Derailing of the Express : Give It Credit, Please: L.A.’s USFL Team Tried, but It Was Never Able to Cash In

One day last February, a painter burst into the Manhattan Beach offices of the Los Angeles Express, his face redder than the football team’s latest financial statement.

Here was one guy who was tired of hearing about the check being in the mail.

He wanted the two grand the Express still owed him and he wanted it now. He was riled. He cursed and steamed and screamed until he finally got an audience with the team’s bookkeeper, Mona Williams.

There would be no plea-bargaining in this case.

“If I don’t get my money, I’m going to kill you!” the man told Williams. “If that’s what it takes to get my money, I will hurt you.”

The Express quickly realized that this was one bill that couldn’t be kicked behind the cabinet--again. So it cashed in all the empty pop bottles around the office, looked for change that had fallen between sofa cushions, and somehow came up with the payment.

Later, the painter called back to apologize for his tirade. It was hard not to admire his strategy.

“He would not have gotten paid had he not done that,” Williams said.

Unfortunately, most others who have done business with the Express have been given only the brush.

These days, it seems, everyone has a favorite story about the L.A. Express. Some are funny, some are sad, but that’s what you’d expect from a franchise gone mad. The Express’ three-year stay in Los Angeles, the town that wanted this team as much as it wanted more smog, is a twisted, distorted saga of pro football, filled with enough zany characters and stories to start a sitcom.

You want bizarre? How about starting with a team that could afford to pay its quarterback every penny of a $40-million contract, yet one that hasn’t paid the plumber for repairing a toilet last season?

You want intrigue? How about Express President Don Klosterman being fired by Harry Usher, the very man Klosterman pushed to become commissioner of the United States Football League.

You want revenge? Did you hear about the trucking company that held the Express equipment hostage for five months until it received an overdue payment of $33,000?

You want shrewd marketing? This was the team that fired its cheerleaders to save a few dimes, yet spent $4,000 a game for daytime fireworks. This was the team that spent $1,000 a game to parade the official Express train around the track at halftime, yet didn’t have enough tape for players’ ankles.

You want more? This is the team that spent $12 million on players in one year, only to discover one day that the water at its offices had been turned off because of nonpayment of a bill for $139.84. This is a team that in three years has lost $20 million and one that still has about $1 million in outstanding debts.

“And those are real people out there looking for real dollars,” said Paul Sandrock, the team’s controller for three years. “We owe hotels, bus line companies, truck companies, advertisers. We owe for newspaper subscriptions, office supplies, Xerox machine maintenance, you name it. Very few people we’ve done business with for the 13 months have gotten away clean.”

Something is rotten in Manhattan Beach.

“You’ll never again see a pro franchise like this one,” Sandrock said. “And God help the world if we do.”

Just a year ago, the Express, after wrapping up the Pacific Division title, was being hailed as the best young professional football team ever assembled. It had 31 rookies who figured only to get better. It boasted such names as Klosterman, John Hadl, Sid Gillman and Steve Young. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the Express nearly was. Its owner, Bill Oldenburg, claimed to be a billionaire. He acted like one, too, until he ran into trouble and out of money.

And so quickly came the fall.

“It was like the good Lord said: ‘You got too much too fast, and that’s not the way it works,’ ” said Hadl, who was the team’s coach until he and his staff were fired by the commissioner in late April.

The dream of the L.A. Express essentially ended in May 1984, when Oldenburg quit sending money from his San Francisco office of Investment Mortgage International. Oldenburg’s empire was crumbling under a federal investigation, and soon the Express would topple with it.

The team was swooped up by the USFL, which vowed to pay its bills for the good of the league. But things were never the same. The bills kept on coming, but the money didn’t.

Piece by piece, the core of this wonder team was dismantled. Big-money stars were sold to the National Football League to pay bills and recoup losses. Players sensed that the end was near, and some played as if it had already occurred. Injuries ravaged the squad, but the league wouldn’t allow for replacements. Klosterman’s gut wrenched with every loss. The dream was over.

