Rozelle

  by the league constitution. Rozelle quietly made it known that he

  was of that same opinion.

  Others decided to abstain because they themselves were think-

  ing they might like to move their franchises one day and were qui-

  etly willing to see how this thing played out. The move, which

  Davis Again: Feud without End

  231

  required three- fourths approval by league owners, was defeated 22– 0 with five owners abstaining.

  When Davis followed through on his threat, the nfl prevented

  it with an injunction. It was at that point that Davis joined an anti-

  trust suit previously filed by the LA Coliseum and also filed an

  antitrust lawsuit of his own. He sued and later he debated, and

  later sued again, and later, well, on and on and on.

  In all Davis sued and fought his own league what seemed to be

  as many times as most folks see doctors for their annual physi-

  cals. In 1982 a federal judge finally gave him the right to move his

  helmets, his shoulder pads, and football team to play in the aging

  Los Angeles Coliseum.

  “We knew,” Moyer recalls, “that we were in deep trouble. We

  were in a city where the hostile Los Angeles Examiner and the local tv and radio hammered away at how Los Angeles, a great town,

  had been deprived of professional football. We tried and failed

  to get a change of venue because it was clear that in the minds of

  the jurors, the only issue would be why this great team shouldn’t

  come to their city.”

  So Davis won. It was settled. Right.

  The nfl should have known better, and so should the City of

  Los Angeles. Historically, in the convoluted mind- set of Al Davis,

  nothing was ever over. In his mind he never heard a fat lady sing.

  In 1987 Davis, as though he had suddenly realized all the dis-

  advantages at the Coliseum itself, which were apparent before he

  even moved in, signed a good- faith stadium agreement with Irwin-

  dale, California. When the town could not deliver, he pocketed a

  nonrefundable $10 million.

  Then in 1995, after failing to get a new Los Angeles Stadium,

  he went before the league’s owners and asked permission to move

  back to Oakland, where he had been promised major improve-

  ments. Although as a result of his court decision other teams either

  planned to move or had moved, he was still Al Davis, and he won

  the right to return to Oakland by a wafer- thin margin of a sin-

  gle vote.

  232

  Davis Again: Feud without End

  He immediately sued the league again, for $1.8 billion, claiming it had conspired to sabotage his efforts to stay in Los Angeles

  by failing to exert its influence to get him a new stadium there.

  This case was eventually thrown out by the California Supreme

  Court in 2007.

  And in the middle of all of the above, he filed an almost Gilbert

  and Sullivan— style suit against the nfl, claiming that his fran-

  chise, now based in Oakland, still had the right to the Los Ange-

  les territory. Once again, he lost.

  You can make a ton of cases over why he sued to move to LA in

  the first place. You could say he tried to help the usfl because he

  had once been in that spot when he was the commissioner of the

  afl. You could say this, but his efforts to help the upstart league

  were generated far more by his never- ending personal agenda con-

  cerning Rozelle than any possible form of altruism.

  When Rozelle could be put at risk, Al Davis was never one to

  look a potential gift horse in the mouth, claiming that his fran-

  chise, now based in Oakland, still had the right to the Los Ange-

  les territory. Once again, he lost.

  Here came Donald Trump, bearing the gift of opportunity.

  And again, when Rozelle could be put at risk, Al Davis was never

  one to look a potential gift horse in the mouth.

  Rozelle, the great compromiser, on the other hand, could for-

  give Hornung and Karras for their gambling. He could forgive the

  lawsuits against the nfl for which Hunt was responsible.

  But when it came to Al Davis and total forgiveness, for Rozelle,

  no penance and no span of time would be long enough for the

  emperor of the team Davis called the Raiduhs.

  Davis Again: Feud without End

  233

  16

  Never Take a Knife to a Gunfight

  Mr. Rozelle and I were friends prior to my involvement in the (usfl) league.

  I just say after my involvement it was like I had the plague but before my involvement we were friends and I would see Mr. Rozelle quite a few times at various dinners and charitable functions.

  —Donald Trump’s response to direct questioning by usfl attorney

  Harvey Myerson, June 23, 1986

  He was an acquaintance. He was not a friend. He was not even on my

  Christmas Card list.

  —Pete Rozelle’s response to Myerson on cross- examination, July 17,

  1986

  There were twelve of them . . . apostles of a brave new world as

  outlined by a dreamer named Dave Dixon, the man who had built

  the Superdome, brought the nfl to New Orleans without shar-

  ing in the glory of the profits, designed the master plan for the

  League of World Championship Tennis, and then had simply run

  out of projects.

  With nothing else left on his drawing board, he had con-

  ceived and then midwifed the least likely of all professional sports

  projects— professional football in the spring . . . football in the

  middle of the nba playoffs . . . football in the heat of baseball’s

  summer . . . in terms of the calendar, football as a fish out of water.

