The new USFL has no formal connection with the old USFL. The new league’s press releases make that clear: “The United States Football League is a new, independent football league … and it is not associated or affiliated with the USFL of the 1980s or its owners.
Still … when you call your league the USFL and you name a team the Philadelphia Stars, it immediately conjures up memories of spring-time football at the Vet in the 1980s.
The original USFL only existed for three seasons – 1983 through 1985 – but for Eagles fans starving for competitive football during a miserable period for the Eagles, it was a fun alternative.
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The Stars were really good.
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They went 41-13, reached all three USFL championship games and won two of them. And they had legitimate talent, starting with Hall of Famer Sam Mills and also including NFL Pro Bowlers Bart Oates, William Fuller, Mike Johnson and Sean Landeta and long-time NFL players like Irv Eatman, John Bunting and Chuck Commiskey.
Before I began covering the Eagles in 1987, I covered most Stars home games in 1983 and 1984 for the old Gloucester County Times in Woodbury, N.J. And with the new USFL kicking into gear with its draft next weekend, I thought it would be fun to take a trip back in time and share 10 memories of those Philadelphia Stars teams of old.
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Let’s play Stars trivia! It was something like the third home game in Stars history. April of 1983. Philly was still trying to figure out exactly what this team was all about, but the games were a breath of fresh air considering that the Eagles were in the midst of a dismal stretch of six straight losing seasons. So a few weeks into the USFL’s existence, at one of the first Stars home games ever, these words pop up on the JumboTron at the Vet: “It’s Time for Philadelphia Stars Trivia.” I have no memory of what the trivia question actually was, but just the notion of a trivia question about a team that was exactly five weeks old was amazing. That's when I knew this was my kind of team.
Franklin Field: The Stars were forced to play their 1984 home playoff games against the New Jersey Generals and Birmingham Stallions at Franklin Field because the Phillies had games those weekends at the Vet. There was a lot of whining and complaining it, but I thought it was incredible. Playing those games in the same stadium where the Eagles won the 1960 NFL Championship over Vince Lombardi’s Packers just 24 years earlier was really cool. And it was just a unique experience having big-time pro football in a stadium where people could walk over from Center City or West Philly or take the train from the suburbs. It gave those games a really unique old-timey feel. I remember talking to a security guard who had worked the 1960 Championship Game, and he told me the Eagles’ locker room – under the grandstand in the northwest corner of the stadium – had been the Packers’ locker room in 1960. I got chills thinking of the legendary Hall of Fame coach and Hall of Famers Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Paul Hornung, Jim Ringo, Forrest Gregg and all the others sitting in that room after the Packers’ only postseason loss between 1942 and 1971.
“I don’t want to go home:” The final USFL game ever played was the 1985 Championship Game between the Oakland Invaders and the Baltimore Stars at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, and the Stars won the game 28-24, but my fondest memory of that day was a free Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes concert in the middle of the parking lot before the game. That was the Bobby Bandiera / Rusty Cloud lineup and they were an absolute killer band. The game was good. The concert was great.
The Comeback: In their 1983 semifinal playoff game against Hall of Famer George Allen’s Chicago Blitz, the Stars fell behind 38-17 with 12:42 to go in the game. Then the Stars went nuts. One-time Heisman Trophy runner-up (to Billy Sims) Chuck Fusina threw TD passes of 17 yards to former Penn State teammate Scott Fitzkee, 2 yards to Quakertown native Jeff Rodenberger and 11 yards to another former Nittany Lion, Tom Donovan, to tie the game with 50 seconds left. The Stars won the OT toss, and Kelvin Bryant capped a 142-yard day with the game-winning TD. The Stars scored 28 unanswered points in about 17 minutes. Here’s what Allen said after the game: “For us to be up like we were and lose the game would be like sending Steve Carlton out to the mound with a 7-run lead in the 9th and watch him lose.”
