Age-Old Foes

President of the United States, Donald Trump, criticised the National Football League (NFL) and drew the ire of its players recently over his comments on players not standing for the national anthem.

His deputy, Vice-President Mike Pence, even left the game between the Indianapolis Colts and San Francisco 49ers early to protest against the players' kneeling during the national anthem. Some called it a publicity stunt which stole the limelight away from Peyton Manning, whose number was retired by the Colts during the half-time ceremony of that game.

Yours Truly is not going to talk politics here. He just wants to remind the readers of some major issues between Trump and the NFL in the past.

Trump was the majority owner of New Jersey Generals, a team in the United States Football League (USFL) founded in the early eighties.

Initially, the USFL wanted to fill the gaps of the NFL by playing its games in spring and summer, and in cities that did not have NFL teams.

And because the USFL did not have a hard salary cap, it managed to capture many players who would eventually be enshrined in the Hall of Fame, such as Reggie White and Jim Kelly.

Later on, however, they decided to move its schedule to autumn (allegedly at the urging of Trump) which meant their games would be in direct competition against the NFL games. Soon, they found themselves struggling to survive against the more well-established counterpart.

Then they decided to file an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL for their monopoly.

Back in the late 1960s, there was another upstart league, the American Football League (AFL) which managed to eventually merge with the NFL. Now most of the teams in the American Football Conference (AFC) of the NFL can trace their roots to the AFL days.

Many thought that the USFL probably wanted a merger too, which was the real aim behind their lawsuit.

When the case went to court, the USFL actually won. And they also got triple the damage from the NFL under anti-trust laws.

But there was one problem: The damage awarded by the court was only US$1.

ONE UNITED STATES DOLLAR.

And under anti-trust laws, they got three times of that. It meant that the USFL was awarded US$3.

THREE UNITED STATES DOLLARS.

Yours Truly is not going into the specifics behind the judgement. Eventually, the USFL received the award (US$3.76 in cheque in 1990, adjusted due to inflation), but folded soon afterwards due to huge financial losses.

And none of the teams managed to join the NFL, unlike those in the AFL.

And you can just imagine how pissed the owners of USFL teams were, or are, with the NFL in that pyrrhic victory.