  And he had gathered his newly enlisted angels at a swank water-

  ing hole in midtown Manhattan called the 21 Club for the launch-

  ing party. On that day in 1982 the most vibrant emotion it had

  triggered among the general public was a coast- to- coast yawn.

  234

  But on Park Avenue at Pete Rozelle’s command post, the memories were still too fresh from the war with the afl and from the

  brief but costly battle with Gary Davidson’s ill- fated World Foot-

  ball League (wfl) to take the new league lightly.

  Rozelle and his lieutenants figured all along that the usfl would

  try to move to the fall. But even at the start there was alarm when

  the commissioner saw that the new league’s management was spend-

  ing serious money on its new college draftees.

  As a case in point there were the signings of Reggie White,

  Doug Flutie, Jim Kelly, Steve Young, and other marquee play-

  ers. In addition, the nfl had yet to make players whose class had

  not graduated eligible for its draft. The usfl announced it would

  have no such restriction.

  The impact of that decision was swift and, to the nfl, alarm-

  ing. J. Walter Duncan, the Oklahoma oilman who owned the New

  Jersey Generals, immediately stunned the nfl when he was able

  to induce All- America running back Herschel Walker to leave the

  University of Georgia early to play for the Generals.

  That signing caused major reaction not only within the nfl

  but through all of big- time college football. According to Gor-

  don Forbes, writing
a fascinating obit for the usfl in USA Today

  after the league went out of business, Georgia coach Vince Dooley

  knew all about Walker’s contract well in advance.

  But Steve Ehrhart, the Memphis Showboats general manager,

  told Forbes: “Dooley feigned innocence at a news conference. I was in his car driving in downtown Atlanta and I said you knew Herschel called us but that’s the opposite of what you told the press.

  You said we were going to destroy college football.

  “Then he slammed on the brakes and ordered me out of the car.”

  And that’s how it began— coaches and agents playing both sides

  of the street.

  The rebels signed nfl draft choices. They spent big money

  (money that in some cases they didn’t have) to get them. Jim Gould,

  the president of the usfl’s Washington Federals, threw down an

  unmistakable gauntlet with the nfl, saying, “There are two types of

  Never Take a Knife to a Gunfight

  235

  (football) war. One where you go out and beat the nfl and another type, a psychological war where you get them (by upping the bidding costs) to start beating themselves.”

  It was a battle cry born of fantasy and self- hypnosis. The nfl

  owned the traditional football calendar. The nfl did, indeed, have

  the big money that television was capable of paying, all locked up.

  Rozelle understood he held all the cards, but he also understood

  that if these novices persisted in funding what should be a one-

  sided, hopeless battle, it would still cost the old guard an outra-

  geous amount of money even in victory.

  And then, without warning, the velocity of the gathering storm

  picked up speed in the usfl’s second season when a new player

  entered the game. Donald Trump, Manhattan and Palm Beach

  man about town, real estate mogul, later the face of three Atlantic

  City casinos, and ultimately self- anointed presidential pretender,

  purchased the New Jersey Generals.

  Long before he bought the Generals, he had made himself both

  a legitimate brand name and a legend in his own mind. His Atlan-

  tic City venue was the scene of major championship fights. His

  people made sure he made all the right gossip columns. He hosted

  successful and well- reported charity affairs.

  He obtained a one- of- a- kind real estate variance in Manhat-

  tan to build his signature Trump Tower. He needed the variance

  because of its unique height in such a narrow space in that cov-

  eted part of the city’s real estate. Few developers— if any at all—

  had the political muscle to get it.

  He was a mogul who knew how to play that headline game.

  The reasons he bought the Jersey Generals were simple:

  First, there was the obvious spate of headlines it would gener-

  ate for him, and he was sure that such ownership would eventu-

  ally afford him the vehicle to shoot his way into an nfl franchise.

  On top of all that, he never met a headline he didn’t covet.

  Like much of what he did, it was enveloped in sound and fury

  signifying just one thing: it kept his name in the newspapers and

  on the airwaves.

  236

  Never Take a Knife to a Gunfight

  Put many of his quotes together over the decades that followed his usfl involvement, and he comes across as a screaming, self-anointed caricature of the words written by Edmond Rostand in

  his play Chantecler: “I fall back dazzled at beholdng myself all rosy red, at having I, myself, caused the sun to rise.”

  Clearly, he did not buy the Jersey Generals to be part of a

  springtime novelty act on the edge of the New Jersey swamplands.

  Donald Trump lusted after a place in New York’s autumn foot-

  ball firmament . . . a place where the elite among his friends did

  not have to (ugh) cross the Hudson to see if Donald really had a

  team. He immediately proved that theory.

