USFL Team Can’t Meet Its Payroll, Releases All Players

The San Antonio Gunslingers released all 46 players Monday afternoon minutes before a 5 p.m. deadline to pay the team for two overdue paychecks.

Roger Gill, general manager of the United States Football League team, said team owner Clinton Manges intended to pay the players, but he would not specify a timetable.

Gill would not elaborate on why the team decided to release the players.

“Our intentions are to play in the 1986 season. We’ve got a year to prepare,” Gill said. Releasing the players would allow them to join a National Football League team if they so desired, Gill said, although league officials said they would first be fair game for other USFL teams.

“If they don’t make it with another team, we’ll give them a chance to play with us. As soon as we fulfill our payroll obligations, we’ll start to pursue players,” Gill said.

Linebacker Jeff Leiding termed the team’s action a betrayal.

“I never thought it would come to this,” Leiding said. “For us to come to being released and the core of the operation being abolished--how can you foresee that happening at the beginning of the year? It’s crazy. There are no more surprises. Now I know what it feels to be a steel worker. I’ve been laid off.”

Safety Mike Ulmer said: “I thought he might pull it out right at the last. But it’s a business. Evidently something he did failed.”

An arbitrator for the USFL Players Assn. had said if Manges failed to meet the Monday deadline for paying the back salaries, contracts for all the Gunslingers would be terminated.

Under the terms laid down by the arbitrator, San Antonio’s players would then be put on the league’s waiver list, and those not picked up by other USFL teams by 5 p.m. today would become free agents.

Doug Allen, executive director of the USFL Players Assn., said earlier that from his conversations with Gunslingers players he had gathered that the two payrolls had not been met.

“I’m very disappointed, but not very surprised,” Allen said in a telephone interview from his office in Washington.

“It’s typical of the way Clinton Manges has conducted himself with this team.”

Earlier Monday, Gill had said the team was waiting for the league to release $400,000 the club claims it is owed.

The Gunslingers were not paid on their regular paydays of June 11 and June 25.

Manges faced an identical situation in early June, but managed to meet two overdue payrolls just hours before a deadline set by another arbitrator.

The USFL Players Assn. filed a grievance after the June 25 payroll was missed.

An arbitrator ruled the players would have to be paid by Sunday, but the deadline was moved to Monday so it would fall on a working day.

Leiding and Ulmer were the only two players at team headquarters at Alamo Stadium at the 5 p.m. deadline. Most of the others returned to their homes elsewhere in the country after the season concluded.

Former head Coach Jim Bates, fired in May, was at team offices but said he had no luck collecting his overdue paychecks, either.

“They’re not being sympathetic to people’s lives and their families,” said Bates, whose contract still must be honored. Bates said he still has not found a job.