Editor's Note: This story was published in January 2016, when Donald Trump still looked like a long-shot candidate.
Before barreling through what he dismisses as his loser, low-energy, blood-coming-out-of-their-whatever opposition and shaking up politics as usual, Donald Trump was trying to shake the high holy shit out of professional football. He was just 37—a budding rogue rich guy with flyaway sandy (not yet orange) hair and a trophy first wife named Ivana. He'd just built a 68-story glass tower in the middle of Manhattan and, to make sure people noticed, put his name on it. In bronze. He'd soon open his first Atlantic City casino, slapping his name on that, too. Even back then, Trump wanted what he still wants most: more.
So in 1983 he bought a football team, joining a confederacy of other rich rogues who had just completed their first season of the United States Football League. The business plan: compete with the NFL—sport's one true, grim superpower, whom USFL owners mocked as the No Fun League—but not directly against it. The twelve-team USFL played its games in the spring, encouraged excessive end zone celebrations (the NFL penalized them), and allowed both replay challenges and two-point conversions after touchdowns (the NFL still didn't permit either). Games were televised on ABC and an upstart cable channel called ESPN.
Trump purchased the New Jersey Generals from J. Walter Duncan, a laidback Oklahoma oil tycoon who got homesick travelling each weekend to watch his team play ("You weren't going to outsmart him," one observer said of Duncan. "But you might be able to out-talk him"). With Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker already in the backfield, the Generals had been the league's flagship underachiever. They won just six games against opponents that stretched from Tampa Bay (whose halftime promotions included seven-car giveaways and the burning of mortgages) to Birmingham to Los Angeles, where the league eventually took over a team almost nobody came to watch. By the next season, when Trump bought in, the league swelled to eighteen cities—a money grab by owners to collect millions in franchise fees and soften their growing losses.
The Generals' fortunes rose instantly, but the league's did not. The USFL collapsed after just three seasons. Yet its Trumpian storyline hews eerily close to today's. The Donald made a media-inhaling, savior-is-born entrance; surged beyond expectations; then went all in on his attempt to upend the entrenched NFL by pushing his fellow owners to move games to the fall in hopes of inciting a merger. The bet brought the league, already in failing health, crashing down. Critics blame Trump's hubris. Haters wait for a similar last act in the upcoming Republican primaries.
"You can cut and paste the USFL and the GOP and it's the same damn story," says Charley Steiner, radio voice of the Generals and now play-by-play man for the Los Angeles Dodgers. "It's all about him and the brand and moving on to the next thing if it doesn't work out."
Others, like Buffalo Bill Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly, remain friends with Trump, and while they see parallels between The Donald then and The Donald now, they aren't betting against him.
"It's like when he came into the USFL," Kelly says of Trump's hell-with-'em nomination campaign for president. Kelly starred for the run-and-shoot Houston Gamblers before that team merged with the Generals, not long before the league folded. "And here he is as a kind of bull in the china shop again."
His take on Trump's odds now: "He does everything big, whether it's big buildings or a presidential candidacy. He always shoots for the stars and usually gets what he wants. Except the NFL."
ENTRANCE
Jimmy Gould (Generals president): When we had the announcement at Trump Tower when [Duncan] sold him the team, it was a big deal. Trump was Mr. New York, here to salvage the USFL. The league should've paid him. The league was dying, and here came this massive shot of steroids.
Lawrence Taylor (Hall of Fame linebacker for the New York Giants, who signed and then backed out of a contract with the Generals): Donald was the mogul of the USFL. He was a major pain in the ass to the NFL. I liked him a lot. Heck, he was my kinda guy.
Jim McVay (director of marketing for the Tampa Bay Outlaws): Trump brought a lot of glamour and attention. I thought it was good for the league. You had the San Antonio team: players had a gumball rally [a car race down the highway] to get to the bank to get their checks cashed. There was a lot of that going on.
Kelly: Trump was a businessman. He had money. We needed that. There were players that weren't getting paid after games. He had the money to pay the players to play. That's what we wanted.