  Once he became an owner in this league whose payrolls out-

  distanced its television income, Donald Trump demanded to call

  the shots that would get him the exposure and the ego massage

  he craved and take his 100- yard act across the river to New York’s

  golden mountain in a stadium that he would cause to happen.

  His subsequent testimony when the usfl brought a $1.67 bil-

  lion antitrust suit against the nfl made it clear he did not buy

  the Generals to participate in a springtime experiment. During

  direct testimony on June 23, 1986, he responded to his league’s

  lead attorney, Harvey Myerson: “Following my decision (to buy

  the Generals) I spoke to people over in the networks and I based

  my premise on the idea that this could be a viable operation if we

  could get a network contract in the fall.” And later in his testi-

  mony: “I felt that I would be successful in convincing the own-

  ers to move to the fall because they were losing too much money

  to stay in the spring.”

  The first thing he told his new partners was they had to move

  the schedule to autumn. It was true if they wanted better tv money

  and better crowds. But it was not true if they didn’t want to go to

  war with the nfl.

  One man who didn’t was the late John F. Bassett, who owned the

  Memphis Southmen of the defunct wfl. Years earlier he had tried

  to get an nfl franchise and failed. He had been a charter mem-

  ber of the World Football League with the Toronto Northmen,

  Never Take a Knife to a Gunfight

  237

  who were then legislated out of Canada when Parliament sought to protect the homegrown Canadian Football League.

  He took them across the border, and they remained in the short-

  lived wfl as the Memphis Southmen until the league folded. When

  Dixon announced the formation of the usfl, John Bassett, son of

  a Toronto news media mogul and ceo on his own, came into the

  new game as the owner of the Tampa Bay Bandits. He had been

  burned by the wfl’s overreaching and understood that the Davids

  had no chance against the battle- tested Goliaths.

  He knew more about football than Trump. He knew more about

  the nfl than Trump. And he loved the game and wanted to stay in

  it. He was one of the leaders of the opposition to Trump’s obses-

  sion with moving the operation to the fall. After that he believed

  he could keep his league in the spring, make a little money, and

  enjoy life.

  This was totally unacceptable to Trump, which came to light

  when the transcripts of a usfl meeting picked up idle conversa-

  tion between owners. Unlike the nfl, the usfl used a profes-

  sional transcript company, and the reports recorded everything

  from coughs to side conversations. In one meeting, discussing a

  potential antitrust suit against the nfl, Basset rhetorically asked

  the group why it was doing this when he believed that Trump was

  the only one who wanted it.

  Trump desperately needed an argument to win over those reluc-

  tant owners so the league could sue. He had discovered— although

  his testimony during the trial reaffirmed his ability to overlook

  the fact— that his self- styled charisma was not enough to win his

  intramural argument.

  His intentions were strengthened by the strange
st alliance in the

  history of sports litigation. The hard- core employees and senior

  officials at the nfl were not surprised. It may well have been that

  what happened next was the trigger that led to Rozelle calling the

  usfl’s lawsuit “black mail litigation.”

  There is no doubt that Trump got some private advice from

  238

  Never Take a Knife to a Gunfight

  Al Davis, who was for just about anything that would embarrass Rozelle. Subsequent events would support this.

  In truth, some of Trump’s renewed appeal to the significant

  group of holdouts was a battle plan that sounded strangely like

  some of the factors that had led to the settlement of the old afl-

  nfl controversy back when Davis was the commissioner of the

  about- to- be- merged rebel league.

  But the afl model was actually something out of a time warp.

  The afl and nfl settled in 1966, and conditions were not the same

  because the afl had for years had its own lucrative national tv

  contract. It was bankrolling its war with that network’s money.

  All the usfl had were spring games and spring tv money. Why

  had Donald Trump been so sure he was right?

  Certainly, his co- owners were not all on the same page. It was

  Tad Taube, then owner of the Oakland Invaders, who insisted in

  1984 that “if we are not successful in establishing player [salary]

  caps I can guarantee you that there will not be a usfl within three

  years, irrespective of improved revenue [from] television. . . . We

  have sighted the enemy and they are us!”

  A year later Myles Tanenbaum, the owner of the Philadelphia

  Stars, came to a Chicago meeting believing he had enough votes

  to head off Trump on a fall schedule. He had, after all, won league

  titles, and Trump had none. He wanted to stay in the spring.

  But Trump won enough votes, as he believed he would. He

  overpowered the opposition with dazzling self- confidence that

  stemmed from the notion that he would win. It was a conviction

  that sprang from the notion that in fact he was “the Donald,” years

  before his first wife, Ivana, bestowed that title on him in several

  predivorce television interviews.

  In support of that theory, Carl Peterson, an nfl veteran adminis-

  trator with the Eagles before he moved to the usfl and built another

  winner in Tanenbaum’s Philadelphia Stars, has been quoted as say-