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Law & Order: USFL

In the United States Football League justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the original USFL, which wants to preserve its legacy, and Fox, which has revived the brand. These are their stories.

DUN-DUN.

**Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl**

In case you missed it, we got ourselves a bit of legal drama leading into the opening season of a new spring football league. An entity named “The Real USFL LLC” is suing Fox for calling its new league the USFL, saying it is an “unabashed counterfeit.”

The complaint states, in part, “(the original USFL) had – and continues to have – a mass following with enduring demand for USFL merchandise. Fox has no claim to this legacy and no right to capitalize on the goodwill of the league. Much less does Fox have a right to deceive the public into believing that it is the USFL – or that Fox’s League’s teams were the USFL teams. Yet that is precisely what Fox has done.”

The lawsuit was filed on Monday in California with the plaintiffs listed as Fox Sports Inc., The Spring League LLC and USFL Enterprises LLC. The entire document is 37 pages long, and I read through it all although I can’t claim to be an expert in law and/or legalese.

In the interest of full disclosure, my mind wandered a few pages in and I started watching cat videos on YouTube.

From what I can gather, though, here’s what’s at stake:

On April 16, 2022, Protective Stadium in Birmingham will be the site of the season opening United States Football League game between the Birmingham Stallions and New Jersey Generals.

Or, on April 16, 2022, Protective Stadium in Birmingham will be the site of the season opening National Spring Football League game between the Birmingham Football Team and New Jersey Football Team.

Or, I guess conceivably the whole operation could come to a standstill. Truly, I have no idea because when it comes to lawsuits, trials, judges and juries, you never know what might happen.

I haven’t seen an episode of “Law & Order” in several years, so I don’t know enough about the merits of the case to tell you if this even warrants a clarinet interlude over the opening credits. I will say, however, I’ve personally been careful to avoid linking the original USFL to the new one.

Why?

Because regardless of what anyone at Fox says (or has said), what will take the field next month has no legitimate ties to what last took the field in 1985.

Put another way, I had a little dog named Raven in 1985. I have a little dog named Steve in 2022. I could call Steve “Raven,” but that wouldn’t mean Steve has any relationship with the pupper from 37 years ago.

The point I’m trying to make is that even though Doug Flutie appeared on the Fox Twitter feed last June and proclaimed, “The USFL is back!” while wearing one of those cheap New Jersey Generals caps, the USFL he was a part of is gone forever.

It’s never coming back.

Regardless, there was no doubt Fox was hoping to take you on a nostalgia trip by appropriating the history of the 1983-85 circuit, and I get that.

I don’t like it, but I get it.

If I’d had my druthers this would be a league with a new name and new acronym and all eight teams would have cool, unique nicks (I’m still hoping for a franchise called the Birmingham Battalion one day).

All this turning into a situation now, on March 1, gives the original USFL a chance to inflict the most pain on what it views as identity thieves. In spite of that, it’s puzzling. I don’t know the difference between an IP and an IPA, but I figured whatever issues there were between the 80s USFL and this venture had surely been hammered out by lawyers before the upstart league took shape.

I mean, Fox is the subject of a $2.7 billion defamation suit from Smartmatic as well as a $1.6 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems – court battles the media corporation could most certainly lose. Thus I assumed Rupert Murdoch’s attorneys did their football homework so as to avoid more legal trouble.

Yet regardless of what I assumed, we now have a case of gridiron “Law & Order,” and one can only hope it moves through the system quickly and justice is served.

Meanwhile, I’m still planning on going to the USFL game between the Stallions and Generals next month. But if it turns out to be a NSFL game between the Scallions and General Practitioners, well, I reckon that’s for the courts to decide.

DUN-DUN.

I’ve gone full Hamilton

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats last played in the Grey Cup in 2019, and I watched every frustrating second of their 33-12 loss to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. The Canadian Football League championship game is a big deal to me – arguably my favorite single day event on the sports calendar – and I’ll watch regardless of the matchup.

Still, having “my” team in it made it more special, although the outcome was disappointing.

But the last time the Tiger-Cats won the Grey Cup – well, I just had to hear about it, which was also disappointing.

