When Trump tried to take over football. And ended up with $3.76

The President of the United States – essentially the most powerful man in the world – is unlikely to get involved in a sector without transforming it, not least because otherwise there would be little point in getting started. In Donald Trump’s case, moreover, recent news reports speak for themselves. Even in sport, although his involvement in the FIFA-World Cup affair – particularly following UEFA’s criminal complaint against Gianni Infantino – remains to be clarified. Trump, after all, even before entering politics, had demonstrated a willingness to shake things up, to introduce new – and often controversial – ideas – otherwise, what would be the point? – and to cause a stir. For example, through his involvement in the United States Football League (USFL), a league founded in 1983 to fill the gap left by the NFL between February and August.

The idea came from David Dixon, one of the great figures in American sport of the last century, though unknown to most people. An antiques dealer from New Orleans, he had brought the NFL to the city in 1967 and, in 1973, by persuading his friend Lamar Hunt to found the World Championship Tennis, he had effectively ushered in the era of professional tennis. One day in April 1981, Dixon had another brainwave whilst watching his university, Tulane’s, spring game in New Orleans alongside 25,000 other spectators – the traditional ‘family game’, a sort of attack versus defence match: ‘Why can’t we play football in the spring and summer?’

He commissioned a survey which yielded favourable results; he noted the mistakes made by the World Football League in 1974 – first and foremost, the decision to try to compete simultaneously with the NFL – made a round of phone calls, and within a year the USFL was born, with 12 teams and an initial schedule of 20 matches running from March to July. That is to say, during the months when, at the time, the NFL was practically never mentioned. The New York team – or rather, New York/New Jersey, as this was the only way it could play at Giants Stadium, which was actually situated in New Jersey – was entrusted to a somewhat half-hearted oil magnate from Oklahoma, Walter Duncan, who grew tired of it after a year and sold it to Trump. Trump was actually supposed to have been the original owner: it was just that, after paying the first instalment, he had failed to follow up with the second, and when they tried to contact him by telephone, he justified himself by saying that, on that very day, a potential property deal had come up that required his full attention and resources.

Having finally taken the helm, Trump revolutionised everything, from the coaching staff to the squad: he wanted to win the championship – something he failed to achieve because other teams had more solid foundations – but above all he wanted to challenge the NFL, almost certainly in the hope of forcing it into a merger and, perhaps, finally securing the purchase of the Baltimore Colts (later Indianapolis, from 1984). The challenge had to be direct, namely by playing at the same time, in the autumn, from 1986 onwards.

Eddie Einhorn of the Chicago Blitz (and the MLB’s White Sox) was the main figure to follow Trump in this shift, but after a while others came round to his side and even the USFL president, Chet Simmons, had to give in, whilst still considering the idea madness. The crisis soon arose: when the television broadcasters who had welcomed the spring league with interest (i.e. money) proved hesitant to renew their contracts, the USFL, suspecting pressure from the NFL, took legal action against it – a court case that caused quite a stir, not least because one of the main league’s own owners, Al Davis of the Los Angeles Raiders, a long-standing dissident, testified against it.

The NFL found itself in a tight spot, particularly when a paper by a Harvard professor entitled “How to Destroy the USFL” came to light, which was reportedly commissioned by the league’s top brass. And indeed, the court ruled in favour of the USFL, but with a sensational twist: the NFL was, in fact, operating under a more pronounced monopoly than that permitted by a 1961 Act of Congress, but its conduct, whilst reprehensible, had not been severe enough to harm the USFL, which was itself to blame for shooting itself in the foot by deciding to move its season to the autumn. The compensation awarded to it was – and remains one of the great anecdotes of American sport – one dollar, which rose to 3.76 dollars due to a clause in the antitrust cases, a sum that no one ever had the nerve to collect, not least because the USFL disbanded. There is no record of Trump subsequently attempting to become the owner of a football team again.