By Ken Bikoff
May 25, 2004

(First of a three-part series)

Watching college programs pack 30,000-plus fans into stadiums to observe spring practice is what convinced USFL founder David Dixon that football had a place outside of autumn. Getting such an idea, as well as a league based on that premise, off the ground was a much larger problem, however.

The USFL lasted only three seasons because of poor management and impatience, but even had the league continued playing despite mounting losses, the schedule would have eventually moved the league to the fall. For some reason — likely tradition more than anything — football has been viewed as a fall sport. Playing a professional football schedule in the spring hasn’t been nearly as successful, and it doesn’t appear as though a springtime league could take hold any time soon.

“Viewers are just so satisfied with the NFL,” said Chet Simmons, the first commissioner of the USFL, who now is retired and living in Georgia. “The NFL starts preseason games earlier, the draft got the word out more, and people are already thinking about the NFL. I think it’s too late. I don’t think (a rival league) could go now unless someone was willing to put millions and millions of dollars behind it and have the patience to wait to see if it could mature. I don’t think the viewership is out there.”

Not that people haven’t tried. World Wrestling Entertainment president Vince McMahon put together the XFL in 2001 in an effort to tap into a spring market, but he went for more flash than football. Viewers quickly got bored of McMahon’s brand of professional football, and the league folded after one season.

“(The XFL) was the wrong kind of league,” Simmons said. “It was disgraceful. Any league that comes in with the right idea and right focus — there might be different theories about how you can do it, from league ownership to getting big banks behind it — but it would be very tough to do. They claim that people are thirsting for football in the springtime, but it has never been proven to me.”

But Chiefs president Carl Peterson, who was the president of the Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars in the USFL days, doesn’t think it is a lack of fans or viewers that is really the problem. It’s getting those viewers to focus on football.

“It begins and ends with television,” Peterson said. “Our founders (in the USFL) knew that. That’s why before the league really got started, there was a contract with ABC and ESPN that was agreed upon, and it helped subsidize the league for the three years of its existence. Without that, it’s so difficult. Today in the NFL, the largest part of our revenue still comes from television. That would be the key to it. The XFL did try it. They went a different route and tried to partner with the World Wrestling people, and that turned out to be a bad decision. There is so much sports programming today that it would be more difficult today to match the ratings we got in the spring of 1983.”

For all the struggles the USFL went through from a monetary standpoint, in some cities, the attendance was there to make the league profitable. One such city — Jacksonville — proved to be so strong that the NFL had no choice but to take notice. The Bulls averaged more than 45,000 fans in their two years in the league, which opened the eyes of the more established league. The strong attendance from the USFL is one of the reasons Jacksonville was awarded an NFL franchise, the Jaguars, who began play in 1995.

There have been plenty of discussions over the years about taking another shot at the mighty NFL by founding a league to play in the spring and running the league in a manner that would allow it to be more successful. It just seems to be an idea that won’t go away.

“We talked about it some years ago, and actually (former Oakland A’s owner) Charlie Finley came down to visit with me three or four times and we talked about it,” former USFL executive director Steve Ehrhart said. “But the NFL got wind of that, and that’s one reason I think they started the World League of American Football. In those first few years, they played in the spring, and they used the international component. Now, I think there was a window, but I’m not sure that we can do it. We tried to get the CFL to grow up and become a North American football league, but that didn’t really take. The Arena teams have filled some of the void. Ten years ago I was very bullish about it. But now I’m not sure any network is willing to stand up and take the chance of angering the NFL.”

The WLAF is one of the great ironies of the demise of the USFL. Founded in 1991 as an international league that featured six European-based teams and seven teams based in North America, the WLAF had the backing of the NFL as a developmental league. It shifted to an all-European league in 1995 and later became NFL Europe, which has yielded Super Bowl quarterbacks Kurt Warner, Brad Johnson and Jake Delhomme.

“(NFL Europe) is an idea that we have a terrific game and there is interest in this country — and hopefully around the world — that exists year-round,” Peterson said. “People like to watch pro football, and the NFL taps into that market while helping out its own teams. As long as fans can get their football fix somewhere year-round, it’s going to be tough for another league to take hold.”

Coming Wednesday: The Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars were one of the bright spots of the USFL because of a brilliant coaching staff

Read more about the USFL in the just-published print edition of Pro Football Weekly, available at newsstands and stores throughout the country or through PFW Online. "A League of Its Own" is a three-page feature by Ken Bikoff about the effects the USFL had on the NFL, including a sidebar about coaches who came out of the USFL to flourish in the NFL.