Return to yesterday

The New USFL kicks off tonight in prime time, and the goal is to fool you into thinking it's the Original USFL. That's why the two teams playing the inaugural game are named the New Jersey Generals and the Birmingham Stallions.  

The New Jersey Generals! The Birmingham Stallions! Why, it's 1983 all over again, folks!

Except it's not, of course.

Oh, sure, the New USFL is using all the old names, like the Generals and the Stallions and the Houston Gamblers and the Michigan Panthers, and also the Philadelphia Stars, Tampa Bay Bandits, Pittsburgh Maulers and New Orleans Breakers. The hope is fans will see those names and remember Jim Kelly (Gamblers), and Bobby Hebert and Anthony Carter (Panthers), and  Steve Spurrier (Bandits) and maybe even Marcus Dupree (Breakers).

The problem is none of those guys live there anymore.

Almost 40 years on they're all graying senior citizens, and so tonight Herschel Walker will not be lugging the mail for the Generals, having given all that up for a run at Congress that gets stranger and more Trumpian by the day. Instead, the running backs for Jersey will be named Darius Victor and Mike Weber and Trey Williams.

None of them ever won the Heisman Trophy.

None of them, in fact, you've ever heard of unless you're an all-in football junkie.

Same goes for the quarterbacks, D'Andre Johnson and Luis Perez. Same goes for the Stallions' QBs, Alex McGough and J'Mar Smith. And instead of Anthony Carter, the wide receivers will be a bunch of guys named Cameron Echols-Luper and Peyton Ramzy and Manasseh Bailey and CJ Marable, and also Alonzo Moore and J'Mon Moore.

If you've heard of any of them, again, you spend way too much time memorizing CFL and college football rosters from places like Presbyterian and Tuskegee and Morgan State.

This does not mean the product will be faceless and un-interesting, or that some of the players might actually achieve star status of a fashion. It's just that the New USFL, unlike the Original, is a league without drawing cards. And they're playing in the spring, which is a handicap all its own.

But maybe, just maybe, it'll fly. Maybe it will have a business model that's modest and realistic and therefore sustainable. 

The Original certainly did, in the beginning. And because of that, it was successful, for a time and of a fashion, But then some guy bought the Generals and bullied the rest of the league into getting into a bidding war with the NFL for players, and there went that.

That guy, of course, was our 45th President, bumbling businessman, former reality show and next-level wackjob. And heaven help the New USFL if it trades on that part of the Original.