If Pinocchio Ran the USFL, He’d Be Taking a Nosedive

The USFL is sinking slowly, and so is its flagship franchise, the L.A. Deadbeats.

What else would you expect to have happen to a concept built on a foundation of sleaze?

Aha, you say, another kick-the-USFL-when-it’s-down column, eh?

I can’t help myself. I have an itchy foot.

The idea of spring football, or of an extra pro football league, never bothered me. A lot of people have always resented the USFL, considered it an affront to their dignity as a sports fan. This always puzzled me. I figured the USFL was like a dog show or junk mail. If you’re not interested, you just ignore it.

But looking at the whole picture now, from start to near-finish, I can see what bothered a lot of people about the league. It was built on lies, which get bigger as the league sinks deeper.

Lying in sports is nothing new. In fact, it’s almost routine. But the USFL, right from the start, seemed determined to go for the world record.

As I understand it, the league was founded on a few basic, noble concepts:

--No NFL raids. The new league would not raid the NFL. “Sure, we could do (that), but there would be an awful lot of bloodletting,” said league founding father Dave Dixon late in 1982. Within a couple of months, the USFL had stolen its first NFL player.

--No college raids. “We will draft no student-athlete before his time,” the USFL said, or words to that effect. Then Herschel Walker was invented.

--Solvency. Each team would deposit a $1.5-million forfeiture fee, in case of a franchise failure. “If any club folds, there is $18 million to pay the bills,” we were told. This should take care of all those folks who are owed money by the L.A. Express, right? Line forms at the right, folks. Better bring a lunch.

--No drugs. One of the basic founding concepts of the league was a program of drug-testing of players. This was going to be a clean league, Jack. Well, the drug test must have been an easy one, because nobody has ever failed. Maybe it was a true-or-false test.

--Low budget. That was the original plan. No big salaries. It was a nice plan. Lasted about five minutes. Hey, nothing is forever.

Basically, everything that the new league said it would be or would do, it wasn’t and didn’t. The league lied.

And setting the pace was the proud franchise in Los Angeles.

We should have known the situation was shaky. The original owner was Jim Joseph of San Francisco, who talked about how wonderful it would be to have a team in Los Angeles, then moved the franchise to Phoenix.

The next L.A. owners were Alan Harmon and Bill Daniels, whose motto was “commitment and patience.” They waited patiently for a sucker to buy the team, then committed the profits to their bank books.

Then came J. William Oldenburg, who called himself a billionaire, but probably wasn’t even a thousandaire. Then there was Jay Roulier, a bag of wind from the south who, it turns out, may be worth almost as much as Oldenburg.

When all of these fine gentlemen were finally gone, the league took over and turned the Express into the sleaziest con-game operation in professional sports. The league refused to honor existing contracts with coaches and front-office people, forced the team to play dangerously short-handed, and found a way to take care of the team’s mounting debts--don’t pay ‘em.

As outlined in a Times story by Chris Dufresne, the Express callously stiffed hotels, plumbers, carpenters, printers, even cheerleaders--in short, anyone who did not demand advance payment. They should have changed the name from the Express to the Check’s in the Mail.

It wasn’t a matter of letting the bills stack up a little. It was a matter of flushing them down the toilet. They weren’t putting people off, they were ripping people off. A subtle difference.

I guess those responsible for this systematic non-payment will tell us that they were simply waiting for a new owner to buy the team and pay off the debts. See, there are a whole lot of people seriously interested in buying this team.

That’s what the Express people, mainly Don Klosterman, kept telling us. They also kept feeding us phony, heavily inflated paid-attendance figures, but that seemed like a harmless fib. Now, we see it was just part of the pattern.

The league, the Express, is still alive in Los Angeles, waiting for that Prince Charming Owner to come in and deliver the life-saving kiss. Might I suggest that the team and league do the kissing? I have a specific anatomical target in mind.