Donald Trump once owned the New Jersey Generals, a franchise in the short-lived United States Football League
DONALD TRUMP IN NEW JERSEY
A look at the businessman's ventures in the Garden StateEAST RUTHERFORD -- Most everyone knows Donald Trump was an Atlantic City casino magnate.
And the billionaire businessman -- now the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination -- is revered in the golf world for his 17 luxury courses across the globe, including three in New Jersey.
But another, largely forgotten Jersey venture -- his ownership of the long-departed New Jersey Generals -- begs the question:
Did Donald Trump really kill a professional football league?
Trump bought the Generals, a franchise in the upstart United States Football League, in 1983. The young real estate developer had just opened Trump Tower in Manhattan and was a few months away from opening Trump Plaza, his first Atlantic City casino.
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Like the Giants and Jets of the larger NFL, the Generals played their home games at Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands.
"I think the New York-New Jersey area deserves a winner," Trump told Sports Illustrated at the time. "The Generals have become hot."
The USFL sounds like a novelty today: a pro football league that played its games in the spring.
But formed in the wake of 1982 NFL strike, the rise of cable TV, and a growing interest in football, the league actually had a burst of fame three decades ago.
Hesiman trophy winner Herschel Walker skipped his senior season at the University of Georgia to join the league in its first year, signing with the Generals. In all, 187 USFL players went on to play in the NFL.
But toward the end of that inaugural season, interest began to fade.
Enter Trump, who bought the Generals from Oklahoma oil magnate J. Walter Duncan for a reported $9 million.
"It wasn't as if he was owning the Giants," said sportswriter Hank Gola, who covered the Generals for the New York Daily News. "But I think he got more publicity as the owner of the New Jersey Generals than he had before that."
Trump quickly signed quarterback Brian Sipe, a former NFL MVP. He then hired former New York Jets coach Walt Michaels to lead the team. The Generals went from six wins in 1983 to 14 in 1984.
"Every time he spoke, people listened," said Kevin MacConnell, the General's public relations director. "He brought a ton of excitement and a ton of exposure to the state and the metropolitan area and the USFL. He was just what was needed for the second year."
The USFL expanded from 12 teams in 1983 to 18 the following year, and brought in marque players such as Heisman winner Mike Rozier and future Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly. And in 1985, Trump signed quarterback Doug Flutie, yet another Heisman winner.
But Trump saw playing football in the spring as "a wasteland." Experts said he came into the USFL with the idea to move the league to the fall and challenge the NFL directly.
"If God wanted football in the spring, he wouldn't have created baseball," Trump said at the time.
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The league voted to make the move in 1986. But there was a problem: The NFL was on all three TV networks.
So, the league -- with Trump supplying the lawyers -- filed an antitrust and monopoly lawsuit against NFL seeking $1.69 billion. Critics said Trump's hope was that the USFL would become as powerful as the NFL, or that it would force a merger -- leading the Generals to be absorbed into the NFL.
In the end, the jury ruled that the NFL did have a monopoly and that the USFL was injured. But it also felt the USFL contributed to its own demise with too much spending. The jury awarded the USFL $3 in damages.
The league folded and never played a game in the fall.
Actor Burt Reynolds -- one of the partners of the USFL's Tampa Bay Bandits -- was blunt about the demise when interviewed for "Small Potatoes," an ESPN documentary about the league released in 2009.
"I still feel and will always feel that his ambitions -- his personal ambitions -- were what sunk the league," Reynolds said of Trump.
Keith Jackson, an ABC sportscaster, told ESPN that "greed and patience don't live together very well."
"Donald Trump was not happy being involved with what some people still wanted to call a second-level football franchise, league, team -- anything like that," Jackson said in the documentary.
Flutie said the league's plan to jump to the fall happened too quickly.
"We had a decent thing going, and the league could have continued on," the former Generals quarterback said in the film. "I think Donald rushed it a little bit."
Trump, whose campaign declined requests for an interview for this story, disagreed.
"We had owners that were dying," he said in the documentary. "We had owners that couldn't pay their bills. And when you have that, you have to act a little bit quickly.
"I actually think I got the league to go as far as it went," Trump added. "I think without me, the league would have folded a lot sooner."
Gola said Trump is probably right.
"Many people think if they stayed in the spring, they probably could have survived," he said. "But I don't know on what level they would have survived."
Sipe told ESPN radio in Cleveland earlier this month that Trump "was the same guy then as he is now."
"The man's about leverage, he's about promotion, and that's what our franchise was like back in the USFL," the former Generals quarterback said. "But we all got it. We understood it. It kind of made us the marquee team for the league."
"But let's just hope he knows a lot more about governing the country than he did about football," Sipe added.
Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