The team that was supposed to be 15-3 this year ended up 3-15.

The season ended June 21 at Orlando, Fla., and a scene from that game typified the evil days the Express had fallen upon. In the fourth quarter, Coach Hadl, his backfield crippled by injury, was forced to play his $40-million quarterback, Steve Young, at halfback.

In Greenwich, Conn., Young’s father, LeGrande, rose from his chair and stared at his TV screen in disbelief.

We went directly to the college ranks and we built what I think, and history will prove, is one of the finest teams in professional football.

--BILL OLDENBURG, former

Express owner, 1984

Paul Sandrock lives by a rule that he says has contributed greatly to the retention of his sanity. Once he gets on the 405 Freeway and heads home toward Valencia, he refuses to acknowledge the problems of the L.A. Express. If he did, he knows he just might drive on through to the Oregon border.

Never has he been through a year like this one.

“There are more problems on my desk than I know what to do with,” Sandrock said recently. Sandrock is one of three Express employees still retained by the league. The rest of the staff, even Klosterman, the president, was fired at season’s end to reduce operating costs until someone decides if there is a future for the Express.

Usher and the league are trying to find a buyer for the Express with the hopes of moving the team to the San Fernando Valley. But Sandrock and others believe that the end is near.

“There’s nothing left,” Sandrock said. “Harry talks about finding an owner. For what? Who would want to buy the Express with what’s there. No one in their right mind will buy the team. It’s down the chute as far as I’m concerned.”

Klosterman, emotionally and physically exhausted after his 18-month tenure as president of the Express, admits that there isn’t much future for the team or the USFL.

“I don’t think it has a chance,” he said. “It (the USFL) is alive for one reason and one reason only, and that’s the lawsuit. And that’s a hell of a way to try to make it, on litigation only. And I don’t think the case has a great deal of merit, either.”

The USFL has filed a $1.32-billion antitrust suit against the NFL, claiming that the league has a monopoly on the three major television networks. The USFL plans to compete against the NFL in the fall of 1986, although there is no major television contract.

But will the Express even make it to the fall of 1986?

Sandrock doesn’t think so. He, in fact, suggests that the team file for bankruptcy and rid the world of the Express once and for all.

“It’s their easiest and best way out of its legal and financial problems,” Sandrock said. “The legal and financial problems of the Express today are mind-boggling. There is no easy way out. There is no simple solution other than money.”

Even Usher, who staunchly fought to keep the Express alive this season, calls the team’s future uncertain. For Usher, that’s a concession.

What about bankruptcy?

“Depending on how the next several weeks go, we have to look at all the options,” Usher said.

Usher partly blames ABC for the problem. The network is withholding a $7-million payment because the league abandoned many of the nation’s major media markets this year. The loss of that money has made owners even less interested in supporting the Express any longer.

The scars left on the community by the Express are numerous, wide and deep. Sandrock said that 10 lawsuits have been filed against the team, and he couldn’t even count the number of threatening letters from lawyers.

The Express bills come in all shapes and sizes.

Here’s a sampling:

--The Fiesta Inn, Tempe, Ariz.: $10,000.

--The Sheraton Kennsington, Tulsa, Okla.: $6,000.

--The Hacienda Hotel, Los Angeles: $16,683.84.

--The Hyatt Wilshire, Los Angeles: $30,000.

--Manhattan Beach City School District, which controls the lease on Express offices: $31,266.

--Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum: $36,000.

--JAM Productions, Redondo Beach: $25,000.

--Express Cheerleaders: $4,100.

--James Federman, president of Arrow Coach bus line: $5,000.

--Steve Burton, Touch of Class limousine service: $3,000.

In all, Express bills total slightly less than $1 million.

Some of the people hit hardest are members of the local community and were among the biggest supporters of the team.

Federman, whose bus company provided transportation services for the Express, belonged to the Express Booster Club.

