Los Angeles Express

United States Football League (1983-1985)

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Background

The Los Angeles Express was a charter member of the United States Football League (USFL) established in 1982. The franchise was originally awarded to Alex Spanos. However, he backed out to take a minority stake in the NFL’s San Diego Chargers. With the L.A. market open, Jim Joseph and Tad Taube, owners of the league’s Bay Area team, flipped a coin. The winner would take the Los Angeles franchise.

Californication

Joseph won, but the celebration was short-lived. Bill Daniels and Daniel Harmon, who had been trying to secure a USFL franchise for San Diego, were having trouble getting a lease for Jack Murphy Stadium (formerly San Diego Stadium). Local authorities were pressured by the NFL’s Chargers, Major League Baseball’s Padres, as well as the North American Soccer League’s San Diego Sockers. The other two teams were unaware the Sockers were even in the room. With no other facility available, Daniels and Harmon gave up on placing a USFL team in the city.

They were instead given the rights to Los Angeles by the league, as USFL leaders felt Daniels’ and Harmon’s involvement in the cable TV industry would be invaluable in promoting the new league. Joseph took one for the league, and on August 5, 1982, he relocated his franchise to Phoenix and established the Arizona Wranglers. 

Daniels and Harmon dubbed their team the Express and set to work hiring a coaching staff and building a roster. Hugh Campbell, who had led the Edmonton Eskimos to five Grey Cup championships in the Canadian Football League (CFL), was hired as head coach. In January 1983, the Express unsuccessfully pursued Pitt quarterback Dan Marino, who ultimately signed with the Miami Dolphins.  The Express also tried to entice running back Eric Dickerson, who came to Los Angeles but signed with the NFL’s Rams.

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L. A. Express USFL T-shirt

Did you ever watch the L.A. Express. If so, you’re not alone– but you nearly are. Barely able to draw 10,000 fans a game to the cavernous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Express soldiered on for three USFL seasons before they and the league went out of business for good.

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Building the Team

Snubbed by two of the biggest college stars of the 1983 draft class, the Express stocked their roster in the way called for by league founder Dave Dixon in his Dixon Plan. That included recent NFL cuts, free agents, and college players not likely to make the established league’s rosters or who felt they could make a few more bucks in the new league.

In April, actor Lee Majors (Six Million Dollar Man, Fall Guy, Big Valley), purchased a minority stake in the team. A noted football fan, he was often present on the sidelines wearing his L.A. Express satin jacket. 

L.A. Does Not Love Us

The Express finished their inaugural season with an 8-10 record, good for second place in the league’s Pacific Division but not good enough to make the playoffs. To make matters worse, the Express averaged just 19,000 fans a game, skewed slightly higher by the opening-day crowd of 32,000. Local TV ratings were almost non-existent. Daniels and Harmon were shocked by the lack of enthusiasm for the team in Southern California and decided to cut the cord.

On December 22, 1983, San Francisco-based financier William Oldenburg bought the Express. He hired former Rams executive Don Klosterman to run the team and retained Campbell as head coach.

The $40 Million Man

Oldenburg and Klosterman soon landed Brigham Young star QB Steve Young and signed him to the largest contract in the history of professional sports up to that time. It was a 10-year deal worth over $40 million. The contract earned him the nickname, the $40 Million Man. Oddly, Young continued to wear old jeans and drove a 13-year-old Oldsmobile to the Express’ practice facility.

The payments were set up in the form of an annuity that would pay Young $1 million annually for the next 42 years, so the short-term value of the contract was considerably less than $40 million. That was something Young’s mother pointed out to fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, who initially booed her son and chided his $40 million contract with chants of, “forty million down the drain!” As Young recounts in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL? she shouted at the hecklers, “it’s an annuity!” Young explained further during a 2016 appearance on the NPR game show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, “she just baffled them. Everyone in the crowd goes, ‘what’s an annuity?’”

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Los Angeles Ex[ress DAD hat

The Los Angeles Express played in the Coliseum from 1983 to 1985. So disinterested were Southern California fans, the team played its final home game at a community college in suburban Woodland Hills. 

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Money Changes Everything

Klosterman doled out more big contracts, assured by Oldenburg that money was no object. The strategy worked on the field, as the Express started winning. Off the field, not so much. Halfway through the 1984 season, in a turn of events reminiscent of the ill-fated World Football League (WFL), reports surfaced that Oldenburg wasn’t nearly as rich as he said he was and that he had lured several savings and loans into some shaky deals. As the season ended, the team was on the market. Klosterman tried to broker a deal with L.A. Lakers and Kings owner Jerry Buss, but nothing came of it. With no buyers in sight, the league had no choice but to take over the team. A clause in the USFL’s TV contract called for teams in the three biggest TV markets, and the league had already dissolved the Chicago Blitz, effective at the end of the season. 

