danger to the league was less losing a couple of franchises than having our credibility damaged. As long as we had problems, it was difficult to get the press to focus on our stronger teams. Instead, sportswriters wrote about declining attendance in the weaker cities, and the personal financial problems some owners were having.
Meanwhile, as I feared, the long-range-planning study dragged on. A majority of owners had voted to hire an outside consultant, McKinsey and Company, to conduct the study. McKinsey is probably the best in its business, but I like consultants even less than I like committees. When it comes to making a smart decision, the most distinguished planning committee working with the highest-priced consultants doesn’t hold a candle to a group of guys with a reasonable amount of common sense and their own money on the line.
McKinsey’s study took three months and cost a princely $600,000. Finally, on the morning of August 22, 1984, McKinsey executive Sharon Patrick presented her conclusions to the USFL owners, who had gathered in Chicago. The league’s best hope, she told us, was to continue to play in the spring, to limit expenditures severely, and perhaps to consider a move to the fall somewhere down the line. Among other things, she reported that a majority of fans who’d been surveyed in a poll wanted the USFL to stay in the spring. You can probably guess how much stock I put in polls.
The reality was that we just couldn’t afford to adopt the McKinsey conclusions. Even if we cut our losses in the spring, there was no foreseeable chance of making a profit, and a lot of our weaker owners couldn’t afford to lose another dime. We needed to take radical action—and that’s what I stood up and said. Within two hours of Patrick’s presentation, I managed to get the issue of moving to the fall put to a vote. It passed by more than the required two-thirds majority. That same afternoon we announced the decision, to take effect following one last spring season.
The other thing we began to discuss at the meeting was bringing an antitrust suit against the NFL. Specifically, we authorized our commissioner, Chet Simmons, to send NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle a letter putting the NFL on notice. Simmons stated our views gently: “The position of the USFL as a new sports enterprise, and the market position of the NFL, make it essential to the survival of the USFL that the NFL and the NFL owners operate within the bounds of the laws and regulations which govern the conduct of a business having a dominant market position.” Put more bluntly, our message was this: If you try to hurt us, we’ll sue you.
By October, it was clear that something had changed dramatically in the tenor of our discussions with CBS and NBC. So long as we were just considering a move to the fall, both networks seemed interested in discussing a deal. No sooner did we announce our move, however, than they both backed off totally. It was obvious to me that the NFL was putting enormous pressure on the networks not to do business with us in the fall—particularly on ABC, with whom we already had a contract for the spring.
Pete Rozelle later testified that he’d never even discussed the issue with Roone Arledge, the head of ABC Sports. To me, that was preposterous. Rozelle and Arledge are longtime colleagues and good friends. Would anyone seriously believe that Rozelle, highly concerned about the implications of the USFL’s move to the fall, wouldn’t make his views known to his friend Arledge? And is it really possible that Arledge, a man who made millions of dollars for ABC by inventing NFL Monday Night Football, wouldn’t be highly concerned with keeping Rozelle happy?
The irony is that all three networks—not just ABC but NBC and CBS as well—were actually losing money on NFL games. After total rights fees in excess of $350 million a year, the networks, by their own estimates, lost many millions televising games during 1985.
Even so, no network wanted to risk alienating the NFL. Football is the prestige TV sport, and in order to remain competitive with one another, the three networks were resigned to carrying the NFL as a loss leader. As for the USFL, we were left with no option. On October 17, 1984, we filed an antitrust suit in the southern district court of New York. Specifically, we asked that the NFL be limited to contracts with no more than two of the networks, and that we be awarded damages of $1.32 billion.
In the meantime, we had a more immediate problem: staying alive.
On January 3, 1985, the USFL held its third draft of college seniors. While the Generals had improved greatly, to 9–5, and averaged more than 40,000 fans a game, other teams were falling more deeply into the red. We very much needed a shot in the arm.
My own solution was to go after the best and most exciting college senior. There was little doubt who that was. Doug Flutie of Boston College was a lock to win the Heisman Trophy. In his final game, playing against the University of Miami on national television, Flutie capped his career by throwing a last-second fifty-yard bomb for a touchdown, giving Boston College a 47–45 victory. Very quickly, the pass became one of those instant-replay classics, transforming Flutie into an overnight sports legend. I must have seen the pass at least two dozen times on various newscasts and sports shows.