“There is no recourse,” Federman said. “It’ll cost me more in court than I’ll ever get from these guys,” he said. “I take it so personally. I know I’m small potatoes. I don’t think Harry Usher goes to sleep at night worrying about Arrow bus lines.”

Jeffrey Schepps’ company, JAM Productions, did most of the printing work for the Express this season--game programs, tickets, graphics.

He said he knew what he was getting into and was willing to lose some money for the sake of the team. Still, he said, what the Express pulled at the end of the season was unforgivable.

Schepps said the Express owed him $15,000 going into the team’s game at Pierce College June 15. He said the Express begged him to print programs and media roster cards for the final home game to provide some sort of professionalism.

He was told he would get all proceeds from the programs, which sold for $2 each. Schepps printed 4,000 programs for the game, which drew 8,000 fans.

He’s still waiting for the money.

“I’m a little guy,” Schepps said, referring to his relatively small business. “I’m not a millionaire. I try to build my company on nickels and dimes. When the Express takes a bite, yeah, it hurts. There was a certain amount I was willing to give, but after I made the last deal, I don’t understand the game. I’m not a game player.”

There are some who will probably never see their money again.

Other companies, though, spent their waking hours plotting ways to make the Express pay.

Heritage Moving and Transfer in Torrance put the Express on the spot last season when they held the team’s equipment until back payment of $33,000 was made.

After Express road trips, it was the moving company’s job to haul the team’s equipment from Los Angeles International airport back to the Coliseum.

But after the team returned home from last season’s Western Conference championship game in Tempe, Heritage took the uniforms and held them.

Even so, the Express was lucky. The company had been thinking of taking the equipment before the championship game, which would have given George Allen’s Arizona Wranglers a decided advantage.

Heritage delivered the equipment after getting a certified check for $33,000.

Federman considered taking his 24 buses and forming a blockade around the Coliseum exit to prevent Express VIPs from leaving.

Then, there was the case of the missing cheerleaders’ uniforms.

USFL watchdog Richard Stevens, in one of his first moves as the Express’ chairman of the board, fired the team’s 34 cheerleaders in February, saying that they projected an unwholesome image. Eight new cheerleaders were hired and new, less-revealing uniforms were ordered.

But a few games later, the new cheerleaders arrived for the game wearing the old uniforms. The new uniforms had been confiscated by Moore Dance Wear in Torrance when the Express took them there for alterations.

It seemed the Express owed the company money.

That confiscation wasn’t nearly as successful, though, as Heritage Moving’s had been. The Express simply went back to the old uniforms.

And what of Moore Dance Wear?

“We’ve still got the uniforms,” employee Tim England said. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

The daily problems soon frayed the nerves of the Express staff.

Klosterman had to talk Sandrock out of quitting in January.

Sandrock said he was tired of the cheating and the lies.

Although Sandrock and Mona Williams had nothing to do with the team’s cash flow problems, they were the ones who had to deal daily with creditors.

Williams remembers the self-employed carpenter who came into the office one day. He had done some work for the Express and was still owed about $1,000. Only now he was out of work with a broken leg. He said he had three kids and really needed the money.

“It started to affect me personally,” she said. “It got to the point where I couldn’t take it very well.”

Williams quit the Express in March and took a job with the Oakland Invaders.

I hope to turn it around by the third year. Next year, I’m shooting to break even. I’ve alr e ady said it. I want it to become a booming success. I will see the race until the end. It’s consumed me. It’s in my blood. --ALAN HARMON, former Express owner and president, 1983

A problem for some of the Express’ creditors was the team’s Madison Avenue image. It was all flash, no cash. The Express was a gleaming Ferrari with two squirrels on a treadmill under the hood.

When vendors came to inquire about payment, they had to pass a fleet of Mercedes-Benz cars in the Express’ parking lot. Before they reached the front door, they had to side-step Stevens’ limousine. As they waited in the lounge, they could pick up a paper and read about how Steve Young was going to spend his money.

