USFL May Be Down to 7 Teams

Commissioner Harry Usher said Tuesday that the United States Football League is prepared to play next fall without the champion Baltimore Stars, whose owner suggested that the USFL consider scrapping the 1986 season.

“We’ve been drawing up a seven-team schedule if it comes to that,” Usher said. “We’re working on the assumption that we’ll have an eight-team league, but if we have to play without Baltimore, we’re prepared for that also.”

Usher made his comments as the USFL, already down to eight teams from 14 last season, prepared for meetings in New York today to plan its first fall season. The USFL was formed as a spring league and played three spring seasons.

Myles Tanenbaum, owner of the Stars, had told the Baltimore Sun that the USFL should consider remaining idle until its $1.32-billion suit against the National Football League is resolved. That led Herschel Walker of the New Jersey Generals, one of the league’s few remaining high-priced stars, to say he would join the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys if the USFL did not play in 1986.