Month: August 2021

The United States Football League was near and dear to my heart.

I remain smitten with the Canadian Football League.

And if the USFL and CFL had combined forces in 1988, it could’ve been my greatest love of all – gridiron-wise, at least.

I’d like nothing more than to tell you it almost happened, that two of my favorite leagues came tantalizingly close to becoming my one favorite league. If I told you that, though, I’d be lying. But let the record show that a merger of the two was, in fact, proposed by none other than Charles O. Finley on March 2, 1987. And for a brief, shining moment (actually it was roughly 48 hours), visions of a Birmingham Stallions vs. Hamilton Tiger-Cats clash at Legion Field danced in my head.

Here’s how it all played out:

Finley, you might remember, was the colorful and controversial sports mogul/showman who once owned the MLB Oakland Athletics, NHL California Golden Seals and ABA Memphis Tams. By the 1980s he was looking for the next big thing, and thought he might’ve found it in the ruins of the USFL.

The former spring league suspended what was supposed to be its first fall season in 1986 after collecting only $3 in its antitrust suit against the NFL. Despite having no players and no apparent path forward, technically the USFL was still around in early 1987, featuring the Arizona Outlaws, Baltimore Stars, Birmingham Stallions, Jacksonville Bulls, Memphis Showboats, Orlando Renegades, New Jersey Generals and Tampa Bay Bandits.

In March of 1987, Finley proposed merging the CFL with the remnants of the USFL and went to both FOX and Turner Broadcasting with his pitch.

“Charlie has approached us and I think he talked to FOX as well,” Turner Broadcasting Vice President of Sports Programming Rex Lardner told Associated Press. “I think it’s kind of speculative right now. Our response was that we have an interest but we’d love to chat more specifically once things are in place. He indicated to us that they were talking to the CFL and talking to some of the USFL owners.”

Finley wouldn’t say whether all the USFL owners were on board, but insisted there was plenty of interest from big money men who wanted to be part of his proposed North American Football League.

“I’ve been working continuously since November (1986) lining up these U.S. owners with substantial stability, with mighty deep pockets,” Finley said. “I’m happy to state they’re all ready and hot to trot with the CFL teams. A man would have to have rocks in his head not to be interested in a proposition like this.”

In 1988 the CFL had eight franchises, so if all the USFL leftovers were involved it would make for a 16-team league with an even split of clubs north and south of the U.S.-Canada border.

Bandits owner Lee Scarfone was interviewed by the Tampa Tribune and expressed interest in the idea.

“If anyone comes forward with a viable professional football league, the Bandits are definitely interested,” Scarfone said. “But we would only be interested if it was truly a professional league. I do know that people in the CFL feel that a USFL-CFL combination would give them a good opportunity in a great market.”

Frank Kush, still employed as head coach of the USFL’s inactive Arizona team, told Associated Press he had spoken with several CFL executives about a merger.

“I personally think it would be a great idea,” said Kush, who spent a year in Canada coaching the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. “It would be the culmination of both leagues.”

Kush reportedly began pushing the idea as early as January, 1987, before Finley got involved.

Unfortunately for Charlie O., Kush and me, the CFL was not “hot to trot” to sign on. On March 4, CFL Commissioner Doug Mitchell issued a press release that said, in part, “The CFL has received overtures from a group headed by U.S. businessman Charlie O. Finley which, if accepted, would have the CFL playing some form of interlocking schedule with U.S. based teams. The CFL intends to operate in its present format and if any expansion takes place it will occur within the boundaries of Canada.”

Mitchell told the Canadian Press he had, in fact, met with Finley but felt the need to issue the statement to shoot down rumors that former USFL teams would form a Southern Division of the CFL.

“People began to think that it was becoming a reality,” Mitchell said. “I just thought I’d make it known that, no, it’s not a reality.”

And that, as they say, was that.

Finley was still touting the formation of the North American Football League throughout the summer of 1987, this time with eight to 10 U.S. teams and four to six Canadian clubs (but none of them affiliated with the CFL). With Montreal losing the Alouettes in 1987, he planned to put a franchise there.

By September, though, the NAFL had morphed into the International Football League. The IFL would begin play with 10 franchises, including some under the direction of former USFL owners.