But at the front desk it was always: “Sorry, Mr. Jones, but about that $25 we owe you for chalking the field. . . . “

So what went wrong here?

For the answers, you have to go back to the beginning.

Once upon a springtime, the USFL was going to be a nice little league with nice little salaries. Too bad there weren’t many nice little egos.

When Bill Daniels and Alan Harmon bought the charter Express franchise in 1982, they projected total first-year player salaries of $1.2 million. They had a five-year plan of slowly integrating the USFL into the imaginations of America.

Egos and greed prevailed, though. During the first year, the Michigan Panthers leaped beyond the salary cap and signed enough stars to win the USFL championship, and that was all it took to torpedo the idea of quiet growth. New York developer Donald Trump bought the New Jersey Generals and started shelling out money in an effort to buy the best team in the land.

Harmon and Daniels had seen enough.

When they sold the Express after the first year, it appeared they had pulled off the scam of the year. One minute they were proclaiming their undying commitment to the league, and the next they were selling the Express to Oldenburg in December of 1983 for $7.5 million, reaping about a $2-million profit.

But Harmon, who is back running his cable television company in Denver, says now that it was escalating salaries that drove him out.

“We got lucky and made a little money in something we didn’t know anything about,” Harmon said. “But it was no scam. If it was, we would have left a lot sooner and not spent $5 million. I can do a scam better than that. I guess I was naive to think that 12 guys (owners) could agree on something. I’m not proud of the USFL right now. I’m disgusted with it. I have guys call me all the time and say, ‘Let’s start a new spring league.’ I hang up on them.”

Said Daniels: “We went in with our eyes open wide. But we wanted to keep salaries down. When guys like Trump went in it for the big bucks, we saw it as a contest with the NFL. And that’s suicide.”

That’s not to say, however, that Daniels and Harmon didn’t make their mistakes along the way.

The biggest, perhaps, was allowing Harmon to become president of the team the first year even though he admitted that he knew nothing about running a football team.

They called Harmon Arthur around the office, the name taken from the role of an eccentric millionaire played by Dudley Moore in the movie of the same name.

Harmon was impatient and admittedly misjudged the sports-saturated L.A. market. He fired his first general manager, Curly Morrison, after three games and then ran the team himself.

“And I proved to be equally inadequate,” Harmon said. “But at least I lost my own money.”

Who’s to say whether the Express, even under the most ideal management conditions, would ever have made it in the tough L.A. market. But with its Barnum & Bailey front-office act, it didn’t have much of a chance.

There was a lack of stability from the start. The Express has had five owners, counting the league, and four general managers in three years. The team never had an owner or star player long enough to promote successfully. Money was wasted in marketing and promotions. The team’s largest home crowd in three years was its first game, in February of 1983, when 34,002 showed up at the Coliseum. In their last home game at the Coliseum, the Express drew 3,000.

I can’t remember another signing that would match this. I guess you’d have to go back to Joe Namath’s signing with the New York Jets. It’s a tremendous step forward for the league . --DON KLOSTERMAN, commenting

on the signing of quarterback

Steve Young, March 5, 1984 The Express’ problems seemed to be over when Oldenburg bought the team.

Daniels had little reason to doubt the solvency of Oldenburg’s Mortgage company, IMI. Oldenburg’s initial $5-million payment check cleared the bank in 48 hours.

Oldenburg was another eccentric character, fiery and flamboyant. Whenever a million-dollar deal was struck at IMI’s offices in San Francisco, a large Chinese gong was struck.

Oldenburg set out to conquer the football world. He hired Klosterman, who had been ousted by the Rams, as his president and general manager.

He told Klosterman to build him the best football team money could buy. Klosterman did just that.

In an eight-week signing spree that ended on March 16, 1984 the Express had signed 20 top college players, 13 of whom were projected as first- or second-round NFL draft choices.

