USFL Fails in Bid to Divide NFL

The United States Football League failed Wednesday in its second attempt to limit the National Football League’s power when a federal judge denied its request that the older league be divided into two conferences, limited to two network television contracts or be forced to expand into USFL cities.

The league’s motions were denied by U.S. District Judge Peter K. Leisure.

Leisure said that because the jury, which awarded the USFL just $1 in its $1.62-billion antitrust suit against the NFL, specifically had found the NFL blameless in monopolizing the television market, he found no reason to order the NFL off any of the three major networks.

He also noted that the demand to make the AFC and NFC into two independent conferences with separate administration and a separate draft would overturn the act of Congress that had authorized the 1966 merger of the NFL with the old American Football League.

He added that he agreed with the jurors who said that the USFL had caused its own problems resulting in $150 million in losses over three years of playing in the spring and summer.

“When a firm which has committed myriad blunders in the marketplace seeks to gain benefits through injunctive relief that it could not acquire through fair competition, courts should not be condemned for obstructing such an effort,” Leisure wrote in his opinion.