The $1 league: The rise and fall of the USFL

The United States Football League began in 1982 with high hopes in lucrative TV contracts, enthusiastic, well-heeled owners, a full 1983 schedule, and predicted fan support. Byrne, the league's communications director, tells the sad results as the league limped through three spring seasons of falling attendance, waning ABC and ESPN networks ratings, warfare among owners Donald Trump, John Bassett, and others, and failing finances. The Pyrrhic $1 judgment (with triple damages) in 1986 in its antitrust suit against the NFL wrote finis to the dreams.