I also liked the fact that Flutie had great media potential. He was good-looking, well-spoken, and gutsy—the sort of guy the press loves to write about
. There were two minor problems. One was that the Generals already had a very talented quarterback named Brian Sipe. The other was that Doug Flutie stood just five feet ten and weighed only 170 pounds. A number of scouts were skeptical that he could make it in the pros, where virtually every defensive lineman is six feet six and weighs at least 260 pounds.
In the end, I went with my instincts. Brian Sipe was a proven star, but he was also thirty-five years old, and his best years were probably behind him. Doug Flutie, on the other hand, had the potential to become the USFL’s Joe Namath. In the worst case, he’d generate a lot of press, which would help the Generals’ season-ticket sales and the image of the league generally. In the best case, he’d be a great player, too.
On February 5, we signed Flutie to a five-year contract at over $1 million a year—which I personally guaranteed. I don’t like to do that, but a player of Flutie’s stature wasn’t about to risk signing with a financially shaky league unless he had some guarantees. If the league ever did go under, I figured, I could sell his contract to an NFL team.
On February 6, I solved the issue of Brian Sipe by trading him to the Jacksonville Bulls. I wasn’t about to have a very highly paid quarterback sitting on the bench.
Flutie made his debut on February 24, in an away game against the Birmingham Stallions. He started slow but came on very strong and almost pulled out a victory by leading the Generals to three touchdowns in the fourth quarter. As for his box-office value, it was even greater than I expected. The game was televised by ABC and drew a 9 rating—nearly twice what we’d averaged the previous season.
Two other notable events occurred that first weekend of the season, both having to do with quarterbacks. One was the opening-game performance of a quarterback named Jim Kelly of the Houston Gamblers. Kelly threw for 574 yards and five touchdowns, proving that he was as good as any quarterback in either league. Unfortunately, the other quarterback news was not good. Brian Sipe, playing his first game for Jacksonville, suffered a separated shoulder, which seemed almost certain to end his season—and perhaps his career.
On March 10, we had our home opener against the L.A. Express. If I had to pick a high point for the USFL, it was probably that game. Over 60,000 fans turned up, anticipating a duel between the newcomer Flutie and the USFL’s best proven quarterback, Steve Young. Both players put on dazzling shows, and better yet, the Generals came out on top. Flutie threw for two fourth-quarter touchdowns, to give us the victory, 35–24.
The day after Flutie’s great game, I wrote a letter to Harry Usher, our new commissioner, suggesting that the cost of Flutie’s contract be shared among all USFL owners—on the grounds that Flutie’s promotional value was leaguewide. I knew it was highly unlikely that the other owners would go along—and they didn’t—but my attitude is that you can’t get hurt asking.
Flutie, Kelly, and Young represented the good news about the USFL. The bad news was that we were still stuck with a lot of weak teams led by mediocre quarterbacks.
My worst fears about the consequences of having weak partners came true midway through our 1985 season. John Bassett was the owner of the USFL franchise in Tampa Bay. Previously he’d been one of the founders of the ill-fated World Football League. From the very start, Bassett and I had been on opposite sides of nearly every issue—and specifically the move to the fall. I’d managed to bring the majority of my fellow owners over to my way of thinking, but Bassett never stopped fighting me, though he finally, reluctantly, did vote with the majority. Despite our disagreements, I liked him personally, and I felt sympathetic to his situation. On this Sunday afternoon in late March, it was widely known within the league that Bassett had cancer, that he was fighting for his life, and that his behavior had become increasingly unpredictable during the previous few months.
What I’ll never know is whether Bassett’s illness affected his judgment that day. In any case, Bassett agreed to be interviewed by ABC announcer Keith Jackson, who began by asking what he thought was wrong with the USFL. What followed was a tirade. Before a national TV audience, Bassett viciously criticized the concept of moving the USFL to the fall. He called the league its own worst enemy. He said the USFL was guilty of mismanagement and virtually every other horrible sin he could conjure up. I caught the interview on a TV monitor in the press box, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My first thought was that Bassett would make a great witness for the NFL in our antitrust suit. My second thought was that he was just a terribly frustrated man, thoughtlessly venting anger.
If any one person had the potential to offset the damage wrought by Bassett and our other weaker owners, it was probably Harvey Myerson, the attorney we hired in the middle of 1985 to take over our antitrust case. Myerson was the head of the litigation department at the firm Finley Kumble, and he was an expert in antitrust litigation. He also had the sort of pugnacious, confrontational attitude you need when you’re the underdog taking on the establishment. Most of the other USFL owners had long since written off the possibility that we’d win the antitrust suit. The NFL, they believed, was just too entrenched. But from the first time Myerson met us in April 1985, he told us he felt we had a very strong case. He said that we should pull out all the stops to bring it to trial, and that there was a better-than-even chance we’d win.
