The Los Angeles Express was a team in the United States Football League (USFL) based in Los Angeles, California. Playing at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Express competed in all three of the USFL seasons played between 1983 and 1985.
History
Cable television pioneers Alan Harmon and Bill Daniels were awarded a USFL franchise for San Diego when the league announced its formation in 1982. However, the city refused to grant the team a lease to play at Jack Murphy Stadium under pressure from the stadium's existing tenants—baseball's Padres, the NFL's Chargers, and the NASL's Sockers. The only other outdoor facility available in the area was Balboa Stadium, the original home of the Chargers. However, it was a relatively antiquated facility (built in 1915) that had not had a major tenant since the Chargers moved into Jack Murphy in 1967, and was now largely used by high school teams. This was an untenable situation for a team that was aspiring to be part of a major sports league.
With only eight months before the season was to start, Harmon and Daniels decided to move to Los Angeles with the league's blessing. League officials believed that Harmon and Daniels' ties to the cable industry could help the league get exposure; David Dixon's blueprint for the league depended heavily on television coverage. They forced Jim Joseph, second owner of the Los Angeles USFL franchise, to give up his rights to Los Angeles in favor of Harmon and Daniels. Joseph relocated his franchise to Phoenix, Arizona as the Arizona Wranglers.
1983 season
The Los Angeles Express drafted Dan Marino as the first pick in USFL history. Marino made some appearances on behalf of the Express before signing with the Miami Dolphins.
The Express also made a serious run at Eric Dickerson, and actually matched the Los Angeles Rams' offer for him. However, Dickerson signed with the Rams, apparently because family members were skeptical about the USFL.
Television star Lee Majors became part owner in April 1983.
The Express ownership lured Canadian Football League legend Hugh Campbell, head coach of the Edmonton Eskimos, to be their first head coach. (Campbell had taken over the Eskimos in 1977 and in his six years had taken the team to six straight Grey Cup games, winning the last five.)
The 1983 Express team was a competitive team headed by quarterbacks Tom Ramsey and Mike Rae and led by an above average defense. Despite losing two defensive backs to knee injuries, the Express finished fifth in the league in total defense.
However, a patchwork offensive line limited the team's offensive firepower. The Express had the worst rushing attack in the league. Herschel Walker rushed for 72 more yards than the entire Express team in 1983. Despite this, the Pacific Division was so weak that the Express were actually in contention for the division title with two weeks to go in the season. However, upset losses to the New Jersey Generals and Washington Federals in weeks 16 and 17 respectively cost the Express the Pacific Division title and allowed the Oakland Invaders to claim the last 1983 playoff berth.
Southern Californians viewed the Express largely with indifference. They only drew 19,000 people per game, failing to top 17,000 in their last four games. The crowds looked even smaller than that due to the cavernous size of the Coliseum, which seated almost 95,000 people at the time, far and away the largest stadium in pro football. However, it was far too big for an NFL team (the Los Angeles Raiders, and the Rams before them, were plagued with local blackouts even in their best years), let alone a USFL team. It was so spread out that even crowds of 25,000 —a decent-sized crowd by USFL standards— were swallowed up in the environment.
While Harmon and Daniels knew that the Express were going to be a hard sell, the poor gate surprised even them. Additionally, television ratings for USFL games in the Los Angeles market were so low that they significantly held down the league's average television ratings.
Oldenburg told Klosterman that money was no object, and he was to sign the best 40-man roster he could find. As Klosterman put it, Oldenburg wanted to "design a car to go 180 miles an hour." Klosterman signed 31 players in two months for a total of $12 million. Among other things, he spent a total of $8 million to sign four of the best offensive linemen in college football, giving the Express the most expensive offensive line in all of professional football. One of the new signees, kicker Tony Zendejas, recalled being stunned at the number of luxury cars in the players' parking lot.
Offseason disaster
Then, just as quickly as the Express rose, they fell. Midway through the season, the FBI began investigating Oldenburg's financial dealings. Multiple exposés by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times revealed Oldenburg not only had a habit of luring savings and loans into questionable deals, but was also nowhere near as well off as he had long claimed.
