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.
1984 season Harmon and Daniels grew alarmed at their fellow owners' increasingly reckless spending. They had also tired of commuting from their base in Denver to Los Angeles for games. They put the Express up for sale, and found a buyer in mortgage banker J. William Oldenburg, who bought the team for $7.5 million. Soon after taking over, Oldenburg hired veteran NFL executive Don Klosterman as general manager and former Chargers and Los Angeles Rams quarterback John Hadl as head coach.
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.
Klosterman and Oldenburg's biggest prize was Steve Young, a quarterback who had played at the namesake university of his lineal ancestor, Brigham Young University. Agent Leigh Steinberg negotiated for Young what was then reported to be the largest professional sports contract ever signed – a 10-year deal worth over US$40 million. The payments were to be in the form of an annuity set up to pay him $1 million annually for the next 42 years, so the value of the contract was considerably less than stated.
The NFL also noticed the Express' stockpiling of talent: in the 1984 NFL Supplemental Draft of USFL and CFL players, no fewer than twenty Express players were picked, including four of the first six selections and eleven in just the opening round. But despite the all-star lineup, the team struggled to compete with the popularity of the Raiders (who had just won the Super Bowl) and the Rams: the Express only drew 15,361 people per game, down from 19,713 a year earlier. On three occasions, the team drew crowds of fewer than 11,000 people. Largely due to the poor attendance, they reportedly lost $15 million.
In spite of its overwhelming talent and one of the league's highest payrolls, the young team struggled with adjusting to the pro game and several injuries, losing their first four home games and only finishing two games over .500 at 10–8; however, this was enough to tie the Wranglers for first place in the Pacific Division. The Express won the division title on a tiebreaker, and got to play the Michigan Panthers, who had limped into the playoffs with a 4–8 record in their last 12 games since losing star wide receiver Anthony Carter for the season, while Arizona got Jim Kelly's red hot 13–5 Houston Gamblers. The playoff game against the Panthers drew only 7,964 fans, which looked tiny in the huge Coliseum. As it turned out, the contest was the longest in professional football history: a three-overtime, 93 minute and 33 second marathon won by the Express 27–21 on a touchdown run by Mel Gray. (This proved painful for both teams: Gray broke his arm on the play, and the Panthers never played again, merging over the winter with the Oakland Invaders.)
The Wranglers upset the Gamblers 17–16 on a late rally, which normally would have given the Express the right to host the conference championship game against the Wranglers. But since the Coliseum was being readied for the 1984 Summer Olympics, the game was shifted to the Wranglers' home, Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. However, moving the game created another problem: with daytime temperatures in Arizona well above 100 degrees on that July day, local doctors and other officials implored the league to move the contest to nighttime, which they did. Unfortunately, this meant the game would be aired starting at 11:30pm on the east coast, which didn't exactly help TV ratings (and, even after sundown, temps were still in the nineties at game time). League officials were nonetheless relieved when the game attracted a solid crowd of 33,188, which would have looked extremely sparse in the Coliseum. (Arizona won, 35–23, and advanced to the USFL title game, which they lost to Philadelphia.)
1984 schedule and results Week Date Opponent Result Record Venue AttendancePreseason 1Bye 2Bye 3 vs. Birmingham Stallions L 0–10 0–1 Tempe, Arizona 4ByeRegular Season 1 February 26 Denver Gold L 10–27 0–1 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 32,082 2 March 4 Birmingham Stallions L 14–21 0–2 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 14,789 3 March 11 at Oakland Invaders W 10–0 1–2 Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum 23,479 4 at San Antonio Gunslingers W 13–12 2–2 Alamo Stadium 9,821 5 March 25 Jacksonville Bulls L 7–13 2–3 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 8,000 6 April 1 New Jersey Generals L 10–26 2–4 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 19,853 7 at Denver Gold L 27–35 2–5 Mile High Stadium 19,115 8 Memphis Showboats W 23–17 3–5 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 10,049 9 at Chicago Blitz L 29–49 3–6 Soldier Field 11,713 10 at Houston Gamblers W 27–24 4–6 Houston Astrodome 30,727 11 Pittsburgh Maulers W 20–12 5–6 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 16,789 12 May 13 at Philadelphia Stars L 14–18 5–7 Veterans Stadium 22,391 13 May 20 Michigan Panthers W 14–17 6–7 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 10,193 14 Arizona Wranglers W 24–17 7–7 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 11,702 15 June 3 at Washington Federals W 35–21 8–7 RFK Stadium 5,263 16 June 10 at Oklahoma Outlaws W 17–10 9–7 Skelly Stadium 22,017 17 Oakland Invaders W 24–19 10–7 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 14,794 18 at Arizona Wranglers L 10–35 10–8 Sun Devil Stadium 35,258Playoffs DivisionalPlayoff Michigan Panthers W 27–21 1–0 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum 7,964 ConferenceChampionship at Arizona Wranglers L 25–35 1–1 Sun Devil Stadium 33,188 Sourcesstatscrew.com 1984 Los Angeles Express Game-by-Game Resultsusflsite.com 1984 USFL Seasonprofootballarchives.com 1984 Los Angeles Express (USFL)
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.