• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Football for a Buck The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL by Jeff Pearlman 9 football books to kick off the 2018 season. From Donald Trump and the defunct United States Football League to retrospectives on the Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots, the 2018 football season offers some engaging reading. Here are excerpts from nine new releases. 1. ‘Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL,’ by Jeff Pearlman. September 5, 2018. By Ross Atkin. As a high school English student, Jeff Pearlman was so smitten by the wacky United States Football League that he wrote a 40-page paper on its demise when the assignment only called for half as many pages. Since then the bestselling author has wanted to write a book about the last football league to challenge the mighty NFL but realized he first needed to solidify his writing credentials before taking an in-depth look at the USFL. The league played three spring/summer seasons before folding, while fielding such superstars as Herschel Walker, Steve Young, and Reggie White. One team owner who gets a lot of attention is Donald Trump, who hoped to use the USFL as a steppingstone to the NFL, but instead became a central figure in a cautionary tale about the dangers of ego and excess. Here’s an excerpt from Football for a Buck : "For all his bluster about the USFL switching to a fall schedule, Donald Trump sure wasn’t big on details and specifics. Neither, for that matter, was Harry Usher, a lovely man with a thick resumé and glorious hair who appeared increasingly incapable of handling the tasks placed before him. Other than assuring journalists that – win or lose its lawsuit – the USFL would go on in the fall of 1986, Usher was a sprinkler lacking water. When he spoke, nobody seemed to listen. When he didn’t speak, people wondered if he ever opened his mouth. In July, he declared the USFL’s next season would likely include 12 teams, not 14. Which was a departure from Trump’s statement that the USFL should have 8 teams, not 12. There was talk of the Denver Gold moving to Honolulu, as well as the Denver Gold merging with the Portland Breakers. The Los Angeles Express were said to be headed to the San Fernando Valley – or the graveyard. The Tampa Bay Bandits and San Antonio Gunslingers were prepared to become one and relocate to … Chicago ? Then, on July 23, the Gunslingers waived all 46 of their players because the owner, Clinton Manges, was broke. ‘I regret that the players were unpaid,’ Usher said meekly. ‘I hope that they are paid in the near future.’ They never were.” About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”: “Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.” If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism. But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in. The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908. We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.” Drugs, Dick Injuries, And Liberace's Bodyguard: Just A Normal Season In The Ludicrous And Doomed USFL. Excerpted from Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL . Copyright © 2018 by Jeff Pearlman. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. On the morning of Wednesday, February 22, 1984, head coach John Hadl arrived at the Los Angeles Express’s Manhattan Beach facility and reviewed the list of players who would be dismissed. When he broached the name of defensive end Greg Fields, an executive with the team warned, “Paper isn’t going to take this very well.” “Really?” Hadl asked. “Yup,” the employee replied. “I’d have someone in the office with you.” At six-foot-one and 230 pounds, Hadl was no shrinking violet. He’d absorbed many crippling hits over a 16-year quarterbacking run with the Chargers, Rams, Packers, and Oilers, and feared not a journeyman lineman. Plus, at 44 he was young enough to hold his own in a scuffle. “I told two guys to stand outside the door,” Hadl said. “Just in case anything happened and we needed to get him out.” Hadl summoned for Fields, who sensed what was coming. A day earlier the Express had released Al Burleson, which enraged the lineman. “Al was my best friend on the team,” Fields said. “It was bullshit. I wasn’t in the best mood.” Moments before entering Hadl’s office, Fields spoke with Danny Rich, the linebacker. “If they dump me,” he told him, “they’re gonna have to get the National Guard to pull me out of here.” There is a robotic application to the typical player cut, one followed for decades by nearly all engaged parties in all professional team sports. The coach invites the soon-to-be departed to sit down. The soon-to-be departed gulps. The coach explains how impressed he was by the soon-to-be departed, but that it comes down to numbers. The soon-to-be departed thanks the coach for the opportunity, shakes his hand, leaves the room, packs his belongings, and (oftentimes) cries. “I’ve cut many players,” said Hadl. “You pretty much know how it goes.” This time, Greg Fields entered scowling. He was wearing a gray Express T-shirt and blue shorts. “Have a seat,” Hadl said. “I’d rather not,” Fields replied. “OK,” the coach said. “Well, we’re letting you go. It’s nothing you did wrong. We just. ” Fields turned toward the door and slammed it shut. He charged Hadl, drew back his right fist — bulky gold ring wrapped around the thumb — and swung it toward the coach’s face, connecting enough to open skin and draw blood. “He got me on the cheekbone—that’s all,” said Hadl. “It wasn’t so bad.” The two men stationed outside the door burst in at the same time Hadl was popping Fields in the mouth with a counter left. “It was craziness,” said Derek Kennard, the rookie offensive lineman. “That was my first day with the team, and security is everywhere, scrambling around. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, what have I walked into here?’” “[Moments later] Hadl enters the room for the quarterbacks meeting and he has a rabbit-sized mark on his face,” said Express QB Tom Ramsey. “We were all shocked. He said, ‘I cut Fields, and Fields didn’t like it.’” “It was,” said Ricky Ellis, the Express tight end, “the weirdest thing ever.” Fields was escorted from the facility and ordered never to return. As he marched toward his car, he promised he would be back to “kill” Hadl and “beat down” Keith Gilbertson, the defensive line coach. Later that day GM Don Klosterman had someone in the organization reach out to Nelson Mercado, a well-known local security professional who, at the time, was working as a private bodyguard for Liberace, the flamboyant pianist. “They called and told me a disgruntled ex-player wanted to assassinate the head coach,” said Mercado. “I’d heard a lot of things in my career. But that was a new one.” Mercado said he advised the Express to contact the police, and that a team representative replied, “We did — but the cops won’t handle this the way you would.” Mercado requested a leave of absence from Liberace, who was living and performing in Las Vegas, then made the four-hour return drive to his Southern California home. Although Fields later denied the claim, Mercado said the former lineman called in a threat to come to the facility on a random day armed with a six-inch barreled Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver and end Hadl’s life. “It was no joke,” said Mercado. “We followed him. I would report to the Express every day on Greg Fields’s whereabouts. I had certain things put on his vehicle — tracers. He also had a beeper, and we put a tracer on his beeper. I had a crew of about six people working just to know his whereabouts. He would park his car two or three blocks away from the facility. He called me once and made the point of telling me he had a long rifle and was able to kill me and kill anybody on the practice field.

Load more

  6

Copy Link