The year was 1999, and while the world was planning for the imminent disaster of Y2K – food shortages, poisoned water supply, rabid dinosaurs running unimpeded through the streets – United States television networks were not planning for my CFL enjoyment.

The “U.S. experiment” of CFL franchises located south of the Canadian border ended in 1995, and ESPN2’s contract with the league expired two years later.

So Americans like me who still loved the three-down game and wanted to follow the eight-team circuit were mostly out of luck. Sure, the “World Wide Web” existed back then, but it wasn’t nearly as user-friendly as it is today.

Now you can ask Siri (or Alexa … who you’re in a relationship with is none of my business) to tell you results of the full contact Yahtzee competition from the Netherlands, and she’ll share the information immediately. Or you can watch it live on your phone. Back in 1999, about the best I could hope for was a funny cat video that took 10 minutes to download.

There was no Twitter to get instant updates, and no Facebook to provide misinformation about the game.

So I guess I probably just waited until the evening SportsCenter to learn that Hamilton had vanquished Calgary, 32-21, at BC Place in Vancouver. I’m sure I was happy, but not being able to experience it made me sad.

This Sunday, however, that won’t be a problem.

Hamilton gets its rematch with Winnipeg – this time in the friendly confines of Tim Hortons Field – at 5 p.m. on ESPN2.

Unlike last week when the Eastern and Western finals were shown on the network’s version of the The Ocho (ESPN News, which I do not have a subscription), I can experience the event from my futon. Said futon is located roughly 922.8 miles from the game site, but I’ll feel like I’m there.

I’ll be wearing my game-used No. 68 Ti-Cats jersey (Angelo Mosca made it famous, of course, but this one was actually worn by offensive tackle Greg Randall in 2006), along with one of my four Ti-Cats ballcaps. I thought about wearing a different one each quarter, and I still might. With me, I never know.

And of course I’ll enjoy my Grey Cup game day tradition, the “Super Snack.” The simple yet scrumptious dish is made up of sour cream-flavored potato chips, dry roasted peanuts and Chex Mix piled on a plate, covered in Easy Cheese, and microwaved for 12 to 15 seconds. It’s my take on the Canadian delicacy poutine, although poutine doesn’t normally consist of sour cream-flavored potato chips, dry roasted peanuts and Chex Mix piled on a plate, covered in Easy Cheese, and microwaved for 12 to 15 seconds.

For the main course I’ll probably have a black bean patty on an onion roll, which I call a Hamilton Burger (so named as a tribute to the CFL team, not the district attorney on Perry Mason).

But really, the fan festivities started earlier in the week when I renamed our ginger shelter cat “Hamilton.” It’s only temporary, but since he’s a cat who kinda looks like a tiger, he can be a Tiger-Cat for a few days.

In keeping with the all about Hamilton theme, I also staged an in-house production of the musical Hamilton in which I changed the title of the song Alexander Hamilton to East Champion Hamilton and altered the lyrics to better reflect the Grey Cup:

There is no beat, no melody
Blue Bombers, my first friend, my enemy
Maybe the last facemask I ever see
If I throw away my third down shot,
Is this how fans will remember me?
What if this 108^th game is my legacy?

On Friday I’ll listen to the soft rock song Don’t Pull Your Love by Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds on a continuous loop, even though I don’t care as much for the contributions of Joe Frank or Reynolds.

And finally, on Saturday I’ll pay tribute to George Hamilton, who not only founded Hamilton, Ontario, in 1816, but went on to star in Love At First Bite and co-host a popular mid-90s daytime talk show with his ex-wife.

My greatest joy, though, would come from the Ti-Cats helping me experience what I couldn’t experience in 1999 by winning the whole dang thing right before my eyes. It won’t be easy – Winnipeg is the defending champ and has the league’s best record. Plus, I can’t expect the Bombers to turn the ball over five times (six if you count the turnover on downs) like they did last Sunday against Saskatchewan.

And if Mike O’Shea’s club comes out on top, I’ll congratulate a great organization and their wonderful fans, because us CFL folk – even the ones living in the Lower 48 – have to support each other.

But there’s always the chance for an upset.

