Spring professional football may be making a comeback.
An exhumed version of the U.S. Football League has surfaced, making the promotional rounds this summer in possible cities for the proposed eight-team league. It is scheduled to begin play next year.
So far, Washington isn’t on the list.
But 20 years ago Thursday, Washington was set to play host to the first championship game of another spring pro football league. It was a title game that never was in a league that never started.
The Professional Spring Football League was supposed to make its debut in 1992, a new spring league that meant to pick up where the defunct original USFL left off. It had franchises in 10 locations, including the District, where the Marauders, coached by former Philadelphia Eagles center Guy Morriss, were to call RFK Stadium home.
The league, founded by a New Jersey businessman named Vincent Sette, had also picked RFK to host its first league title game, “The Red, White and Blue Bowl,” on July 5, 1992.
What it left in its wake — before a game ever was played — was a pile of red: unpaid bills and disappointed players and coaches, including some well-known former NFL players.
The league hit the ground running in January 1992 with spring training camps throughout Florida and a lot of attention.
The Marauders had former Redskins cornerback Barry Wilburn on their roster and opened camp in Deland, Fla. Other players on league rosters included former Redskins running back Timmy Smith and former Miami Dolphins running back Bernie Parmalee.
Coaches hired to run other teams included former Michigan State and Detroit Lions coach Darryl Rogers, former Patriots quarterback Steve Grogan and former Packers wide receiver Boyd Dowler.
The cost of a franchise was set at $250,000, with each team carrying a 45-man roster. The average player salary was $45,000.
At the time, Sette told reporters he had the formula to succeed where the USFL failed — corporate guidelines that assured financial controls.
“The structure will allow fiscal and budgetary control to insure the overall success of the league,” he said.
What it didn’t have was money.
“Financial questions were never really answered from the beginning,” Dowler said shortly after the league folded. “When you asked who had the money, where was the money and how much, there were never any definitive answers.”
Nobody ever really got any answers.
Sette resurfaced years later when the SEC charged him in 1997 in a wire fraud case. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to pay $300,000 in restitution.
The SEC came back in 2010 with more charges that Sette committed fraud in a stock sale. He was ordered to pay more than $5 million in restitution and fines and was barred from serving as an officer or director in a public company.
Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue Bowl.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
