Where’s This Team Going? : The Express Doesn’t Have an Owner or a Lot of Fans

Quarterback Steve Young sure is looking good these days. Look, no bags under his eyes. Look, no more catching naps between interviews. Look, no more paleface.

The pressure of being the world’s $40 million quarterback seems almost bearable now. Thank you Bruce Sutter and your mind-boggling contract. And thank you too, Doug Flutie ($25,926 per hour).

And can anyone remember Young’s arm being this strong? Last year, the strain of playing back-to-back seasons made some his deep passes look like Frisbee tosses.

But on this February day at training camp in Long Beach, Young’s passes were crisp. They had zip. Amazing what a good night’s sleep can do.

And how about the rest of this team, the Los Angeles Express? These guys nearly made it to the U.S. Football League title game with 31 rookies last year. Who’s going to stop them? Big offensive tackle Mark Adickes is back after knee surgery. So is Young’s buddy from Brigham Young, tight end Gordon Hudson. He’s a two-time All-American.

Hey, these guys are going to be good. So when’s the first game, anyway?

It’s Feb. 24, but that’s enough about football. Remember, this is the Express. Let’s get to the meat.

“I can tell from all the questions I hear that it’s going to be a little while before we can talk about football,” Young said recently.

Who wants to talk X’s and O’s when you can talk about a team that’s going into its third season with no owner, no marketing campaign and no real fans to speak of.

Who wants to talk football when you can wonder about things such as who will receive the trophy if this USFL-operated team wins the title? Does Commissioner Harry Usher make the presentation to himself? Do they give rings to the other 13 owners?

And what’s the real story behind Jay C. Roulier, the Houston Gamblers’ part-owner who owned the Express for about five minutes before being sent back to Texas to save his old franchise?

And what about all those fat Express player contracts? Are the checks in the mail?

No, this is more than a football team. For those employed by the Express, this isn’t a job, it’s an adventure.

“We’ve faced a lot of adversity,” second-year Express Coach John Hadl said. “No question, it’s pulled the team together. I know the players discuss that all the time, the coaches too. We’re all riding down this river together.”

Even Young, who takes brushing his teeth seriously, is learning to make light of the Express’ misfortunes.

“Hey,” Young said. “Just call us the L.A. Orphans. We’re the underdogs. All year long we’ll be looked at as the rebels without a cause.”

Young paused for a moment . . .

“That would be cool,” he said. “A team with no owner winning the championship.”

The team lost its latest owner, Roulier, on Jan. 31. If you’re counting at home, that’s the third Express ownership change in three years. Charter owners Bill Daniels and Alan Harmon got out after the first year, actually reaping about a $2 million profit. The USFL took over operation of the Express last July when then-owner Bill Oldenburg went under federal investigation for alleged business irregularities.

The USFL’s emergency fund supported the Express until October, when Roulier agreed to sell his one-third ownership in the Gamblers and take over the floundering Los Angeles franchise.

Roulier said had he not taken over, the Express would have folded.

But the Gamblers couldn’t find a replacement for Roulier and the league faced an embarrassing predicament. Houston and Los Angeles meet on opening day at the Coliseum.

Had the USFL not made a move, Roulier would have entered that game with interests in both teams.

“I had nightmares about us playing Houston and me still owning one-third of the Gamblers,” Roulier said. “But now the pressure is off Houston and the pressure’s off L.A.”

There are some people around the Express camp in Long Beach who are still not sure what Roulier accomplished . During his “reign” there were cash flow problems. Not one cent was spent on a marketing campaign. Express season tickets sales are hovering around 6,000, about one-half of last year’s total.

But, as President and General Manager Don Klosterman was quick to point out, “We’ve sold 6,000 season tickets and people didn’t even know if we were going to be here.”

Roulier said he arrived too late to kick off any kind of sensible marketing campaign.

“The 1985 season was aborted,” Roulier said. “We were not going to spend big money on a marketing campaign. We felt the preparation time was inadequate.”

Roulier said his primary mission in L.A. was to clear up the financial mess left by Oldenburg.

He said he spent more than $3 million in clearing up past debts and paying off overdue signing bonuses. Since Roulier’s purchase money ($4.5 million) for the Express was tied up in escrow, these payments came from USFL resourses. But Roulier said he will ultimately assume financial responsibility, though he will be reimbursed as soon as another owner is found in Los Angeles.