In the meantime, one bright spot amidst all the USFL’s troubles was the fact that the Generals—and specifically Herschel Walker—were playing so well. For the first two weeks of the season Herschel simply wasn’t being utilized. He’d call me up in my office, depressed, and say, “Mr. Trump, I can run over these guys, if they’d just give me the ball.” I ranted and raved to our coach, Walt Michaels, but it wasn’t until I literally threatened to fire him that he got the point. In the seventh game of the season, Herschel was finally let loose. He ran the ball thirty times for almost 250 yards, setting a league record. In each of the next ten games, he ran for more than 100 yards. By the end of the season he’d racked up 2,411 yards. That broke the all-time professional football rushing record, held previously by Eric Dickerson of the NFL. I got a great kick out of that.
Unfortunately, Doug Flutie was injured late in the 1985 season, and that almost certainly cost us the USFL championship. In the playoffs, we lost by three points to the transplanted Baltimore Stars, while Flutie stood on the sidelines.
In February 1986 we agreed to reduce the number of USFL teams from fourteen to eight. In the process, we weeded out the owners with the biggest financial problems. We also consolidated our strengths. The Houston Gamblers, for example, merged with my Generals. As a result, we created a dream backfield that I’m convinced had no equal in professional football: Herschel Walker at running back and Jim Kelly at quarterback. The other teams that survived the consolidation were also all among our strongest and most popular: Memphis, Baltimore, Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, Arizona, and Birmingham.
In April we got more good news when a federal judge named Peter Leisure set a jury trial to begin the next month in our antitrust suit against the NFL. That ensured us a verdict before the start of our first fall season. If we won the suit, we’d be in great shape to launch. If we lost, I considered it highly unlikely that the USFL could survive—but at least we’d finally be able to cut our losses.
The future of the USFL now rested in the hands of the six jurors chosen to hear our case.
The jury system is designed to ensure the fairest possible trial. The problem is that a pool of randomly selected jurors isn’t necessarily qualified to make judgments on complicated issues. Sometimes that isn’t bad, particularly if you have a case that’s weak and a lawyer who is very persuasive. The problem is unpredictability. You can have a great case and come out a loser, and you can have a terrible case but come out a winner.
We got to present our side first, and very quickly, a consensus formed in the courtroom that Harvey Myerson was beating the living daylights out of the NFL. He put Commissioner Pete Rozelle on the stand and almost literally took him apart. For twenty-six years
, Rozelle had been running the NFL very successfully and very smoothly. Of course, you don’t have to be a genius to run a monopoly. Put that same man up against a tough competitor, and it may be a whole different story.
Myerson pressed, and Rozelle got flustered. He mumbled, stumbled, and spoke badly, he turned red, and he took back statements. At times he appeared to be flat-out lying. Halfway through his week of cross-examination, Rozelle had become physically sick. His performance was so weak that I found myself actually feeling sorry for him. In retrospect, however, I realize that the jury probably felt at least as sorry for Rozelle as I did, and that may well have helped save the NFL’s case.
Rozelle was least credible, I thought, when he talked about the Harvard seminar entitled “The USFL vs. the NFL”—the linchpin of our case. Rozelle claimed he hadn’t known anything about the seminar, and that he got “physically ill” when he first heard about it, weeks after the fact.
“To your stomach, sir?” asked Harvey Myerson, totally deadpan.
“Yes,” said Rozelle.
“I see,” said Myerson. “How long did it take you to recover?”
“About half a day,” Rozelle replied. I doubt that a single person in the courtroom believed Rozelle during that exchange.
At another point, Myerson introduced some devastatingly incriminating comments that Rozelle had made before a congressional committee, back in 1961. At the time, the NFL’s games were being shown on just one network, CBS. “If all the networks were tied up by one football league,” a senator asked Rozelle during his testimony, “wouldn’t the other league possibly be at a major competitive disadvantage?”
“I should certainly think so,” Rozelle said, quickly adding, “There is no intention on our part of using more than one network.” By 1987, of course, the NFL had all three networks tied up. Didn’t that put our league at a major competitive disadvantage? Rozelle could only hem and haw.
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