When BYU quarterback Steve Young signed March 5, he got a $2.5-million dollar signing bonus.

During the Oldenburg reign, which lasted less than six months, the Express spent $12 million on players.

Those connected with the USFL, including former owners Harmon and Daniels, rapped Klosterman for driving player salaries out of sight.

Said Klosterman: “We were just paying what the market was. Of course, the market was at an all-time high. You had two forces (NFL and USFL) meeting head-on. We were offering the money it would take to win them over, which we did.”

Did they ever. Was it any wonder the college kids were praising the USFL?

Oldenburg was with Klosterman when Klosterman was negotiating with Mark Adickes, a star Baylor lineman, and his agent, Perry Deering. Adickes said later that he’d had no intention of signing with the USFL.

But during the conversation, Oldenburg said, out loud, “Don, I like this kid. Give him whatever he wants.”

Klosterman cringed. “Now I’ve got to sit down with his agent and what do I say?”

Adickes said that he had his agent scribble an outrageous salary on a piece of paper.

Adickes has two years remaining on a contract that pays about $700,000 a year.

“It was like Monopoly money to me,” he said.

It was a great time to be a college senior.

Then, of course, there was Young.

The Brigham Young star, who figured to be the No. 1 pick in the 1984 NFL draft, was lured to the Express by the now-famous $40-million contract. The deal originally was about $6 million for four years, but Oldenburg added a deferment that would eventually pay Young $40 million by the year 2027.

Insanity? Young thought so. But what’s a man to do?

The Express suffered through some growing pains but came together in time to win the Pacific Division title and advance to the Western Conference title game. Not bad for a team with 31 rookies.

Although the Express was winning, however, there were growing inquiries into Oldenburg’s business affairs. Oldenburg, an owner famous for pounding walls in his private Coliseum box, suddenly dropped out of sight.

In May of 1984, so did the money. Oldenburg was under federal investigation and his case is still pending. He resurfaced on the May cover of San Francisco magazine, and since has hired attorney Joseph Alioto to represent him in a suit against the magazine for defamation.

Sandrock will never forget his last call for money to IMI.

“It was May 3, 1984,” he said. “I called up there, and they said all they could give me was payroll. But they said next week we’d be in good shape. Next week hasn’t come yet. It’s been a long week.”

The league took over operation of the team, but it was a long and dry summer.

“We didn’t have enough money for a postage stamp,” said Chuck DeKeado, former Express marketing director.

There also was no off-season marketing program, and season ticket sales dipped from 12,000 to fewer than 6,000.

And there were those bills piling up in the corner.

DeKeado said he struck a great endorsement deal with Pioneer Chicken for $150,000, only to learn that Pioneer Chicken owned the Hyatt Wilshire hotel, the same hotel the Express owed some $30,000.

Oops.

The team thought it had an owner last October, when Jay Roulier, one-third owner of the Houston Gamblers, announced that he would buy the Express and keep the team alive for the 1985 season. But Usher ordered Roulier back to Houston in February because the Gamblers had not yet found Roulier’s replacement and he technically owned two teams at the same time.

Oops.

Sandrock said that Roulier, a real-estate developer from Denver, hadn’t spent much money on the Express, anyway, although he did authorize a $25,000 film entitled: “A Day in the Life of a L.A. Express Cheerleader.”

At the time, the team was $1 million in debt and on the verge of being kicked out of its training-camp hotel in Long Beach.

Last month, Roulier’s firm in Denver filed a $10-million lawsuit against him, alleging fraud and misapplication of funds. Another suit was filed by a Colorado film maker, who was seeking $25,000 for production of a film he made about the L.A. Express cheerleaders.

Oops.

Roulier did not return phone calls from The Times.

So this was the atmosphere under which the Express began the 1985 season.

USFL owners, at the urging of Usher, agreed to chip in about $500,000 each to keep the Express going. The team was given a strict $6-million budget, most of which went to pay part of the team’s $4.6-million payroll.

