I have been watching the 30 for 30 shows on ESPN classic. Some good episodes particularly the ones on Len Bias and the Ali/Holmes fight. I don’t know a lot about football but they had an episode on the fall of the USFL. The documentary primarily blames the collapse of the league on the switch from Spring football to Autumn football (where they competed directly against the NF). That switch is blamed entirely on Donald Trump who owned one of the teams.
ESPN link here: http://30for30.espn.com/film/small-potatoes-who-killed-the-usfl.html
Careful, it’s a video with an ad and volume.
So what’s the SD on the USFL?
IMO “The Donald” was a major factor in persuading the others to switch to a fall schedule and the USFL’s failure. But he also had some bad luck. The USFL did win an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL. But the kicker was they only got $1 (trebled to $3 for punitive damages) instead of some huge multi-million figure one would ordinarily suspect. But other mistakes were made. Keith Jackson mentions in the film that he thought expanding from 12 to 18 teams in the second year was a bad idea. There were a number of franchises with problems but rather than concentrate on fixing them, the league increased its size by 50%. You are sure to bring in more problems that way. I also think the schedule got too long. Many of the games were exciting to watch but the season just dragged on and on dulling the appetite.
A book titled “The $1 league” also says the original plan was flawed. The study the organizers conducted to see if Americans wanted spring football was designed to give an overly optimistic report. The organizers sold this flawed report as gospel to unsuspecting investors.
While a spring football league sounds like a good idea, it hasn’t worked. Eights years before the USFL, the WFL tried to play during the summer and early fall. While they caused a sensation by signing stars like Larry Csonka and Paul Warfield, they didn’t last a second year. Later on, the indoor AFL with tight budget controls lasted about 20 years but ultimately went bankrupt. Although the USFL did have contracts with ABC/ESPN, ultimately getting into a bidding war with the NFL for current stars and players coming out of college proved to be one-sided.
In short The Donald was a major culprit. But he wasn’t the only one. Earlier leagues such as the AAFC and AFL did get teams admitted because they were plenty of cities that wanted them in a league (the same with the ABA and WHA in basketball and hockey). But ultimately there weren’t that many cities the NFL was looking into expanding to. Plus around this time, sports leagues found out if you leave a couple markets available, you can blackmail politicians and voters into give you huge welfare payments in the form of new stadia, favorable leases, etc to keep you from moving.