The Philadelphia Stars were charter members of the United States Football League in 1983. Considered to be that league’s best team, the Stars one two USFL Championships, one in Philadelphia and one after moving to Baltimore for their final season.
The Michigan Panthers were the original champions of the spring season United States Football League during the league’s 1983 debut season. The team launched the pro careers of future NFL stars Bobby Hebert (quarterback) and Anthony Carter (wide receiver), who sparked the Panthers to the USFL title as rookies. The Panthers played in the longest game in a professional football history, a 93-minute triple overtime playoff loss to Steve Young and the Los Angeles Express in June 1984. This also proved to the Panthers final game. The USFL’s planned move to a fall season in 1986 caused the Detroit-based Panthers to merge with the Oakland Invaders ahead of the USFL’s 1985 season in order to avoid going head-to-head with the NFL’s Detroit Lions in 1986.
The Washington Federals were a dreadful early 1980’s entry in the otherwise fondly remembered United States Football League. The Feds went 7-29 over two seasons of play and were famously compared to “a group of untrained gerbils” by exasperated team owner Berl Bernhard. After two seasons in the nation’s capital, the club was sold and packed off to Orlando prior to the USFL’s third and final season in 1985.
The Boston Breakers were one of twelve original franchises in the springtime United States Football League (1983-1985). Expectations were low for Head Coach Dick Coury’s club, which failed to sign virtually all of its draft picks and fielded a team of low budget, no-name NFL training camp cuts, Canadian Football League castoffs and prison parolees. To nearly everyone’s surprise, the Breakers finished 11- 7 and narrowly missed the final playoff spot. Coury was named the USFL’s Coach of the Year.
The New Orleans Breakers were a relatively popular entry in the United States Football League during the spring of 1984. The team gained national attention by signing teenage Marcus Dupree to a $6 million contract after the ex-University of Oklahoma star dropped out of college. The Breakers got off to a hot start 5-0 start in league play that spring and brought in crowds of over 30,000 to the Superdome. But the USFL’s sudden lurch to move to a fall season in 1986 doomed the franchise in the Big Easy.
