National Post (National Edition)

`The story of my life'

When Trump tried to make football great again

- SCOTT STINSON

It is a curious footnote to history that the denouement of Donald Trump's presidency has echoes of his adventures in football almost 40 years ago.

The other lesson from that time: more people should have listened to John Bassett.

Bassett, the Canadian businessma­n, owned the Tampa Bay franchise in the new United States Football League in the early 1980s. He wrote one of the earliest documentar­y records of someone having had quite enough of Donald Trump, who had just bought the USFL's New Jersey Generals after the league's surprising­ly successful first year.

Trump pushed his fellow owners for fundamenta­l change to the USFL's business: it played in the spring, after the National Football League season was completed, and he wanted it to move to the fall, where it would directly compete with the NFL. “If God wanted football to be played in the spring,” Trump said at the time, “he wouldn't have invented baseball.”

The record suggests Trump was not particular­ly deferentia­l to his partners in his lobbying.

On Aug. 16, 1984, Bassett, on Tampa Bay Bandits letterhead, wrote to Trump and called him a “talented and successful young man.” But he also said he would no longer let Trump's “insensitiv­e and denigratin­g comments” toward his fellow owners stand unchalleng­ed.

“You are bigger, younger and stronger than I,” Bassett wrote, “which means I'll have no regrets whatsoever punching you right in the mouth the next time an instance occurs where you personally scorn me, or anyone else, who does not happen to salute and dance to your tune.”

The letter went on to advise Trump that he was only alienating himself among allies with his tendency to insult others. Prescient!

Trump's football foray has other modern-day parallels. He tried to secretly leverage his USFL ownership into a spot in the NFL's exclusive club, and when that didn't work he sought out U.S. television network executives to see if they would be interested in broadcasti­ng the USFL's games should they move to go head-to-head with the NFL in the fall. The author Jeff Pearlman, in his book Football for a Buck, wrote that the television networks that were already broadcasti­ng a popular NFL product were not interested in Trump's proposal, but he told them in a league meeting that a big TV deal was waiting if they decided to change their schedule from spring to fall.

Trump eventually won enough support from the USFL's owners for the move. In an ESPN documentar­y on the league, the actor Burt Reynolds, who was one of Bassett's partners in Tampa Bay, described how Trump got his way.

“Everyone was so in awe of this man who made so much money and took such chances that they were willing — half of them — to give it a try,” Reynolds said. But he also said what he thought of trying to compete with the NFL: “To go head to head with them was insane.”

Bassett, diagnosed with brain cancer in 1985, sold the Bandits and left the league. After plotting to have a fall schedule for the USFL's fourth season in 1986, Trump launched an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL, in hopes of landing a windfall settlement — or forcing the league to accept some of the USFL's franchises into their league.

It was a script that by now seems familiar. Trump insisted that the TV networks would embrace the new USFL, and instead they did the opposite, and then he barged ahead with a lawsuit, insisting to his fellow owners, who by now had hitched themselves to the Trump train, that he would emerge victorious in the end.

And he did, sort of. A jury found the NFL guilty of running an unfair monopoly on profession­al football, but it awarded the USFL damages of one dollar. In that ESPN documentar­y, Small Potatoes — named for Trump's derisive label of a football league that only wanted to play in the spring — it is said that the jurors were unconvince­d that the USFL's owners had been actually harmed by the NFL's monopoly, since it had been viable before it had decided to compete directly with it in the fall. It also hadn't been operating since the spring of 1985, by its own decision. Trump offers his own theory in the film, saying that the jurors knew he was rich, so he didn't need the money.

Despite the lawsuit “win,” the USFL never played a game in the fall of 1986, or ever again. Many of its stars — Jim Kelly, Steve Young, Reggie White — went on to lengthy NFL careers. Doug Flutie, who played for Trump in New Jersey, became a Canadian Football League legend. Bassett died in 1986, as the court case against the NFL was starting. Trump tried to get into the NFL again in 2014, but was outbid in his effort to buy the Buffalo Bills. He then went on to a political career of some note.

Would the USFL have lasted in the spring? Maybe, although several attempts at a spring league have tried and failed in the decades since. Whatever might have happened, it didn't outlast the arrival of a certain ambitious owner.

“People can try to blame Trump, or whatever they want to do,” Trump says in Small Potatoes. “I mean, that doesn't matter, it's the story of my life.”

 ?? THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES ?? New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump shook hands with Herschel Walker on March 8, 1984, after Walker agreed
to a four-year contract with the USFL team. The league crumbled three years later.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump shook hands with Herschel Walker on March 8, 1984, after Walker agreed to a four-year contract with the USFL team. The league crumbled three years later.
 ??  ??
 ?? UPI ?? When John F. Bassett owned the Tampa Bay Bandits of the USFL, he wrote he'd happily punch Donald Trump,
then owner of the league's New Jersey franchise.
UPI When John F. Bassett owned the Tampa Bay Bandits of the USFL, he wrote he'd happily punch Donald Trump, then owner of the league's New Jersey franchise.

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