New Game Plan

More pro football in the fall

Since the United States Football League started play in 1983, the high-rolling owners of its 18 teams have each bet a fortune on the proposition that fans would flock to professional football in the spring and summer, when the air is traditionally filled with pop-ups and homers rather than punts and passes. So far, the new boys of summer have drawn disappointing crowds, suffered tepid television ratings and piled up losses of $80 million in 1984 alone. Meeting in Chicago last week, the owners decided that the only way to play for keeps is to switch to a fall schedule in 1986, even though that means going head to head with the dominant National Football League. Said Donald Trump, owner of the U.S.F.L.'s New Jersey Generals: "If God wanted football to be played in the spring, he wouldn't have created baseball."

One big question, though, is how the U.S.F.L. games will fit into the fall television schedule. NBC and CBS now broadcast three N.F.L. games between them each Sunday, and ABC airs another match-up on Monday night. In addition, the law bars the networks from carrying pro games on Friday nights or Saturdays during the high school and college football seasons. Even so, U.S.F.L. Commissioner Chet Simmons thinks that ABC or one of the other networks may be willing to show a fourth Sunday-afternoon contest. Moreover, Simmons says that ESPN, the cable-TV sports network that has agreed to pay $70 million during the next three years to broadcast U.S.F.L. football, could carry games on midweek nights.

But even the money from ESPN will not be enough to move the U.S.F.L. teams into the black. The New Jersey Generals lost $4 million this season, and the Los Angeles Express an estimated $15 million. Only the Tampa Bay Bandits came close to breaking even.

Much of the league's red ink flows from lavish salaries to star players. The Express signed Quarterback Steve Young to a lifetime contract reputed to be worth $36 million. Young's paychecks are already proving to be a strain on Express Owner William Oldenburg, who heads a San Francisco company that arranges loans for construction projects. Oldenburg is in financial trouble, and his team is up for sale.

Other owners, however, can draw on vast wealth to keep the U.S.F.L. alive. The Generals' Trump is a New York City real estate tycoon who built the $200 million Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Alfred Taubman, a Detroit real estate baron who owns the Michigan Panthers, is believed to be worth more than $500 million.

Not all the owners favored the move to fall. Taubman's son Robert voted against it on behalf of his father, partly because the Panthers will have to compete with the N.F.L.'s Detroit Lions for playing dates in the Silverdome. Myles Tanenbaum, owner of the champion Philadelphia Stars, said that the shift will force his team to leave Philadelphia for Baltimore to avoid scheduling conflicts with the N.F.L.'s Philadelphia Eagles.

Some football experts think the ultimate goal of the U.S.F.L. owners is to merge with the N.F.L., as the American Football League did in 1966. But Trump professes to be more interested in beating the N.F.L. than joining it. He envisions a championship game between the winners of the two leagues. His proposed name for the confrontation: the Galaxy Bowl.