In its bid to gain credibility with the sporting public, the USFL stressed that it required potential owners to undergo an exhaustive due diligence and meet strict capitalization requirements. However, it emerged that the owners largely dispensed with these procedures while reviewing Oldenburg's application. The league was desperate to ensure an apparently solid owner in the nation's second-largest market. With Oldenburg as the only credible bidder for the Express after Harmon and Daniels pulled out, the league only conducted a cursory review of his finances. While Oldenburg had gained a reputation as the enfant terrible of the league, no one even suspected that he was a fraud until the FBI and newspaper investigations revealed that he had virtually no money. When he applied to buy the Express, he claimed to have net worth of $100 million, which on paper would have given him more than enough net worth to buy the team. Subsequent investigations suggested that much of that figure came from buying a piece of property for a discount, then selling it to a small bank that he owned for ten times its actual worth. they went 3–5 in their next eight games. Just when it looked like the season could be salvaged, the injury bug bit the team hard, decimating the roster. Young was among the more prominent casualties. At that point, the season turned into a complete fiasco, and the Express would not win another game. The nine-game losing streak was the second-longest in league history, behind only the Wranglers' 10-game losing streak in 1983. One of those games was a 51–0 thrashing by the Denver Gold—the largest margin of defeat in league history.
The Express' on-field collapse was all the more stunning since this was essentially the same team that had gone all the way to the Western Conference title game a year earlier. However, the rash of injuries made a shambles of the depth chart. At one point late in the season, the team was so short of healthy offensive linemen that one player had to back up the entire starting line. The stadium, which had already hosted an Express preseason game in February, increased its capacity to 16,000 for the contest. Usher and the league owners hoped if the game did well they might have some ammunition to land a potential owner.
That game almost didn't occur when the team's bus driver refused to take them to Pierce College without being paid up front, in cash. Young passed a hat around, but no one was willing to chip in. Finally, the trainer offered to cash his check, and the driver took them to the game. However, the contest was still not a sellout; only 8,200 people (barely half of the stadium's capacity, and actually less than their average in the Coliseum) saw Young and the Express lose 21–10 to Doug Williams and the Outlaws. The playing conditions left much to be desired; the field was strewn with rocks and potholes, and some areas were merely painted dirt. The scoreboard was positioned at an angle that made it useless once the sun began setting.
Demise of the franchise and the league
Unable to find a new owner for the Express, the USFL announced the team would suspend operations for the 1986 season. However, many of the very issues that plagued the Express in 1985 made it very likely the team would not have returned even if the league had succeeded in winning a large payoff from the NFL to finance a move to a fall schedule in 1986. Additionally, the Express would have had to compete against two NFL teams and, if they had returned to the Coliseum, would have had to share their home with one of them (the Raiders) and the University of Southern California's team. In the end, the USFL cancelled its 1986 season, never to return.
Aftermath
After trying all season in 1985, Steve Young and Gary Zimmerman were finally able to buy their way out of the USFL. Both went on to Hall of Fame careers in the NFL.
The "Los Angeles Express" name was briefly revived in 2013 for a proposed A-11 Football League team, but those plans fell through in April 2014 due to California's workers compensation situation.
Single-season leaders
- Rushing yards: 830 (1984), Kevin Nelson
- Receiving yards: 889 (1984), Jojo Townsell
- Passing yards: 2361 (1984), Steve Young
Season-by-season
|-
|1983 || 8 || 10 || 0 || 2nd Pacific || –
|-
|1984 || 10 || 8 || 0 || 1st WC Pacific || Won quarterfinal (Michigan)<br>Lost Semifinal (Arizona)
|-
|1985 || 3 || 15 || 0 || 7th WC || –
|-
!Totals || 22 || 34 || 0
|colspan="2"| (including playoffs)
References
External links
- Remember the USFL: Los Angeles Express