‘86 Season Called Off by USFL : Decision in Wake of Court Case Puts Players in Limbo

The United States Football League took another step toward extinction Monday.

Its eight owners voted to suspend play for a year.

But the USFL’s 400 players weren’t asked to vote. And what happens to them was left temporarily in doubt.

Leigh Steinberg, a West Los Angeles attorney and an agent with clients in both leagues, said the players’ contracts will be breached if the USFL doesn’t open its training camps by mid-August as planned.

So he expects that within a week or so, the four-year-old league will negotiate the release of those players it now has under contract.

But Bob Woolf, a Boston attorney and East Coast agent, told the Associated Press that the USFL’s decision to suspend--instead of fold--will give its owners time to explore selling its player contracts to the National Football League.

Steinberg said: “If the USFL doesn’t shortly (let go of) players with standard players’ contracts, I would expect them to file for some form of injunctive relief. The USFL’s contracts were all switched to cover fall instead of spring games this year. And if the league doesn’t open its training camps on schedule, those contracts are all breached.”

Woolf took a somewhat different tack.

“I think suspending is the wisest decision (the USFL) could have made,” he said. “It’s bought them time to evaluate the previous litigation and the possibility of appeals. It gives them time to evaluate player contracts.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle had called the owners of several NFL teams that hold the rights to top USFL players to find out how they were planning to handle negotiations and to suggest that those teams proceed with caution. The USFL won a key count against the NFL last week in its antitrust case against the established league. But it lost the fight financially when a jury ordered the NFL to pay only $1 in damages, tripled to $3 under antitrust law.

This left the USFL with three classes of non-playing players: a small group holding personal-services contracts with USFL club owners; a somewhat larger group of other “name” players, and a massive group whose names are not well-known.

Spokesmen for Donald Trump, owner of the New Jersey Generals, said Trump has personal-services contracts with running back Herschel Walker, quarterback Doug Flutie and others.

If so, those players would remain in Trump’s stable if he wanted to keep them, even for something like launching a touch football league.

This doesn’t sit well with Flutie, whose NFL rights belong to the Rams and who has stated a personal interest in playing for the New England Patriots.

“We’ve already been on hold for a year and a half,” he said.

The Dallas Cowboys, who own Walker’s NFL rights, denied that the former Georgia All-American has a personal-services contract with Trump. But they don’t expect him in camp this week, either.

“It’s up to Walker to clear his obligations,” Dallas President Tex Schramm said. “As far as we’re concerned, his status is unchanged.”

Of the other name players, quarterback Jim Kelly hopes to exercise the outlet clause in his contract, a modified standard players’ contract, and jump the Generals for a new home with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.

“I want to play football now,” said Kelly, the most successful USFL quarterback and, for a while, a Raider prospect.

The Raiders have concluded, however, that Buffalo owner Ralph Wilson won’t make any kind of deal for Kelly now.

In addition to Walker and Kelly, there are at most two other impact players still in USFL organizations: former UCLA lineman Irv Eatman of Baltimore, who belongs to the NFL’s Kansas City team, and running back Kelvin Bryant, also of Baltimore, who belongs to the Washington Redskins.

Eatman’s agent, Steinberg, is confident that his client and Bryant will both be in the NFL in the near term.

“They haven’t played football since June of 1985,” Steinberg said. “To miss another season would be too damaging to their careers. I think all right-minded people would agree with us. The critical factor for all of these players--as the NFL’s preseason begins--is time. They don’t have much time to win their way onto another team. “

Eatman, one of the USFL’s best linemen, said: “I don’t want to hear, ‘Let’s wait a few months and see what happens.’ Somebody has to remember there are babies and wives who couldn’t care less about antitrust.”

So much for the stars. Most of the others in the USFL--the bulk of its players--are probably out of football for good.

“That’s the saddest thing about it,” said the founder of the league, David Dixon of New Orleans.

Typical of the players whose names are not well-known is Baltimore defensive back Jonathon Sutton, who said: “I have to start looking for another job. That’s what it boils down to. I’m very disappointed.”

This doesn’t seem to bother the USFL’s owners.

Stephen Ross, who owns the Baltimore franchise, told the Associated Press: “The one thing with football players is that if you signed them once, you can sign them again. There’s a new crop of players every year.”

The USFL’s many coaches were also left without work, and without much hope. NFL coaching berths and most college football openings for coaches have were long ago filled.

Reached by Florida writers, Tampa Bay Bandit Coach Steve Spurrier said: “I don’t have any plans for the next four or five months. There’s nothing out there now. Maybe I’ll be able to do some television work.”

Commissioner Harry Usher cited only one reason for the USFL’s one-year postponement: “The unbelievable impossibility of effectively playing pro football without a (major network) television agreement.”