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“Perles? You’re talking about Perles?” Jim Mora did a terrific job coaching the Stars through a lot of league uncertainty, a move to Baltimore, a merge with the Pittsburgh Maulers and lots more. But Mora wasn’t originally the Stars’ coach. In 1982, the Stars hired former Michigan State assistant George Perles as head coach, and in the lead-up to the league’s first season, it was actually Perles who served as the team’s coach. But before he coached a game, Perles was offered the head coaching job at Michigan State, and he broke his contract with the Stars and left for East Lansing. The Stars filed a $1 million lawsuit against Michigan State in U.S. District Court, a suit that was eventually settled when MSU officials paid the Stars $175,000. The Stars really lucked out when Perles abandoned them.
“If you build it they will come:” With fans increasingly disgusted by the Eagles and the Stars coming off a terrific first season, attendance finally started increasing in Year 2. The Stars drew just over 30,000 fans to the Vet for their home opener against the Oakland Invaders and set a franchise record when a late-season game against the Generals drew nearly 38,000 fans. While most other USFL teams struggled to draw, the Stars averaged 32,251 fans for eight home dates in 1984 and then drew about 45,000 to their two playoff wins at Franklin Field. Those turned out to be the Stars’ last games ever in Philadelphia.
The Doghouse Defense: One of the reasons fans began gravitating to the Stars was their defense. Eagles fans love defense, and the 1983 and 1984 Stars had it. The 1983 Doghouse Defense held 12 of its 18 regular-season opponents to 10 or fewer points, and during their eight-game winning streak, they allowed an average of 9.1 points per game. The Stars forced 37 turnovers in those 18 games, including eight interceptions by Scott Woerner, six by East Stroudsburg’s Mike Lush and four by Jonathan Sutton. Hall of Famer Sam Mills, long-time Eagle John Bunting and Paulsboro’s Glenn Howard gave the Stars an NFL-caliber linebacking corps and Don Fielder was their top pass rusher. The Stars did not allow a 100-yard rusher in their first two years. And Mora’s defensive staff was loaded, with defensive coordinator Vince Tobin and assistants Vic Fangio, John Pease and Bill Kuharich. “When you go into a game, you’ve got to feel you can shut the other team out,” Tobin said in 1983. “If you don’t, you better have another plan.”
“The game is … WHEN?”: Although the USFL looked like big-time football – the level of play wasn’t NFL-caliber but it was close – behind the scenes the league had plenty of operational issues. In 1984, four days before the Stars were scheduled to face the Birmingham Stallions at UAB‘s Legion Field, team officials learned that the game had been switched to Sunday to accommodate TV. But because of a convention in Birmingham and the Talladega 500, there were no hotel rooms available, and the Stars’ traveling secretary had to really scramble to find a hotel in the outskirts of Birmingham that could accommodate a professional football team. The Stars managed OK. Kelvin Bryant rushed for 84 yards, Fusina threw TD passes to Fitzkee and Herb Harris, Dave Trout kicked five field goals and the Stars improved to 10-1 with a 43-11 rout over the 9-1 Stallions.
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The beginning of the end: Once the USFL’s owners voted to move to a fall season and take on the NFL with hopes of a merger, the Stars moved to Baltimore since competing with the Eagles – even the 1980s Eagles - would have been suicide, and Baltimore had just lost the Colts two years earlier. But when the Stars were unable to use Memorial Stadium, they wound up playing their home games at the University of Maryland’s Byrd Stadium, which is actually closer to Washington than Baltimore. The franchise kept its offices in Philadelphia and practiced here, which meant a 2 ½-hour bus ride to home games. After averaging over 30,000 fans per game in 1984, the Stars drew just over 14,000 in College Park, with three of their last four games under 8,000. It was a disappointing 10-7-1 season but Mora did an incredible job keeping that team together amid all the distractions, and the Stars beat the Invaders at the Meadowlands after the Southside Johnny concert to win their second straight title. Soon after the championship game, they got kicked out of the Vet. And soon after that the league folded.