Gary Barbaro (Pro Bowl defensive back for the Kansas City Chiefs who played one season with the Generals): When I went to New York to sign, we pulled up to Trump Tower. That was a good indication of the kind of personality you were dealing with. When I signed the contract, I was looking out the window at Central Park. Trump Tower is actually one block away from the park. He bought the air rights to the buildings in front of him so no one blocked his view. I thought that was kind of interesting.
Steve Ehrhart (USFL executive director): He had so much enthusiasm, so much energy, so much positive-ness. He said, "We've got to make this league as great as it can be. We're going to take on everybody."
Gould: We had to meet and figure out what to do about cheerleaders. I had to work with Ivana. She wanted to put on a really big presentation at the Trump Tower.
Andy Warhol (from The Andy Warhol Diaries): I was a judge at the cheerleading tryouts for the New Jersey Generals….They were having them in the basement part of Trump Tower. It was the final tryout, and I was supposed to be there at 12:00 but I took my time and went to church and finally moseyed over there around 2:00. This is because I still hate the Trumps because they never bought the paintings I did of the Trump Tower. So I got there and they were already up to the fiftieth girl and there were only twenty left to go. Another guy had been filling in for me and he handed me his pad and I took over. I didn't know how to score….People like LeRoy Neiman were the other judges. He said he voted for anybody who could kick. Ivana voted for any of the girls who looked like her.
Steiner: What Trump desired, what he craved, was attention—imagine that. He felt that buying a football team, albeit the New Jersey Generals of the USFL, not the NFL, would get him into the greater media consciousness. Nothing compared to owning a football team. It was a calculated media strategy. [He was] the best thing that ever happened to the USFL, and two years later he was the worst thing that ever happened to the USFL.
SURGE
In Trump's first year, the Generals' record jumped from 6-12 to 14-4, before New Jersey was knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. Average attendance at Giants Stadium, their home field, topped 40,000. While he inherited Walker and the three-year, $5 million contract he signed after his junior season at Georgia (then the richest pro contract ever), Trump continued to spend on marquee college players and quality NFLers—exactly what the founding owners vowed not to do, and which few could resist. Trump signed Cleveland's MVP quarterback Brian Sipe the first season, then plucked Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie out of Boston College the next. All-pro linebacker Lawrence Taylor, already the toast of New York, secretly signed a futures contract with the Generals, unhappy with what the Giants were paying him halfway through his six-year deal with them. The windfall included a $1 million, interest-free loan. When their NFL rival learned of the Generals' contract, the Giants gave Taylor a new, juiced-up offer. Taylor accepted it, with the Giants paying Trump at least $600,000 just weeks later to buy out his Generals contract.
Gould: I was reading in the paper about Lawrence Taylor being dissatisfied with the Giants. Trump and I got together that morning and he says to me, "We got to get him." Literally that day [Taylor] showed up at Trump Tower. I took him into Donald's office and Donald said to him, "How would you like to make a million dollars?"
Lawrence Taylor: I remember his secretary called and said, "Mr. Taylor, please hold for Mr. Trump." They sent a car for me, we met at Trump Plaza. He had me watch some Trump movie before we met. He says, "I want to sign you." I was like, "I've got three or four years on my Giants deal." He didn't give a shit. He had me call my bank, and sure as shit, thirty minutes later he wired a million dollars into my account. I was like, "Thanks, Don." I respected that he put his money where his mouth was.
Trump, from LT: Over the Edge: I ended up selling him back to the Giants. I did it not because of the money, but because I never felt Lawrence Taylor should be in the USFL. I had too much respect for him as a football player.
Taylor: I wasn't even on my way back to Jersey when word started leaking out. He has certainly always known how to use the media. When my USFL deal fell apart, the Giants had to send him $750,000 to get me out of it, but it got me a helluva raise from the Giants. I became the highest paid defensive player in the league. I have always been appreciative because I don't really think he ever thought I would be a General, but it was a brilliant publicity stunt.