On the field, things were looking good, though not many fans turned out to see the Express win the Pacific Division with a 10-8 record. Only 7,954 fans showed up at the Coliseum for a first-round playoff game against the defending champion Michigan Panthers. Those fans were rewarded, though, with an exciting game that turned out to be the longest game in the history of pro football at 93 minutes and 33 seconds. It took three overtimes before Express RB Mel Gray plowed into the endzone for the game-winner.

The Express was scheduled to host the Arizona Wranglers in the semifinals, but due to the upcoming Olympic games, the Coliseum wasn’t available. The game was moved to Phoenix, which was good news for the league, as over 33,000 fans turned out to watch as the Wranglers prevailed and advanced to the championship game.

Still No Interest

The hope inspired by the division crown and first-round playoff win disappeared soon after the start of the 1985 season. A 2-7 start was made worse by reports that the league would fold the Express before the end of the season. 

Indeed, the season’s only highlight was a Week 1 opening-day match-up in the Coliseum against the Houston Gamblers, led by future NFL superstar Jim Kelly, since dubbed “The Greatest Game No One Ever Saw.” 

The game wasn’t televised because ABC opted to cover Doug Flutie’s debut with the New Jersey Generals. Only the videographers from the two teams were on hand to record the shoot-out between Young’s Express and Kelly’s Gamblers. A season-high crowd of just over 18,000 watched Houston take a 13-0 lead in the first quarter. Los Angeles responded in the second quarter with two Tony Zenjedas field goals. The Express defense kept Kelly’s high-powered offense under control while Zenjedas added another field goal in the third, followed by a 64-yard TD pass from Young to WR Jo-Jo Townsell.

In the fourth quarter, Zendejas added another field goal. A 42-yard interception returned for a touchdown by Express safety Troy West made the score Los Angeles 33, Houston 14.  With just under 10 minutes to play, Kelly and the Gamblers engineered three unanswered touchdown drives to win 34 to 33. 

A few years ago, the USFL Forever YouTube channel was able to assemble most of the game using the video from both teams, along with a recording of the radio play-by-play discovered years later. See below.

This Is The End

The Express went on to finish 3-15. Ironically, a minority partner in the Gamblers was approached about buying the Express, but his finances were as bad as Oldenburg’s. Only 4,658 fans turned out for the team’s penultimate home game against the Birmingham Stallions. The league decided to quietly host their final home game at Shepard Stadium on the campus of Pierce College in Woodland Hills. That game, a 21-10 loss to the Arizona Outlaws, was witnessed by 8,200 fans.

Unable to find any suitors, the league suspended the team’s operations. In September 1985, Young was released from his contract and signed with the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Express would never return, but as it turned out, neither would the rest of the league after the 1985 championship game. The move to fall, disinterest in L.A. for the Express, no matter what season they played in, and the $3 award won by the USFL in their antitrust suit against the NFL put the final nails in the coffin.

Legacy

The Express’ uniforms took the field on October 17, 1986, on the TV series The A-Team. Joe Namath, Jim Brown, John Matuszak, and Carlos Brown played members of a fictional traveling football team called the TA Express. Game footage of the 1983 USFL season opener between the New Jersey Generals and the Express was used in the episode (below). 

Steve Young never did get his $40 million. He explained to CBS Sports in 2013, “we never funded the annuity. The owner was so crazy, it had to stay in his name for 45 years,” the hall of famer said in an interview. “So they gave me the option to take the money, which I think was $1 million bucks or $900,000 to fund the annuity — either take that money or fund the annuity — I just took the money. The whole idea of the annuity is false advertising.”

In Memoriam

Defensive back David Croudip (Express ’83) died of a cocaine overdose on October 10, 1988 at age 30.  He was a member of the Atlanta Falcons at the time. (New York Times article)

Ex-USC and L.A. Express wide receiver Kevin Williams (’83) died in a freight train crash near Los Angeles while working as a brakeman on February 1, 1996.  Williams was 38.

Founding co- owner Bill Daniels died on March 7, 2000.  The cable TV pioneer was 79 years old.

Express General Manager Don Klosterman (’84-’85) died of a heart attack on June 7, 2000 at age 70.

Former USC and L.A. Express defensive lineman Rich Dimler passed away September 30, 2000 of pancreatitis at age 44.

Linebacker Carlton Rose (Express ’85) died of a stroke on March 26, 2006.  Rose was 44.

Linebacker Eric Scoggins (USC ’80, Express ’83) died of amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) on January 10, 2009 at the age of 49.

Los Angeles Express Video

“The Greatest Game No One Ever Saw” via the USFL Forever YouTube Channel