One-game wonders

Tom Ramsey, the quarterback, remembers his knees knocking.

“I might have been more nervous for that game than the Rose Bowl versus Michigan a couple of months earlier,” he said this week.

Tony Boddie, the tailback, remembers warming up on the field beneath the Coliseum’s giant shadow.

“Herschel Walker was on the other side,” Boddie said. “Number 34. University of Georgia. Massive legs. Faster than anyone should be.”

Bob Rose, the publicity man, recalls scrambling to accommodate more than 200 reporters who requested credentials. One was New York’s legendary and irascible columnist Dick Young, who Rose said became irascible when his press pass wasn’t at will call.

Overflow media were moved to an auxiliary press box on the roof of the Coliseum.

Rain was in the forecast.

“We were sweating bullets,” Rose recalled.

Twenty five years ago, March 6, 1983, the Los Angeles Express played its inaugural game for the fledgling United States Football League.

Sappy Anniversary?

Hardly, although the bill collectors might hold a reunion.

A lot of people may remember how the L.A. Express ended -- the movie could be titled “Apocalypse Then.”

In three years, it was over: the Express, the USFL, the $1 antitrust victory, the whole ridiculously mangled mess.

“You’ll never see a pro franchise like this one,” Paul Sandrock, the team’s controller for three years, said at the time. “And God help the world if we do.”

The Express didn’t start out as a car going over a cliff. On March 6, 1983, spring football actually seemed possible

It didn’t rain, the birds chirped, Dick Young got his press pass. Everything felt squeaky clean that Sunday, the air crisp with a mixture of hype and hope.

Opening day in the USFL drew a 14.2 rating on ABC. “You just didn’t know which way it was going to go from there,” Rose said of the excitement.

No Express owner had yet hurled a plate of food at his coach.

A spring league had sprung, one with modest payrolls and expectations.

The Express defeated the New Jersey Generals, 20-15, before a curious crowd of 34,002.

Ramsey, the former UCLA star, relieved starter Mike Rae, a former USC star, and tossed two touchdown passes, one to Boddie and the other to Vister Hayes.

The shocker was Boddie, fresh out of Montana State, stealing opening credits from Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner and the USFL’s first flagship player.

Boddie finished with 77 rushing yards to Walker’s 66. Boddie also had 49 receiving yards to Walker’s three.

Boddie’s parents captured the game on a primitive device known as a VHS recorder.

“I’ll always remember that,” said Boddie, who lives in Bremerton, Wash. “I out-performed Herschel Walker.”

The Express’ roster was sprinkled with the kind of talent that embraced the USFL’s mission statement. Fifteen players hailed from local colleges -- USC, UCLA, Long Beach State, Cal State Fullerton and even one from Cal Poly Pomona.

Nobody imagined March 6 was as good as it was going to get.

“We hit the high note on day one,” Ramsey said, “Then it became ‘The Gong Show’ after that.”

That home crowd of 34,002 was the largest in franchise history. The last game at the cavernous Coliseum, in 1985, drew 3,059, and their last home game was played at Pierce College in Woodland Hills.

After March 6, unfortunately, there was a March 7.

The Express went 7-10 the rest of 1983, 11-9 in 1984 and 3-15 in 1985.

Freud would not have recognized USFL founder David Dixon’s dream.

Dixon’s idea to grow it slow with a $1.3-million salary cap -- that was the max for a team, not just a player -- was immediately violated, mostly by the Michigan Panthers, who lost an estimated $6 million buying enough players to win the first USFL title. The league, after one year, expanded from 12 teams to 18.

The Express was mismanaged by co-owners Bill Daniels and Alan Harmon, but at least they were smart enough to get out (for a profit) after one year.

Hugh Campbell, the Express’ first coach, who wanted nothing to do with escalation, also pulled his parachute cord and bailed out to the NFL’s Houston Oilers.

And when Donald Trump bought the Generals, well, there officially went any concept of modesty.

The Express in 1984 was sold to a self-proclaimed billionaire, William Oldenburg, who once said, when it came to business, Trump couldn’t “carry my socks.”

Oldenburg was known as “Mr. Dynamite,” and he certainly was a keg full. He started spending money it turned out he didn’t have, hiring former Rams general manager Don Klosterman and telling him to buy him a team just like the Rams.

Klosterman spent $12 million on 31 prized rookies and famously inked Steve Young to an annuity-laden $40-million deal.

In 1992, seven years after the Express disappeared, 12 of its players were still in the NFL. Young and offensive tackle Gary Zimmerman ended up making the Hall of Fame.

The Express in 1984 fell one victory of advancing to the second USFL title game. Behind the scenes, though, the money was drying up. A truck at one point sat idling at Arizona State’s Sun Devil Stadium, ready to seize the team’s uniforms. Mom and pop businesses around town got stiffed out of nearly $1 million.

Oldenburg’s financial woes forced the league to take over ownership in 1985. The players got paid, but the cheerleaders got fired.

The practice-field grass that didn’t get mowed because the landscapers didn’t get paid grew ankle-high around a parking lot filled with Porches and BMWs.

The 1985 team wasn’t allowed by the league to replace injured players and the injury-plagued Express skidded to a 3-15 finish.

You could have said “turn out the lights” if only the Express had paid the electric bill.

Trump, surprise, wanted to take on the NFL in the fall. Instead, the USFL filed a $1.69 billion anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL.

A jury ruled in the USFL’s favor but comically and tragically awarded the league only $1, trebled to $3 under law -- not enough to buy Trump socks.

Ramsey says the league might have survived had it not broken sport’s 11th commandment: Thou shalt not threaten the NFL.

“The concept was there, the financing was there,” Ramsey said. “But they tried to grasp too much too soon. The expansion was exponentially wrong. Then they got into bidding wars, and it spun way out of control.”

March 6, 1983, doesn’t get off entirely clean. The Generals had actually poisoned the premise by signing Walker, with a year of college eligibility left at Georgia, to a multi-million dollar contract.

Yet, the Express on that one day embodied the right rah-rah spirit.

Scott Ostler, the Times’ columnist who somehow wrangled the assignment away from Jim Murray, was impressed.

“The L.A. Express looked like a real team,” Ostler wrote, “with Tom Ramsey throwing and scrambling and halfback Tony Boddie looking like Herschel Walker was supposed to look.”

Twenty-five years later, they’re all just scrapheap stories.

Anyone care to blow a kazoo?

Ramsey, the most valuable player in the 1983 Rose Bowl, ended his USFL career in Oakland before moving on to the New England Patriots.

Boddie spent three years with the Express but never matched his opening-day heroics. He got a two-year NFL taste with the Denver Broncos, but thinks sometimes he made a mistake signing with the USFL.

It’s one reason he has never watched the tape of his triumph over Herschel Walker.

If only the Express, and the league, had stuck to the game plan.

“You can only wonder,” Boddie said. “If they would have just made it over that hurdle, who knows?”

Guess what: there is a new spring venture in the offing, the All American Football League, set to debut next month in six cities (no team in Los Angeles). It, too, has modest stated intentions -- with mandates that its players have college degrees.

It may or may not fly.

One can hope the new league learns from the old one.

But do they ever? Did the XFL?

Because sometimes, in the spring league business, all you get is one decent day.

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com