Story of the USFL

Below is a loose (very loose) chronology of the headline stories from the USFL: Herschel Walker signs on When football was F-U-N Young signs with Express The Class of '84 Marcus Dupree: The phenom Blitz 'em in Chi ... uh, Buffalo Only the sky was their limit The cradle of NFL coaching? Perpetual motion (The pursuit of) USFL trivia The Donald (Trump, of course) The $3.76 lawsuit Stick with the plan Landeta and Flutie -- Greg Garber

To a man, they all mention that F-word.

"This was the most fun I ever had associated with football," said Irv Eatman, the Stars star. "It sounds corny, but it was so pure. We were the first players, the first coaches, the first everything. There was no status quo. With all the naysayers, I think everybody felt like they had a vested interest to make it work. I had a hell of a time."

Eatman said the spring schedule, despite the heat of summer late in the season, was more player-friendly.

"You train in Florida in the winter and the weather in the spring is usually pretty good. Plus, as a player, you have almost the entire list of holidays in the off-season - Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's. That's incredibly nice.

"Sure, there were 18 games, two more than we played in the NFL, but there weren't any preseason games. You have to like that."

Barry Stanton covered the Generals and the USFL for the Gannett Suburban Newspapers.

"What I remember is the NFL constantly making fun of them," Stanton said. "They called it the USE-less, said they had no talent.

"It was much more fun than the NFL, a little bit of that old AFL thing going on. They were more willing to try things. It wasn't like this big religion. In the NFL, the high holy day is the Super Bowl. The USFL Championship, it was more like Halloween."

Bart Oates remembers training at Stetson University in Deland, Fla., with the Philadelphia Stars.

Deja review

The NFL was once referred to by a former player as the last bastion of Fascism. Conservative probably is a fairer word. While the NFL was plodding along, mired in the 1930s, the USFL was encouraging celebrations, offering two-point conversions and keeping officials honest with a replay system. "Yeah," Eatman says, "we did all that stuff in the '80s, before the NFL finally came around." -- Greg Garber

"It was fun because there was this sense of having nothing to lose," Oates said. "Guys like me, in the NFL I would have been camp fodder, a mid-round draft choice, maybe a couple of years in the league.

"It was great because I got to play with my brother [Brad]. He was six years older and a journeyman in the NFL, so it was his last two years and my first two years. We got to room together and it was a nice transition."

Oates, who won two Super Bowl rings with the Giants, passed the New Jersey bar examination and today is the regional director for Workstage, a New Jersey -based company that constructs high-tech buildings.

"Twenty years," mused Oates. "Oh, my God … I've got to call my brother."

Next: Steve Young joins the Express

Greg Garber is a senior writer at ESPN.com.