“There’s no more NAFL crap because those guys (the CFL) did not want to cooperate,” Finley told the Toronto Globe and Mail. “We’ll have nothing to do with the CFL. They had the opportunity to work with us but didn’t, so we’ll go with the IFL.”

Games would be played June to November on Friday and Saturday nights with a $3 million salary cap per team, 40-man roster, and maximum player wage set at $750,000 per season.

Of course, you know how this story ends. The USFL faded into history, the CFL waited until the 1990s to expand south, and Finley’s football fantasy didn’t materialize.

Thus, the greatest pro football mashup of all-time (at least it would’ve been to me) existed only on paper and during a brief news cycle. The bright side, however, is that since it never happened, the alternative football graveyard was spared another tombstone.

By the mid-1990s, Joe Kapp had already done a little bit of everything in football. He had completed a Hall of Fame playing career as a Canadian Football League quarterback, finished a four-year stint in the NFL that resulted in a league title and Pro Bowl selection, and coached five years at the University of California as well as one season of arena football.

So when he decided he was going to invent a brand new football league, it seemed like a natural progression for one of the game’s larger-than-life figures.

On January 16, 1996, Kapp announced that he and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Craig Morton were forming “All Star Football,” a 16-team league that would start play in September, 1997. Unlike the United States Football League and World League of American Football, the new venture would play during the traditional gridiron season.

“How can you succeed playing football in the summer?” Kapp said in an interview with Associated Press. “We’re a moving pocket. We’ll adjust. If (NFL teams) play in the afternoon, we might play at night. If it’s affordable, it will succeed. We don’t have to beat them. We’ve got a plan that works.”

The league targeted both major and secondary markets, with the idea of using stadiums that were sitting idle during the fall.

“The stadiums are there,” Kapp said. “Shea Stadium in New York, Tiger Stadium in Detroit, the Orange Bowl in Miami, the Citrus Bowl in Orlando.”

Set to join Detroit, Miami, New York and Orlando as flagship franchises were Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, El Paso, Hartford, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, Mexico City, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and San Jose.

“Too many cities have been left out for too long,” Kapp told AP. “Who says Columbus can’t have a team? Milwaukee’s been shut out by Green Bay. Oakland sold out 268 straight games and then left, and then came back. They left L.A. without a team. The Jets and Giants are in New Jersey. New York doesn’t have a team.”

The business plan of All Star Football was a single entity model with players and league employees owning equity in the company. According to USA Today, Kapp’s company, Team Dynamics, would own 33 percent of the league, followed by investors (20 percent), players (19 percent), TV distributors (15 percent) and league employees (13 percent).  If there were any profits, 14 percent would go to active players annually, with five percent allotted to retired players. Owners of the 16 teams pledged $15 million each for three years to ensure the launch and stability of the league.

There would be a balanced budget mandate and instead of selling TV rights to an established network, BKS/Bates Entertainment (a TV syndication company and equity partner in All-Star Football) would offer a weekly schedule of games throughout the country.

As for players, the league would simply recruit; no draft was planned.

“We’ll get our players from the same place (the NFL) gets their players,” Kapp said. “So many players never get a chance. I was fifth in the Heisman balloting and nobody called, so I went to Canada. I coached at California from 1982-1986. We had three quarterbacks who could play pro football. One of them, Gale Gilbert, still is in the league. The other two never got on the field.”

The All Star Football plan came on the heels of the short-lived idea for the “A League,” which was to be funded by corporate sponsors, and the end of the CFL experiment with United States-based franchises.

“A lot of planning has been done,” Kapp said. “We spent a long time consulting with experts and specialists. We visited cities all over the country (in 1995) and found a welcome audience. The stadiums are there. The components are in place. There’s no reason to wait.”

But the wait continued until there was nothing left to wait for.

By November of 1996 the plan had been downsized to eight cities the first season. The minimum player salary was to be $50,000 per season with a maximum of $400,000 in a $4 million salary cap.

All Star Football went dark for more than a year until Kapp was touting it again in February, 1998. This time the league was seeking a partnership with Turner Sports and NBC and it was announced that rule innovations would include 4-point field goals from beyond the 40-yard line.

