Starting on February 14, 2014, Sam Quinn and The Sports Post have decided to run down the 52 Greatest What Ifs in NFL History, one per week, for the next year. For a list of published What Ifs, as well as the introductory piece, click here.
A little competition is healthy, right? Wrong. When the USFL, a rising football league that stole quite a bit of talent from the NFL, tried to move from the spring to the fall, litigation destroyed the league and any semblance of a competition for the title of best football league in America. Though it didn’t last nearly as long as the NFL, the USFL is actually responsible for several innovations that have made the league what it is today. Among other things, it created the two-point conversion, popularized the passing game and spread offense, and even launched the careers of several greats like Steve Young and Jim Kelly. It died in 1986 during the proposed move to the fall, but what if the USFL decided to stay in the spring?
Continuing in its pattern of stealing top talent, the USFL grabs Heisman trophy winners Vinny Testaverde in 1986 and Barry Sanders in 1988. Slowly, they begin eating into the NFL’s popularity, forcing the league to strike back imposing lifetime bans on any player who agrees to play for the USFL. As the NFL is far more stable, they hope that this fear of never getting to play in the NFL will force the talent to choose them out of college rather than using both leagues as bargaining chips later in their careers.
Unfortunately, as the nation’s football talent is split between two leagues, the quality of both begins to suffer. The USFL, with its unstable locations and constantly changing rules, is simply too hard for fans to follow. The NFL, on the other hand, becomes far too rigid in its adherence to tradition and lack of excitement. This decline in quality, combined with the fact that the two leagues essentially play back-to-back, over-saturates the market and football as a whole begins to lose traction in the country.
The NBA, with Michael Jordan on the rise and more marketable stars than the rest of the leagues combined, sees this as its opportunity to become the nation’s most popular sport and strikes. NBA Commissioner David Stern quietly starts hiring neurological researches to look into the long-term damage of concussions, claiming the research to be “in the interest of protecting our players,” while really knowing that the truth behind such information would be a massive publicity problem for football. This eventually pushes the player-safety issue to the public forefront 20 years earlier than in reality, and neither football league knows how to properly respond.
The USFL claims that its pass-happy style and steadfast protection of the quarterback keeps players healthier simply because it encourages fewer collisions. The NFL, meanwhile, claims that its players get injured less because its shorter-yardage offenses reduce full-speed hits and spears over the middle. While the leagues squabble about head injuries, another major controversy brews in the background.
In 1995, free agent receiver Ed McCaffrey sues the USFL (who also adopted a lifetime ban policy for NFL players) over antitrust violations claiming the league has no right to ban him from joining. Several NFL and USFL players join in on similar suits, and eventually the leagues are forced to repeal their banning policies and allow players to switch leagues freely as their contracts expire. Aside from confusing fans who only follow one league with new players they’ve never seen, the bad press from the lawsuits caps a miserable decade for football as a whole. The NBA sits firmly atop the American sports hierarchy, with baseball and hockey following behind in second and third. By the time the two struggling leagues agree to merge in 2004, the damage is done and football has become a niche sport.
More must-reads: