Although the president is a constant critic of the NFL, he unintentionally helped the league during a hapless turn as a witness in a 1986 lawsuit

As its third season came toward a close, the United States Football League filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL, claiming it had established a monopoly with respect to television broadcasting rights. The suit was led by Donald Trump, the New Jersey Generals owner who was convinced his league would win and, as a result, force a merger with the NFL. Held over 42 days in the United States District Court in Manhattan, it was one of the most eagerly anticipated trials in the history of modern sports. And the USFL seemed to have a good shot – until Trump stepped up …

The NFL’s lead attorney, Frank Rothman, utilized an approach that was the 180-degree opposite of [USFL attorney Harvey] Myerson’s. He didn’t beat people down. He didn’t scream, rant, snarl. A distinguished 59-year-old with broad shoulders and gray hair, Rothman was the former CEO of MGM/UA Entertainment, and he exuded a natural dignity. He sat back, let Myerson do his dance (as the entity that led the suit, the USFL was first to call witnesses), then meticulously went about making the NFL’s case that the USFL, by moving to fall, dug its own grave. “They had everything their way at the beginning,” Rothman said. “They had the jury they wanted. They hammered away at the Harvard [presentation]. Myerson was pitching the little guys versus the big guys. I would go back and tell the NFL people, ‘Listen, when we get our turn we can start turning this thing around. We have to be patient.’ But, actually, it didn’t take that long.”

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Beginning with the trial’s opening day, Rothman asked himself a single question: Who is my bad guy? He sought someone the jury would find difficult to believe and even harder to like. He sought someone with false bravado, with arrogance, with indifference. He didn’t want the jury to think about a sad little league going up against a powerful machine. No, he wanted the jury to see that the USFL, sympathy be damned, was its own Frankenstein. “The more I developed the strategy,” he said, “the more I wanted Donald Trump as my fall guy. I would call it Donald versus Goliath. I would make their scheme Donald’s plan, which it was. I would show that Donald Trump is not a little lightweight; he is one of the richest men in America . . . He was such a lousy witness for them, and a great one for us.”

“The way Myerson set it up was perfect for [Rothman],” said Ehrhart. “It was big, bad Donald Trump trying to screw the poor little NFL people, who had worked so hard to build their league up.”

Early in the proceedings, the USFL called Pete Rozelle, the NFL’s commissioner, to testify as the trial’s first witness. Over the course of five interminable days, Myerson hammered Rozelle, pounded Rozelle, grilled Rozelle. In particular, he focused on Trump’s claim that the NFL commissioner promised him a franchise should he abandon/damage the USFL. There was, both sides agreed, a meeting held between Trump and Rozelle at the Pierre Hotel in March 1984. What happened, however, was of dispute.

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“Didn’t you tell Mr Trump you wish he had been able to buy the Baltimore Colts and hadn’t gone into the USFL?” Myerson asked.

“No,” Rozelle replied.

“Did you tell him that if he hadn’t gone to the USFL, the USFL would have died?” Myerson asked.

“No,” Rozelle said. “Never.”

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Trump’s testimony was decidedly different. He said the hotel rendezvous was Rozelle’s idea, and recalled the commissioner saying, “You will have a good chance of an NFL franchise and, in fact, you will have an NFL franchise.” The tradeoff , according to Trump, was that the USFL remain in the spring and “not bringing a lawsuit.”

Trump insisted he and Rozelle were friends. Rozelle insisted he and Trump were certainly not friends. Trump insisted Rozelle wanted him in the NFL. Rozelle insisted he would rather have maggot-infected fungus overtaking his cranial lobe. “Rozelle told me I should be in the NFL, not the USFL,” Trump said. “At some point, he said, I would be in the NFL. Then he would reiterate that the USFL was not going to make it.”

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Rozelle couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He made clear that it was Trump who reserved and paid for the Pierre suite. He told Rothman: “[Trump] said, ‘I want an NFL expansion team in New York.’ And he said, and I’m quoting him exactly, ‘I would get some stiff to buy the New York Generals, my team in the USFL.’” Unlike Trump, Rozelle was a meticulous note-taker, and he presented his documented recollections from the meeting.

Rothman’s cross-examination was a breathtaking ode to knowing your subject, and taking him apart, piece by piece. Wrote Richard Hoffer of the Los Angeles Times: “Rothman characterized Trump as the worst kind of snake who was selling his colleagues down the river so he could effect a merger of a few rich teams.” It wasn’t Trump’s words, so much as his swagger and irritability. The USFL was the little league trying to be big, but Trump didn’t seem little. Or sympathetic. Or, for that matter, believable.

“He did not do the USFL well,” recalled Patricia Sibilia, a juror. “Donald Trump and I actually got into a staring match. I would watch the people on the stand, trying to read them. So he and I started looking at each other, and he tried to stare me down. It was an obvious try at intimidation. And what’s funny, in hindsight, is that this so-called business genius ruined it for them. He was not believable in anything he said. He came off as arrogant and unlikeable.”

Rozelle’s cool, controlled testimony was Kryptonite to Trump’s apparent unhinged allergies to truth. Rothman asked, repeatedly, what motivated Trump’s actions, then showed the jury multiple documents – signed or written by the Generals’ owner – that alluded to a “merger” and “merger strategy.” Trump denied his motive was to have the USFL and NFL become one, but lacked credibility. “It was so obvious that’s what this was all about,” said Sibilia. “No question.”

When Rothman suggested Trump’s ultimate goal was to wind up with a valuable NFL organization, the reply was staggering. “I could have gotten into the NFL a lot easier than going through this exercise,” he said. “I could have spent the extra money and bought the Colts on many occasions.”

A historic level of eye rolling filled the courtroom. Trump was lying. He was never a serious candidate to purchase the Colts. Never. “Who do you believe?” wrote Dave Goldberg of the Associated Press, “Donald Trump or Pete Rozelle?”

It wasn’t a tough one.

“It was a hard thing to watch unfold,” said Jerry Argovitz, owner of the Houston Gamblers. “Donald didn’t love the USFL. To him, it was small potatoes. Which is terrible, because we had a great league and a great idea. But then everyone let Donald Trump take over. It was our death.”

Though often immune to criticism, Trump seemed aware that the trial was not going as planned. He was being used by the NFL, and it stung. “All the reporters would rush to the nearby payphones at breaks to call in information,” said Bob Ley, covering the trial for ESPN. “One day I walked into one phone booth, Donald walked into an adjacent one. And he’s absolutely motherfucking someone on the other end of the line.”

On July 29, 1986, at exactly 3:55 p.m., Patrick Bowes, the court clerk, announced that a verdict was at hand. The jury members – tired, battered, and emotionally drained following five days (31 total hours) of deliberation – stepped forward into Courtroom 318. Behind the scenes, the six jurors had engaged in several heated battles. There was yelling, there was barking, there was crying. “It was very high pressure,” said Sibilia. “The court puts pressure on you because they want it all to come to an end. The two sides put pressure on you because they think they’re right. We all had our own notes that highlighted different things. It was never hostile, but it was challenging.” Three jurors favored the NFL, three favored the USFL. Patricia McCabe, a reference clerk for AT&T, suffered from heart murmurs. Miriam Sanchez, a high school English teacher, had excruciating headaches, as well as heart palpitations. “We were not getting any place,” Sanchez said. “We were screaming at each other, calling each other names. I was called frivolous. It’s the worst name I’ve ever been called.”

“At one point, Mrs Sanchez and [juror Bernez R Stephens, a West Indies–born nurse’s aide from the Bronx] were sitting on the sofa in the jury room, while the rest of us were sitting around the table,” Lilienfeld recalled. “We were having a strong debate about a particular point. I said, ‘Why don’t you two join us up here, you seem to be a minority.’ When I said that, one of them jumped up and said, ‘Yes, I am a minority!’ She had misconstrued my words. I meant nothing more than she was in the voting minority. It had nothing to do with race or ethnic background. But that was an example of the tension in that room.”

Although Rothman believed the case went well, he had been involved in past lawsuits that he also thought went well, only to suffer shocking defeat. “It wasn’t like we all knew what was about to be announced,” said Gary Myers, who covered the trial for the Dallas Morning News. “It was real suspense.”

So now, with the room packed and quiet, Judge Peter K Leisure asked McCabe if the jury was ready.

“Yes, your honor,” she said. “We are.”

She handed a piece of paper to the judge, who stared downward and cleared his throat. Everyone in the courtroom was standing. Myerson and his colleagues were positioned at a table near the front of the room. Rothman and Fiske, his co-counsel, were directly behind them at another table. “The first question,” Leisure said, “is, ‘Do you find that the NFL monopolized the business of professional football, yes or no?’

“The answer is, ‘Yes.’”

Myerson grinned like a child receiving a bag of M&Ms. This would be outstanding …

A series of 27 questions ensued, asking whether the different NFL clubs (excluding Davis’s Raiders) were beholden to the monopoly.

“Yes” was stated 27 times.

Myerson could barely contain his euphoria. Holy crap! Holy crap! Holy crap! Several reporters on hand darted from the room to call the news into their offices. This was earth-shaking. The National Football League was found guilty of violating an antitrust law. It had, according to the jury, monopolized professional football and willfully acquired its monopoly power. Yes, the jury would clear the NFL on the eight other charges. But for a brief spell, radio and television outlets reported that the United States Football League had … won!

What followed was … “Shocking,” said Argovitz. “Unfathomable,” said Myerson. “Emotional,” said Rozelle. “Confusing,” said Usher.

“Very, very strange,” said Larry Csonka, senior vice president of the Jacksonville Bulls. “I mean, really strange.”

“I [was in] graduate school at LaSalle,” said Chuck Fusina, Stars quarterback. “I was in a finance class and a guy comes up to me and said, ‘Hey, Chuck, you guys won the trial.’ I said, ‘Hey, that’s great.’ I ran up to the teacher and said, ‘Let me use the phone.’ I wanted to call my wife and tell her the good news. I called my wife and she was kind of down. I asked her, ‘What’s the matter?’ She said, ‘Did you hear the settlement?’”

“My wife and I were traveling to Notre Dame, and we heard the news on the radio,” said Jim Russ, the Tampa Bay Bandits’ trainer. “I looked at my wife, my wife looked at me. I said, ‘Holy cow, we won! We won!’ Then the radio faded out.”

“We were in a conference room when the verdict came down,” said Ginger Lacey, a public relations assistant with the Orlando Renegades. “Bugsy Engelberg was our general manager, and he got the call that we won. He just starts yelling and screaming. Bugsy was a big guy, and I thought he was about to have a heart attack right there.”

“I had a lot of friends in the NFL, and when they heard the first part of the verdict they were terrified,” said Carl Peterson, the Stars’ general manager. “It was clear to everyone listening that the NFL was in big trouble.”

Rozelle hadn’t made it to the courtroom in time for the verdict. He was stuck in traffic, listening to the trial on WCBS Radio, which was broadcasting live. His car was on 23rd Street, and the announcer said, “The National Football League has been found guilty.” A furious Rozelle ordered the driver to turn the car around and take him back to league offices.

And yet, in less than five minutes, USFL joy was replaced by USFL horror, and NFL horror was replaced by NFL joy. After confirming that, yes, the NFL had violated the law, the jury awarded damages of … $1.

Yes, one dollar.

“Actually, $3,” said David Cataneo, who covered the trial for the Boston Herald. “Damages in antitrust laws are tripled.”

Rozelle had the car turn around again and speed to the courthouse. Trump, already there, was sitting alongside John Mara, the son of New York Giants’ owner Wellington Mara. When the words “one dollar” emerged from Leisure’s lips, the younger Mara pulled out a $1 bill from his wallet and handed it to the Generals’ owner. Trump’s sunken expression was worth the price.

Thanks to Myerson and Trump and a strategy that made little to no sense, the USFL walked out of the courtroom with $3 to its name. “I covered that trial, and you had to hate Trump,” said Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, who hosted the Renegades’ postgame show. “I just never saw how anyone liked him.” Sibilia could not get past two things: (1) that the USFL’s dysfunction was the greatest culprit in the league’s failings, and (2) Trump was awful. “He was extremely arrogant and I thought that he was obviously trying to play the game. He wanted an NFL franchise … the USFL was a cheap way in.”

Even though the NFL was eventually forced to pay the USFL $5.5m in attorney fees, the money was far too little to keep the young entity afloat.

Thanks to the selfishness and narcissism of Donald Trump, the United States Football League was dead.