The Oklahoma Outlaws / Arizona Outlaws were a professional American football team that played in the United States Football League in the mid-1980s. They were owned by Fresno banker and real estate magnate William Tatham Sr., who had briefly owned the Portland Thunder (WFL) of the World Football League.
During their first season, the team played as the Oklahoma Outlaws. They became the Arizona Outlaws for their second season.
History
1984 Oklahoma Outlaws
The Outlaws were originally slated to play in San Diego. However, under pressure from baseball's Padres, the NFL's Chargers and the NASL's Sockers, the city refused to grant Tatham a lease for Jack Murphy Stadium. Scrambling for a home, Tatham seriously considered playing in Honolulu for its inaugural 1984 season. However, he settled on Tulsa, Oklahoma—even though the city had not even been included in a list of possible expansion sites for the USFL.
Tatham was initially skeptical about basing a team in Tulsa. It was only the 60th-largest television market, which would have made it by far the smallest market in the league. Moreover, the only viable facility, the University of Tulsa's Skelly Stadium, needed major renovations in order to bring it to something approaching professional standards.
However, Tatham had roots in Oklahoma, and eventually concluded that putting his team there would give something back to the state. He christened his team the Oklahoma Outlaws. The club was the second major-league sports team to play in the state, after the North American Soccer League's Tulsa Roughnecks.
On July 7, 1983, at the same time the USFL announced the expansion team, Tatham introduced Hall of Fame member Sid Gillman, who came out of retirement at age 71 to serve as the Director of Operations. Gillman signed a roster of players, but was fired by Tatham in December in a dispute over finances.
In what proved to be a harbinger of things to come, Tatham and his son, Bill Jr.–who was tapped as general manager despite being fresh out of law school–discovered soon after the ink dried on his lease with TU that school officials had vastly inflated attendance figures for Tulsa Golden Hurricane football games in hopes of maintaining their Division I-A status. The Tathams had been led to believe that the Hurricane drew 35,000–40,000 people per game, which would have been more than respectable by USFL standards. However, business manager Bill Wall, TU's former athletic director, told them after the season opener that the Hurricane actually drew 17,000 per game.
Fortunately for the Tathams, they had a lifeline in Gillman's highest-profile signing, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Doug Williams, who bolted to the upstart league when the Bucs rejected his offer for a significant pay raise out of hand. Years later, Williams said that he was won over when the Tathams "treated me like a human," rather than "a piece of cattle in a stockyard." They signed him to a $3 million contract, along with a $1 million signing bonus, which made him easily one of the highest-paid players in either league. The CFL later stated that unless any prospective owner could deliver a television contract of at least $20 million a year (the USFL's contract with ESPN was offering $27 million a year for the 1986 season had it been held), it would not consider expanding into the United States. The CFL commissioner ultimately rejected the proposal (along with a similar one from Charles O. Finley), stating: "if any expansion takes place, it will be within the bounds of Canada."
Single-season leaders
Rushing yards: 1031 (1985), Reggie Brown
Receiving yards: 1087 (1984), Alphonso Williams
Passing yards: 3645 (1985), Doug Williams
Season-by-season
|-
! colspan="6" style=""|Oklahoma Outlaws
|-
|1984 || 6 || 12 || 0 || 4th WC Central || –
|-
! colspan="6" style=""|Arizona Outlaws
|-
|1985 || 8 || 10 || 0 || 4th WC || –
|-
!Totals || 14 || 22 || 0
|colspan="2"| (including playoffs)
Outlaws in video games
The Outlaws' logo can be found in Madden NFLs Create-A-Team Feature. They are also featured in Blitz: The League, the Arizona Outlaws are a Division 3 team and are the first opponents against the player's created team.
References
External links
- USFL.info – Oklahoma-Arizona Outlaws
- https://web.archive.org/web/20050315214643/http://www.remembertheusfl.8m.com/teams/outlaws.html