Trump’s fumble

Football season will soon be upon us: that crisp time of year when brass horns gleam in the autumn sun, the biggest boys on campus do the concussion waltz, and ninnies toss rolls of toilet tissue into the azure sky. On Friday nights, upwards of 40,000 fans will stuff high school stadiums in Florida and Texas so their school taxes can be put to good use as the teenagers entertain the adults.

At West Point, Dwight Eisenhower once tackled the great Jim Thorpe, and Michigan Wolverine Jerry Ford did the same to Jay Berwanger, making him the only president to tackle a Heisman Trophy winner. Richard Nixon warmed the bench as receiver at Whittier, and the Kennedys loved being photographed tossing the pigskin around to draw attention away from the fact they were a clan of tennis players and golfers.

Our current president also has a niche carved in football lore. In 1983 Donald Trump purchased the New Jersey Generals of the fledgling United States Football League and drove not just a promising franchise, but an entire league, into the ground. It was a spectacular business miscalculation, conceived in two misguided notions: (1) that an antitrust suit is a business plan, and (2) juries will believe Donald Trump no matter how obviously he is lying.

The Unite States Football League was originally conceived in the mind of New Orleans promoter Dave Dixon, who wanted to cash in on the fact that America’s appetite for football was insatiable. The league would play its schedule in the spring, so franchises like the Pittsburgh Maulers would not compete for public hearts with the sainted Steelers. And in cities that didn’t yet have major league baseball, like Denver and Phoenix, spring football would thrive as the only game in town. Cost containment was key. The USFL would not make the mistake of entering an unwinnable bidding war with the dominant NFL for top-notch talent, nor try to poach its existing rosters, as the World Football League had tried in the 1970s. The USFL aimed to aim high by aiming low.

When they stuck to the plan, things worked out well. Denver drew upwards of 40,000 fans per game. The league attracted solid coaching talent, including Jim Mora, Marv Levy, and the venerable George Allen. Some teams stunk, like the Washington Federals and the Maulers, but the Baltimore Stars and Michigan Panthers were pretty good. The league was well on its way to surviving its growing pains and becoming a viable springtime entertainment attraction.

Then came Donald. In September1983 he paid Oklahoma oil man Walter Duncan $10 million for the Generals and fired coach Chuck Fairbanks, who had brought the University of Oklahoma to two national title games. Trump bought the team in no small measure because owning a sports team is a better way to get your name in the paper and your puss on TV than owning some gaudy buildings. He wanted to make a hiring splash, but Joe Paterno at Penn State and Broadway Joe Namath had no interest. He then fixed his sights on Don Shula, who used Trump as leverage to squeeze a huge raise from the Miami Dolphins and their notoriously tight owner, Joe Robbie. Eventually Trump settled for ex-Jets coach Walt Michaels, but not before he told the press that Shula had been asking for the moon, including a suite at Trump Tower. Shula put it this way:” Trump had told the media that the only thing that kept me from coming to terms with him is that I demanded a suite in Trump Tower. I had never heard about Trump Tower. He was using me to get publicity.”

Trump held very public tryouts for the team’s cheerleading squad with his then-wife Ivanna, Leroy Neiman and Andy Warhol as judges. The cheerleaders all chaffed when they were directed to strut their stuff strumpet-style in bars full of drunk, horny losers who might buy tickets. Eleven of them skipped a game in protest and got fired.

Immediately after buying into the league, Trump started to advocate moving to a fall schedule and taking on the NFL directly. John Bassett, the highly respected owner of the Tampa Bay Bandits opposed the move, but recurring cancer weakened his strength and resolve. The Denver Gold knew it would be suicide to take on the Broncos and said no. Trump pounded the drum that the NFL would be forced to grant USFL owners franchises or else face a HUGE anti-trust award. Chet Simmons, the league Commissioner, opposed the idea, but eventually Trump won out. Simmons described the move as “all Trump.”

On Oct. 17, 1984, the USFL filed a $1.32 billion suit against the NFL claiming that it had monopolized the airwaves by entering into broadcast contracts with all three networks, and sought to shut out access to talent by expanding team rosters. Every team and every owner was named as a defendant except Al Davis and his Oakland Raiders. Al was happy to testify against his own league as payback for its unwillingness to allow him to move his boys to Los Angeles. Howard Cosell, whose lips had been sewn to Trump’s derriere for years, gave what amounted to pre-Daubert expert testimony based on his self-declared unquestionable genius, that the defendant league was crawling with mentally challenged crooks. It apparently did not occur to plaintiffs’ counsel Harvey Myerson that if the jurors were an accurate reflection of the community, they couldn’t stand Howard Cosell.

At one point, Trump testified that NFL Commissioner Alvin “Pete” Rozelle had summoned him to a meeting at New York’s Hotel Pierre and said “make sure we don’t get sued, and I’ll make sure you get a franchise.” Rozelle, who like James Comey preserved contemporaneous notes of the conversations, recalled the opposite, that Trump had said “Listen, I’ll get these USFL owners to drop this litigation if I get an NFL team in New York City.” When Rozelle asked “What are you going to do about the Generals?” Trump replied, “I’ll get some stiff to buy it.”

The jurors didn’t believe Trump, they knew Al Davis was biased, and they didn’t care what Cosell had to say. In the end, they awarded the USFL the nominal sum of $1, because even though the NFL had broken the anti-trust laws, the USFL’s damages were self-inflicted. By law, the $1 judgment was trebled. Statutory interest bumped it up to $3.76. The USFL appealed, but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found no reason to reverse. To this day, the check in satisfaction of the judgment has never been cashed. When presented with it by an interviewer years later, Trump just sneered and tossed it aside.