Herschel Walker (from Breaking Free: My Life With Dissociative Disorder): I wouldn't have continued in pro football if it hadn't been for Mr. Trump. I made a lot of money right away with my signing bonus and salary, and was young and uncertain of what I wanted to do with my life. I still had dreams of being in the military. Football wasn't my only love…and I could easily have walked away from it. I had at least a hundred other things I would have considered doing. I had some very honest conversations about my feelings with Mr. Trump—something unusual between an owner and a player. He told me that I was young, that I loved to compete, that I was good at what I did, and that I should really just stick with what I did best. I'd have plenty of time later on to take on other things. I'm glad I listened to him, and I'm really glad he became our owner. As soon as he took control of the team, he started to upgrade our talent.
Dave Lapham (veteran offensive lineman for the Cincinnati Bengals signed by the Generals): He would ask players, "Are we doing this like the NFL?" Things like meals and travel. He was very aware of making it top-shelf. Other owners couldn't afford it or didn't care about it. It was part of his M.O. If you were a player, you liked playing for Donald Trump.
Gould: We went after Joe Theismann, the most valuable quarterback [in the NFL]. We got Joe to meet at Trump Tower. I remember going into the bathroom and talking [with him] about it. It was really surreal. There I am standing at a stall with Joe Theismann, talking about him leaving the Washington Redskins. I actually thought we had a shot.
Barbaro: I had very little contact with Donald. Me being a defensive back, he wasn't overly interested in how the defense worked. He was more interested in how to score points.
Steiner (radio voice for the Generals): I worked for George [Steinbrenner]. Donald was the next generation of George. If there was a camera and microphone, he was there. In terms of the Generals, it was just a small part of his big basket of things. The USFL was born the same year Trump Tower opened. The Generals were just a part of expanding the brand. That was job one for him.
Ehrhart: I think he relished the competitive nature, not only of competing against other teams but competing in the New York market. If there's one thing about Donald, he is one hell of a competitor. He's been the same way for the thirty-two years I've known him. He's not going to back off any position. He's gonna go down the road he feels is the right thing to do. You can't go by and say, "Be nice now, Donald." He's just going to go full bore.
Lisa Edelstein (actress—House, M.D., Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce—and former Generals cheerleader, from The Huffington Post): I helped form a whole walkout because they were treating the cheerleaders like hookers. They were being asked to do these signings in their little uniforms in these sleazy bars all over the place, and they weren't protected and they were feeling really unsafe and uncared for and just sort of thrown into these environments. I was never asked to do it because I was too young. [But] when they started talking about it, we all got together and formed a walkout.
DISRUPTION
Trump dismissed the USFL's spring strategy right away, baiting the NFL with public talk of moving games to the fall. Canadian businessman John Bassett, beloved owner of the Tampa Bay Bandits and Trump's stoutest strategic rival, warned that such a move would trigger apocalypse. That kind of opposition only prompted Trump to proclaim: "If God wanted football in the spring, he wouldn't have created baseball."
Ehrhart: There's no question everybody appreciated him coming into the league at the time. They needed New York to succeed. Everybody really respected what he was doing in that second year of the league. What caused tension was he began pushing the tape, saying we needed to be playing in the fall, we have to go for it. Some of the other owners in different markets said we need to stay in the spring, that they had too many guns in the NFL. To some degree, both were right.
Steiner: He was the Pied Piper and these other desperate owners went along for the ride. It all happened in a flash. Then the USFL was dead and gone and he moved on to the next thing, which was Atlantic City. Which didn't work out too well, either.
Lapham: I know he had visions of a merger with the NFL. It was the only route he felt he had. NFL owners looked at him as a maverick.
Mike Tollin (former head of the USFL's highlight film show and director of ESPN's 2009 documentary Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?): He was a bully. From the beginning I had enormous respect for [USFL commissioner Chet] Simmons and Bassett, and I saw him bullying them and using the USFL to get in the NFL through the back door. The NFL didn't want him. Bassett was dying [from brain cancer], and Trump derailed Simmons. He was good at finding and exploiting an opponent's weakness.
