Newsweek - In 1982, the rival United States Football League announced it intended to start playing in the spring, outside the NFL season. Trump eventually owned the New York City-area team, the New Jersey Generals. Newsweek spoke about the USFL with author Jeff Pearlman, who has a book on the league, The Useless, that's due out in 2018. Having spoken with coaches, players, owners and just about everyone involved with the league—some 420 people in total (although not Trump himself)—it's unlikely anybody has a fuller picture of the USFL's brief life than Pearlman.
It was Trump's undying need to get into the NFL that drove the billionaire to buy his way into the upstart league in the '80s, the author said. But the big league wasn't a fan.
"They just saw him as this scumbag huckster," Pearlman told Newsweek. "He was this New York, fast-talking, kind of con-man."
In the course of Trump's NFL pursuit, he made a fair number of enemies at the USFL and helped shuttle the league to an early grave. He convinced other USFL owners to challenge the NFL directly in the fall, and then led the charge on an anti-trust lawsuit against the football giant that netted a massive...three dollars. The USFL was dead by '85.
The inside story
1 comment:
"They just saw him as this scumbag huckster,"
That's pretty funny considering just what a bunch of taxpayer-raping, player health destroying, billionaire cretins NFL owners are.
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