But …

In the summer of 1998 – when Turner and NBC announced they were exploring the possibility of forming their own league – Kapp was no longer promoting his organization but instead hoping the networks could pull off the feat.

“I applaud their vision and courage,” Kapp told the New York Times. “It’s an open book, and they can write and do football in a better way. These two strong entities can carry a financial load for a long time.”

Looking back, it appears All Star Football was never really close to getting off the ground. Other than an article here or there reminding you that Kapp wanted to start a league, there was no information that led you to believe investors were ready and willing to step in and pay up.

Like many alternative football ideas, it was an interesting one. Being interesting – and being interesting enough to get millions of dollars in backing – are sometimes two very different things, however.

On one end of the field is a team adorned in brown, red and gold, with a regal eagle bursting through an “A” on its helmets.

On the other, a side dressed in purple and orange, with an arrow cleverly incorporated into its team name.

The excitement would’ve been palpable inside the stadium, because when Anheuser-Busch St. Louis squares off with Federal Express Memphis in an A League clash, you can throw those record books right out the window.

For a two month period in the summer 1994, big business toyed with the idea of making professional football its business – and force the NFL to face its most serious threat since the American Football League. Mike Lynn, who had previously served as general manager of the Minnesota Vikings and commissioner of the World League of American Football, was spearheading an effort that would see 12 Fortune 500 companies put up $10 million each to fund a league that would go head-to-head with the NFL in the fall.

Play was to start in 1995 with franchises placed in cities where the headquarters of their corporate sponsors were located. The “nicknames” would be the name of the company paying the bills.

Aside from Anheuser-Busch and FedEx, other corporations supposedly interested in what was being touted as “The A League” were the Walt Disney Company, PepsiCo, and American Express.

“The timing is right, and these corporations aren’t interested in being associated with anything that isn’t major league,” Lynn told Associated Press in early May, 1994.

Of course businesses need to advertise, and there was once no better way to do that than via television. And in the A League, a game would be a three-hour commercial for the teams’ sponsors.  CBS, which saw its 38-year run of televising the NFL end after being outbid by FOX, was set to be the A League’s TV partner – as long as the league had franchises in the nation’s top three TV markets.

“Other than the markets of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, the companies that would own teams will determine where the other franchises are,” Lynn said in an interview with the Scripps-Howard News Service. “There really are no untargeted markets in the U.S.”

Lynn, who made the pitch to CBS executives in December, 1993, said partnering with a major network and playing in the traditional football season gave it a better chance to succeed than spring circuits such as the United States Football League and WLAF. And he was unconcerned with competition from the Canadian Football League, which had four United States-based franchises in 1994 and planned further American expansion in 1995.

“Our league has more in common with the American Football League,” Lynn said. “The games will be in the fall and carried by a major network. The other leagues didn’t have the viability of CBS.”

TV executive Jim Spence – along with Lynn, one of the venture’s organizers – was enthusiastic about the prospects of a corporate-sponsored league succeeding.

“It’s a terrific concept,” Spence said in an interview with AP. “When it was broached to me as a TV guy, it addressed all that comes to mind – credibility, viability and financial commitment. The corporate involvement lends instant credibility and long-term viability.

“The companies we’ve discussed this with think it’s a terrific marketing opportunity. It’s a natural evolution for it to happen in the United States.”

Spence added that it had to be “major league” to become a money maker.

“There’s a lot of work to be done, but it’s an excellent opportunity,” he said. “The fact that CBS is without football makes for a positive opportunity. If the league is to be successful, there will have to be a number of top quality players in the league.”

Alas, the next real news that came out of the A League camp was that there would, in fact, be no A League. On July 20, 1994, Lynn said the money simply wasn’t there.

“After looking at the revenues from TV and corporate sponsorships, it doesn’t make economic sense and I will not be involved going forward,” he told AP. “We’re $90 million short, or $30 million a year for each of the (first) three years. For this to work we’d need enough capital to pool revenues and go after marquee players and it isn’t there.”

International sports (European soccer and Japanese baseball are good examples) show that corporate sponsorship is certainly a viable path to sustainability. But it’s hard to imagine any professional football entity competing with the behemoth that is the National Football League. Apparently the movers and shakers of the A league realized this – and decided to cut their losses before there were any losses to cut.