![]() ![]() Effectively gaining access to the NFL via the back door. He bought the New Jersey Generals, intending to persuade USFL owners to shift the league to the autumn, in direct competition with the NFL, and then somehow force a merger. Trump had been repeatedly rejected as an NFL owner and saw the USFL as his way in. Pearlman argues that the USFL had a chance to survive but was derailed by the interventions of Donald Trump, now US President. It didn’t seek to compete directly with the NFL but to establish itself during a time of year when there is no football. The USFL, which ran for three seasons between 19 was different because it was a spring league. ![]() The most successful, the AFL, ran through the 1960s and eventually merged with the older league to form the NFL of the Super Bowl era. Throughout its history, the NFL has periodically been challenged by other football leagues. “We probably should have paid closer attention.” Ehrhart was talking about Clinton Manges, owner of the franchise, but it could apply to so many of the calamitous or plain bizarre decisions that abound in Pearlman’s history of the short-lived United States Football League. “There were some real red flags,” former Memphis Showboats GM Steve Ehrhart tells Jeff Pearlman at one point in this book. ![]() ![]() Football for a Buck (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) ![]()
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