The United States Football League (USFL) was an American football league which was in active operation from 1983 to 1987. It played a spring/summer schedule in its first three seasons and a traditional autumn/winter schedule was set to commence before league operations ceased. The USFL was conceived in 1965 by New Orleans, Louisiana, businessman David Dixon, who saw a market for a football league which would play while the established National Football League was in its off-season. Dixon had been a key player in the expansion of the NFL into New Orleans and the New Orleans Saints began play in 1967.
The USFL had notable success, including three consecutive Heisman Trophy winners: Georgia running back Herschel Walker and Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie signed with the New Jersey Generals, and Nebraska running back Mike Rozier signed with the Pittsburgh Maulers out of college. Future Pro Football Hall of Fame members defensive end Reggie White of the University of Tennessee and quarterbacks Jim Kelly of the University of Miami and Steve Young of Brigham Young University, began their professional careers with the USFL's Memphis Showboats, Houston Gamblers, and Los Angeles Express, respectively. Veterans, such as quarterbacks Chuck Fusina and Cliff Stoudt, who had limited success in the NFL, had successful careers in the USFL. Former Cincinnati Bengals offensive lineman Dave Lapham signed an unusual personal services contract (rather than a traditional players' contract) with billionaire New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump.
After its inaugural season, the United States Football League was plagued with franchise instability. A number of franchises either relocated or merged with others. However, there were franchises in several cities without NFL teams which would later receive them, such as Jacksonville, Florida. The Michigan Panthers were the first USFL champions. The Philadelphia Stars won the second USFL championship, and after relocating to Baltimore, Maryland, won the final USFL championship as the Baltimore Stars. In 1986, the USFL, having recently decided to compete directly with the NFL, filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the National Football League. The NFL was found to have violated anti-monopoly laws. However, in a Pyrrhic victory, the USFL was awarded a judgment of just $1, which under anti-trust laws, was tripled to $3. When it folded the USFL had lost over $163 million.
Read more about United States Football League: Teams, Season By Season, Championship Games, Drafts
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, football and/or league:
“I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.”
—Thomas Jefferson (17431826)
“I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mothers side was not an Indian chief.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (18911960)
“If the Union is now dissolved it does not prove that the experiment of popular government is a failure.... But the experiment of uniting free states and slaveholding states in one nation is, perhaps, a failure.... There probably is an irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery. It may as well be admitted, and our new relations may as be formed with that as an admitted fact.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (18221893)
“In this dream that dogs me I am part
Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
All moving the same way.”
—Philip Larkin (19221986)
“Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. You toodle along, thinking that all gay men wear leather after dark and should never, ever be permitted around a Little League field. And then one day your best friend from college, the one your kids adore, comes out to you.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)