Pro Football / Bob Oates : A New League Is About to Spring

Get ready for more football next March. There’s going to be another spring league, New Orleans promoter David F. Dixon told The Times Tuesday.

There will be teams in eight cities, Los Angeles among them, for a 20-week season that will begin March 1, he said.

Dixon, the Royal Street businessman who got the Superdome built in New Orleans and who later founded the United States Football League, called spring football a concept that has been proved.

“USFL attendance averaged 26,000 the first two years before they shot themselves in the foot,” he said. “A new football league can never buy its way up to major league status, but it can get there gradually. In the meantime, football is bigger than anything else in the spring.”

Dixon said he would name the eight new club owners later this fall. Their investments will be limited to $2 million each. He is discouraging the free-spending Donald Trump-types whose goals are different from his.

In fact, Dixon said, the fans will be the majority owners in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and the four other cities in his proposed league.

The fans will be offered 51% or more of each club, Dixon said. The game tickets they buy will actually be shares of the club. Thus, the eight principal owners will be minority owners holding 49% or less.

In each city, the 49% owners will have control--in the same sense that Al Davis controls the Raiders with a 25% interest. But the fans will have the votes to overrule them if they choose.

The record shows that the USFL faltered because its club owners didn’t share common goals. As they all say now, they didn’t follow Dixon’s original guidelines.

To ensure the stability that the USFL didn’t have, Dixon said the new league is being organized as follows:

--It will be a single national organization, with each team as a subsidiary franchise. This will enable the league to control the costs that ran wild in the USFL.

--”To maintain a sensible blackout policy, games will be on cable TV, which is big enough now to sustain us. Commercial TV wants too much control.”

--There will be two consecutive 10-game seasons, from March to July, followed by playoffs and a three-game championship series.

--Charter memberships will be limited to populous TV centers such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Texas and Florida.

The USFL proved that there are enough fans, players and coaches for a spring football league, in Dixon’s view.

“We only need one more thing,” he said. “An intelligent organization.”

What will the Dallas Cowboys do with Herschel Walker on the same team with Tony Dorsett when neither is a blocking fullback-type?

Look for Coach Tom Landry to use more of the one-back plays he has had in the Dallas arsenal since long before the Washington Redskins won a Super Bowl with that formation.

The Cowboys could be the game’s best one-back team if they have two tight ends skilled enough to block alternately for Dorsett and Walker, who are different kinds of backs.

Walker is much the better receiver. The Cowboys, who plan to throw more to their backs this year, anyway, will find that the former Georgia sprinter has the hands and speed to be the NFL’s most effective halfback receiver. They could even move him to wide receiver.

Crowds were huge around the league for the first round of exhibition games, and the early TV ratings have been rising.

Why do so many people bother to watch NFL exhibitions?

Fans apparently like to see what the new players can do and whether some of the older question-mark players can make it.

After all these years, no spectator could expect a smooth, well played exhibition game. But it was stimulating to see Raider Vance Mueller of Occidental College run fast and well against a rival NFL team, it was interesting to see Tory Nixon pass his first test as a starting 49er cornerback, and to a Big Eight fan, it was exciting to see Nebraska’s Tom Rathman score against the Raider defense.

Perhaps the most refreshing character in American athletics today is Buddy Ryan, the new coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Nobody in team sports is as outspoken as Ryan, who publicly criticized his own scouting department this week.

On national television, he said that Philadelphia’s scouts had drafted a lousy punter, Ray Criswell of Florida, a fifth-round choice.

Asked to respond, the scouts reverted to the NFL way. They said no comment.

In press conferences after the Eagles’ 17-9 win over Detroit in their exhibition opener, Ryan candidly answered all questions.

Samples:

--On a play called by Ron Jaworski, who, Ryan said, didn’t perform any better than backup Matt Cavanaugh: “That (wasn’t) a good audible.”

--On a starting defensive tackle Ken Clarke: “I was disappointed with (him). He really didn’t do anything.”

--On punters Criswell and Mike Horan: “They haven’t shown anything. They didn’t punt good in mini-camp, they didn’t punt good in training camp, and they didn’t punt good in the game.”

--On the Detroit Lions, with whom the Eagles worked out in Michigan every day last week: “They don’t have the same tempo that we like to play. There was nothing wrong with our players. It’s just that (the Lions) ruined our tempo because they laid down, wallowed.”

Philadelphia writers trying that sentiment out on Detroit Coach Darryl Rogers were told that Ryan “hasn’t been invited back (for next year). Buddy doesn’t work on positives.”