Usher appointed Stevens, his friend, to become the team’s chairman of the board at $20,000 a month. There was immediately tension between Stevens and Klosterman, who questioned some of Stevens’ marketing philosophies.

“It was adverse to common sense,” Klosterman said.

Usher said he had sent Stevens in because of his marketing experience. Stevens, among other things, is credited with turning the Queen Mary luxury liner into a money maker.

Usher said it wasn’t his intention to move Klosterman out.

“Had the Express been 15-3, not 3-15, you might have had a different situation,” he said.

On the field, meanwhile, the situation became bleak in a hurry. The Express lost its opener against Houston after blowing a 20-point fourth-quarter lead.

Then came the doubts. Front-office confusion had the players’ heads swimming. Injuries soon followed.

In his final report to Klosterman, team doctor James E. Tibone concluded that the number of Express injuries in 1985 “must be close to a record for one football season.”

Eleven Express players required surgery, and 12 others suffered what Tibone described as significant injuries.

In the Express’ 51-0 loss to the Denver Gold April 20, two players, Tony Boddie and Joe Lukens, tore knee ligaments on the same play. Both required surgery.

Though Express players were dropping left and right, the league would not allow replacements.

Usher and the owners figured that they had spent enough money for players, especially since ABC was withholding $7 million in television revenue.

So, near the end of the season, the Express limped into games with as few as 35 players. That’s how Steve Young wound up playing running back in Orlando.

Hadl said there weren’t even enough training supplies to keep his team fit.

“The people that send the money were accountants,” he said. “They’ve never been on a football field. They don’t know if you need tape or ice. We hadn’t paid a $300 ice bill, and the league said they weren’t going to pay it. What are you talking about? You spend millions of dollars to keep this team going and now you’re not going to pay a $300 ice bill?”

For Hadl and the players, it was one nightmare after another. The team was losing and it was clear that some players weren’t trying.

Hadl said that he would have cut 10 players for lack of effort, but he needed the bodies to field a team.

Said veteran tackle Jeff Hart, a five-year starter for the Baltimore Colts before joining the the Express in 1984:

“That’s the problem with giving big salaries to young people. Sometimes they don’t know how to handle it. A lot of guys are too young and immature and never had to work for anything. With the pressure of pro ball, they just sat back and said, ‘I can’t handle it. I don’t have to handle it.’ ”

There was always the feeling that the team would fold any minute. Klosterman told the players before the Portland game of April 27 that there was a 90% chance the team would fold. But two days later, at the USFL owners meeting in New Jersey, the league decided to keep the Express alive for the rest of the season.

Hadl, though, remembers the day that a moving van pulled into the Express lot in Manhattan Beach. He thought the team had folded, and that the van had arrived to clean out the offices.

“It drove right by the practice field,” he said. “We just stopped practice and watched. I said, ‘Well, this is it.’ ”

Steve Young remembers staring at Hadl in the fourth quarter of the Express’ season-ending loss to Orlando June 15.

Hadl was out of running backs before the game started, and Boddie, the only healthy back, was taking a beating.

“He was going to put a lineman in,” Young said of Hadl. “I went to him and said, ‘I’ll go in for a few plays.’ ”

Young snapped on his chin strap and went out to make like Red Grange.

But they didn’t call his number once. He blocked on a couple of plays and went back to the sideline.

It was a fitting ending to a season and perhaps a franchise.

So now, most Express players sit and wait for something to happen. Anything.

Kicker Tony Zendejas decided he couldn’t wait and signed with the Washington Redskins. Others may follow suit.

All they can do is dream of what might have happened had this team of teams been allowed to develop.

Meanwhile, James Federman and dozens of others wait for money they’ll probably never collect.

Said Klosterman: “To be a part of an unsuccessful venture, well, it not only affects you personally but also the pocketbooks of the people you’ve dealt with that have been good to you. It’s a pity. It’s almost remorseful we had to end that way. To see creditors not being paid is sinful.”