Brian Sipe (on ESPN Radio in Cleveland, October 2015): The man's about leverage, he's about promotion, and that's what our franchise was like back in the USFL. But we all got it. We understood it. It kind of made us the marquee team for the league.
CRASH
The apocalypse arrived in the summer of 1986. Having already lost a collective $200 million, USFL owners, out-debated and out-maneuvered by Trump, voted 12-2 to move to a fall schedule. They also went ahead with a $1.7 billion anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL, who it claimed, among other things, had a chokehold on national TV rights. USFL owners hoped the suit would void the NFL's TV contracts, force a merger, or provide a game-changing payday. So instead of playing football in the spring of 1986, the USFL landed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. (Bassett, one of the two votes against the fall move, died on the trial's first day). Ehrhart says Trump brought in lawyer Harvey Myerson—later jailed for a phony billing scheme—to lead the case. (Another of Trump's lawyer pals, Roy Cohn, the commie-baiting counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy's hearings in the 1950s, served as only an infrequent consultant, says Ehrhart.) The NFL focused its defense on Trump. It portrayed him, Trump wrote in his 1987 bestseller The Art of the Deal, as a "vicious, greedy, Machiavellian billionaire, intent only on serving my selfish ends at everyone else's expense." To be fair, he's been called worse.
The 42-day trial ended with a jury ruling in favor of the USFL. But it also concluded that the league's dire straights were largely a result of its own doing, not the NFL's, and so awarded the USFL damages totaling…$1. Damages in anti-trust cases are tripled, so the award grew to…$3. The USFL appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which four years later allowed the award to stand. Including interest, the NFL stroked a check to the USFL for $3.76. Ehrhart still keeps it, uncashed, inside a Memphis bank's safety deposit box. (Ehrhart also handled a $6 million check for the league's attorneys' fees and allows, "I did distribute that one.")
On Myerson's advice, the league scuttled its new fall season while waiting out the appeal, assured a huge payout was on the way.
The USFL never played another game.
Steiner: The founding fathers, such as they were, had a pretty good idea. And when you have a guy come in and right away say, "If God wanted football in the spring he wouldn't have created baseball." I'm like, "Why are you coming to this dance? Find another dance to crash." He crashed our party pretty hard. Fortunately, it was only football.
Ehrhart: There was plenty of back and forth. One group felt we should stay in the spring. When the final vote came, Donald was able to convince them. Donald had the absolute power to persuade. He had such an ability to counter any point anybody would bring up. If they'd say, "Let's stay in the spring," he'd say, "That really worked out good for you guys in L.A., didn't it?"
McVay: The bottom line: too many people were losing too much money.
Ehrhart: The Harvey Myerson thing, in retrospect, was a bad, bad deal. Donald said, "He's the greatest." That was one case where he was not the greatest.
Kelly: I'm still owed $250,000 from the Houston Gamblers. One owner told me when we merged that it was Trump's job to pay us back. We were told it was the Gamblers'. Nothing ever came of it. I wrote it off as a loss.
Steiner: There isn't a goddamn difference between Don King and Don Trump. One guy's hair goes north and south, the other's goes east and west.
McVay: I think Trump kept the league together. I know that's not a popular belief, but I think he kept the league going a couple more years than it would have. I know it's popular to say Donald was the villain, that the poor players didn't get to pursue their dream. Hey, the league was outta money!
Tollin: He's the same guy who never lets the truth stand in the way of a good story or anything that furthers his ambition. He never lets humanity get in the way of personal gain. He's the same guy who looks down on anyone in his way, whose audacity and narcissism knows no bounds.
Donald Trump (in a message he wrote atop a letter Tollin sent to him with an advance copy of documentary on USFL's demise, and which Trump returned): P.S. You are a loser.
