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

Three days after the judgment, the USFL suspended operations.

The league had recorded losses approaching $200 million and when an appeal failed and a television contract for 1986 failed to materialize, the game was over.

Donald Dixon, the founder, had seen it coming. In May 1982, he had introduced the league and outlined its modest goals. Teams would have only two high-priced players, he said, and limit the rest of the payroll to $1.7 million. A typical team budget would be around $4.5 million and the television contract with ABC and ESPN would provide nearly half of that.

A nice little theory, eh?

In late 1982, only months after he had launched the enterprise, Dixon found himself at a league meeting in Washington. He knew the key to survival was keeping salaries in line and had figured out a way, through negotiations with the NFL player's union, to legally institute a salary cap.

"I brought that up," Dixon said. "One of our owners, whose name I shall never mention -- I'll never know if he was kidding -- says 'A union? What, are you some kind of communist?'

"Otherwise, I knew they would have ultimately spent themselves into oblivion -- which they did. I decided I'd better get out. I took an offer that was pending for the rights I had to a team, the team that became the Houston Gamblers."

Dixon believes if teams had followed the original modest philosophy and built their franchises slowly, the league would have succeeded.

"They let their costs get out of control," Dixon said. "Even multi-millionaires don't like to lose money."

Few disagree.

"They started out right," said Giants head coach Jim Fassel, "But egos got in the way."

Said Irv Eatman, the Stars offensive lineman, "If the entire league had been run like our franchise, we'd still be in existence. We'd be part of the NFL today."

The plan, according to the Stars' Peterson, was to "crawl before we walk, walk before we run. We had some guys, like Donald Trump, that were too anxious, wanted to go to fast."

"The league was so close to going over the top," said Charlie Steiner. "That's why people remember it so fondly and why there's a bitter sadness about the way it ended. It shouldn't have ended."

Next: The last of the Mohicans: Sean Landeta and Doug Flutie

Greg Garber is a senior writer at ESPN.com.