For some of this team’s big-money stars, there were some tense moments.

According to his attorney, Leigh Steinberg, Steve Young could have legally left the Express during the off-season. The team missed the annuity payment on his now legendary $40 million contract. Technically, that’s a breach.

But Young decided to wait out the situation.

“I wasn’t going to go in and shred people and say this whole thing is bogus,” Young said. “That’s just not my style. I started something here and I guess I wanted to see if we could make it last longer. And, I wanted to stay here.”

Besides, Young did get some pretty good money up front. Like a $2.5-million signing bonus, $200,000 in salary, $183,000 for a scholarship fund at BYU, $100,000 in an endorsement contract.

“The Express is going through some difficult times,” Steinberg said. “Now was not the time to jump. We had an obligation to go back and see the project through.”

And the league did eventually fund Young’s annuity, raising his bank account to a hefty $4.3 million. Actually, not a bad year’s work.

Mike Ruether and Gary Zimmerman, two of the Express’ high-priced offensive lineman, walked out of training camp for a day and a half because they had not received annuity payments on their identical four-year, $5.9 million dollar contracts.

But, again, the league stepped in to save the day and Zimmerman and Ruether are back.

“No question, they could have left,” said their agent, John Marchiano. “But they’ve got some great friends there and they felt a little bit of loyalty. But those two guys went 12 weeks without having their annuity funded. They relied on what Klosterman said. But they know now this is a business. If they miss any regular-season payments, I give you my word they’ll be gone.”

Yes, there’s nothing like talking football.

Some Express players are already wondering out loud when and if they’ll get paid during the year the league will take off when it makes the switch to fall football in 1986.

“Financially, what are we going to do for a year?” Express wide receiver Jojo Townsell asked. “We hope we can reach an agreement with management. It can put some players in a financial bind. The bad thing about being a player is that all we can do is what management says. We just have to go out and play and hope we get paid for it.”

No, these days, the Express has not a single luxury. It lives from paycheck to paycheck, wondering what wrath lies ahead.

When it was announced that Roulier was leaving and the league was taking over, Klosterman called his employees together for his latest “hang tough” speech.

Hadl did the same with his players.

“They felt a lot better, because they new what the situation was,” Hadl said. “We took care of the innuendo. But I didn’t know what was going to happen, we didn’t know what the league was going to do.”

The strength of this team remains the product on the field. Some have called the Express the best young team in professional football. For that reason, the league is willing to shell out millions to keep this team in operation.

“If we didn’t have this group of (talented) players, we wouldn’t have a chance,” Hadl said.

Using Oldenburg’s money, Klosterman signed 31 rookies to contracts in a two-month period at the beginning of last season. One notable sports magazine projected that fourteen of those players would have been among the first 100 taken in the 1984 NFL draft. Eleven Express players were chosen in the first round of the NFL’s supplemental draft.

Now working under a tight USFL budget, the Express won’t be spending large sums of money on players.

In fact, Klosterman already has skimmed some fat from the payroll, one of the highest in pro football last season.

In the off-season, the Express released promising defensive linemen Dewey Forte and Lee Williams from their big-money contracts.

More recently, the Express allowed talented running back Kevin Mack to buy himself out of his contract (he reportedly paid the Express $250,000) so he could sign with the Cleveland Browns. Mack was L.A.’s third-string back behind Mel Gray and Kevin Nelson, but don’t be surprised if he’s starting for the Browns next season.

Klosterman insists that the unloading of high-priced talent will not become a trend.

“This was an isolated incident,” he said of the Mack deal. “We had a lot of quality at that position and it was an opportunity to cut back (expenses) a little.”

Hadl hopes so.

“If we keep doing that, you take the product right out of here,” he said. “You can’t take the product away.”

Klosterman and Hadl are counting on this team to win big this season. It’s almost imperative, especially when you’re trying to impress a prospective buyer.

“We know that,” Hadl said.

Because ABC is cutting back its regional coverage of USFL games this year, almost all Express games will be blacked out locally. If people want to see this team now, they’ll have to get off the couch and drive to the Coliseum.

Klosterman thinks it will happen.

“I think people will get hooked on this team,” Klosterman said. “All the marketing in the world doesn’t work unless you have product.”

Cue to Steve Young, who can’t wait to start talking about, what was that sport again?

“When I get on the football field, that’s the greatest,” Young said. “There’s nothing better than football.”