Donald j trump the art of the deal

AFL had signed away dozens of the NFL’s best players and was widely seen as the more exciting of the two leagues. With the AFL raids escalating, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle surrendered. He suggested a merger of the two leagues, and today those original AFL teams are among the NFL’s most successful franchises. But even without a merger, the AFL would have prospered.

The other venture that tried to compete with the NFL was the World Football League. It was launched in 1973, but by men of much less wealth and more limited vision. In contrast to their AFL counterparts, the WFL owners signed very few name players, placed their franchises in smaller cities, and failed to attract any kind of television contract. Within two years, the WFL was bankrupt. Its founders didn’t lose a fortune—but only because they didn’t invest a fortune.

I foresaw two possible outcomes if we moved the USFL to the fall and began to build quality teams, and both of them were potentially good. The first was that at least one of the three networks would offer us a substantial fall television contract, which would help us continue to build an even stronger league fully competitive with the NFL. The second was that the three networks, all fearful of alienating the monopoly NFL, would refuse to give us a fall television contract, no matter how strong a product we had to offer. In that case, I believed, we’d have strong grounds for an antitrust case against the NFL. If we went the latter route, obviously we could lose, and then our league would be dead.

But I believed the more likely outcome was some sort of victory. If the suit went to a jury and we were awarded reasonable damages—particularly given the fact that any damage award is trebled in an antitrust case—we’d have the financial base we needed. Another possibility was that the NFL, anticipating a costly and humiliating court defeat, would offer some sort of settlement, much as they’d done twenty years earlier with the AFL. I made no secret of my views. Two years later, the NFL would try to claim in court that my plan to move our league’s season to the fall was somehow secret and sinister. In fact, within days of taking over the Generals, I told any reporter who called me exactly how I felt. Then, on October 18, 1983, a month after purchasing the Generals, I attended my first owners meeting in Houston, Texas. I wasn’t shy there, either.

When my turn came to address my fellow owners, I stood up and explained that I hadn’t bought into the USFL to be a minor-league owner playing in the off-season of spring. I pointed out that the greatest number of fans, and by far the biggest pool of network television dollars, were concentrated in the fall. I reminded my fellow owners that because the NFL had just gone through a long, bitter players’ strike the past fall, many fans were feeling restless and alienated. And finally, I argued that we had a chance to put the NFL even further on the defensive by moving aggressively to sign top NFL players whose contracts were coming up, as well as the best graduating college players.

If there was a single key miscalculation I made with the USFL, it was evaluating the strength of my fellow owners. In any partnership, you’re only as strong as your weakest link. Several of my fellow USFL owners were strong as hell financially and psychologically.

Among them were Michigan Panthers owner Al Taubman and Philadelphia Stars owner Myles Tanenbaum, both of whom, coincidentally, had made their personal fortunes building shopping centers, as well as Memphis Showboats owner Billy Dunavaut and Jacksonville Bulls owner Fred Bullard.