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- I got a chance to review Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL
- You’re in for 400 pages of riveting sports history unfolds, with former US President Donald Trump playing a starring role in the narrative
- The USFL was an upstart American football league that aimed to take on the NFL during the 1980s
Lasting just three years, the United States Football League (USFL) legacy is larger than you might expect. It launched the professional careers of legends like Steve Young, Jim Kelly and Hershel Walker and gave the preeminent NFL (then known as the ‘No Fun League’) a few scares.
Jeff Pearlman’s fabulous book, Football For a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL, intimately captures the madness around the upstart league.
The list of characters introduced is simply dizzying, each more zanier than the last. The anecdotes and stories that unfold are funny, irreverent and packed with detail.
The premise of the USFL was simple – play American football in spring, when the NFL had its off-season. Rely on former NFL players to pack out rosters, but also, importantly, try to poach some of the best college talent before they jumped to the NFL.
Football For a Buck
- Written by Jeff Pearlman, it runs to over 400 pages
- Filled with memorable stories and characters
- If you’re looking for a blast of little known sports history, this is the book for you
The USFL really felt like the precursor for Vince McMahon’s first version of the XFL in the early 2000s. The play was extremely dirty, with players constantly injured, there was rampant abuse of alcohol and drugs, but with the USFL there seemed to be much more money sloshing around the fledgling league.
For example, the Heisman Trophy winner of 1984, running back Mike Rozier signed an eye-watering $1 million a year contract to join the league. The Chicago Bears’ Walter Payton, who went on to win a Super Bowl in 1985 and was one of the premier running backs in the NFL, made $785,000 in comparison.
So how good was the USFL? Take the example of future NFL quarterbacks, Steve Young and Jim Kelly. Both faced off in a game in 1985 dubbed to this day “The Greatest Game No One Saw”. In the game, Kelly threw for over 574 yards – still a professional football record to this day.
Yet despite such entertainment it highlighted the weakness of the USFL. Only 18,828 fans filled the LA Colosseum’s 90,000 seats and the game wasn’t even broadcasted nationally. Simply put, a travesty.
Enter the one, the only, Donald Trump into this book.
Trump buys the New Jersey Generals and pushes the other league owners to compete head to head with the NFL season. Within Trump’s strategy is a high-profile legal case against the NFL alleging a monopoly on TV rights for American Football.
The USFL won the case.
The rest, as they say, is history.
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Rating:
I can’t recommend this book enough. It is simply outstanding. Pearlman has created a sports business classic, packed with a host of characters that are barely even believable.
It also offers an insight into some of the pitfalls that any new professional league needs to avoid in order to survive, and ultimately to thrive.