And if the home dogs prevail, the only thing that’ll be upset around 8 p.m. on Sunday night will be my stomach. Those Super Snacks can lay kinda heavy.

Potluck dining

The holidays are here and so are family gatherings, and that usually means various eating events. My most recent invitation involves “bringing a covered dish,” which brings me to today’s topic.

Now, I realize “bringing a covered dish” has been a tradition for almost as long as tradition has been a word. Also known as “potluck dinners,” “potluck suppers” and “Go help your Aunt Myrtle before she drops the vat of banana pudding on the driveway,” sharing grub in a communal setting is quite common. I’ve participated in these food fests so many times I can’t even count them.

But here’s the thing; I’m just not comfortable doing it anymore. I don’t know if it’s an age thing or what, but eating food prepared off-site and delivered in a dish with an aluminum foil cover is a big turn-off for me.

There was a time – many times, in fact – when I never questioned potluck dining. Hell, you could throw a hunk of bread in the air and I’d run up under it and try to catch it in my mouth like a dog. But alas, now I tend to overthink things.

For example, many years ago the place I worked would occasionally have potluck dinners, and I never hesitated to plop a big ol’ spoonful of green bean casserole, squash casserole or sweet potato casserole on my paper plate. Never asked who made it … never cared who made it.

And all of it was delicious. So delicious that I’d often stop chewing briefly and exclaim, “This is delicious!”

I imagined the squash came from a carefully tended garden, while the cheese was made of the finest Velveeta.

Green beans were expertly snapped by people who enjoyed doing such violence to green beans, and the fried onion toppings came directly from the Durkee family (probably delivered to the supermarket by the youngest Durkee, who was just learning the family business. I think his name is Dirk).

And sweet potatoes? Well, they had to be freshly picked from the nearest sweet potato tree before being squished up and smothered in cinnamon, brown sugar and chopped pecans.

My mouth waters just thinking about it (although in fairness I’ve had a drooling issue for the last couple of years so it could be just a coincidence).

Unfortunately, I just can’t do it anymore.

Now I pay close attention to the people who bring the covered dishes, and I begin to imagine what all took place during preparation.

Maybe the squash hit the floor and the cook, in an effort to pick it up, accidentally kicked it. As the yellow vegetable went tumbling across the sticky kitchen tile Tulip – the pit bull/toy poodle mix – picked it up and slobbered on it before it could be retrieved by the cook, who wiped it on an apron before cutting it up with a rusty pocket knife.

And green beans? I think back to my mother sitting on the couch snapping them, an unfiltered Pall Mall cigarette dangling from her lips while she made an odd, kennel cough-like noise.

As for sweet potatoes, those damn things are filthy – and no amount of apron wiping would get Tulip’s drool off of them.

Look, if you saw me bring a covered dish to a potluck situation, I wouldn’t expect you to eat it, either. I have two dogs and two cats plus I mindlessly scratch myself sometimes. I can’t say with certainly I always wash my hands after dealing with an itch on or near my nether regions.

So now I’m faced with a dilemma of having to go to a potluck dinner and bringing my own covered dish. Fortunately, I was not asked to bring anything specific, which means I can go to the nearest supermarket and get some kind of pie or cake prepared by the culinary staff.

How do I know these people are any cleaner that the homemade casserole bakers? I don’t.

But I will assume they don’t have a dog running around in their kitchen and that gives me a sense of peace. It also helps to see a health department score posted. If it’s 98 or better, I’m good.

If it’s 75 or below with a note that reads, “Raccoon activity detected in pantries,” I’m outta there.

As for eating at a potluck function, that’s really not an issue. When you’re among a group of people, you can simply make your plate, be seen walking with your plate, and then set the plate down somewhere. Then you just wander off, and if someone does notice, you start a fire in a trash can and create a diversion.

Honestly, I wish I could go back to the old days of eating unvetted food. It was almost always good, I never once got sick, and I’m really missing out on some delicious homemade fare.

But I’ve already talked myself out of it now. And that means as soon as I’m done with covered dish obligations, I’ll head to the nearest fast food place and get a large serving of French fries.

Sure, one of the fries might’ve hit the floor before it made it to the container, but fortunately hot grease kills germs.

At least that’s what I choose to believe.