The Federals’ ownership group consisted of attorney Berl Bernhard and seven other general partners, including David Pensky and Rick Hindin, founders of the Britches of Georgetowne clothing store. Training camp began in Jacksonville, Fla., two days after John Riggins led the Redskins to a win over the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl XVII.

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“The Redskins give us a goal to shoot for in a championship city,” Federals Coach Ray Jauch, who spent the previous 13 years in the Canadian Football League, told The Washington Post. “Their success will help us, if anything.”

The Federals bumbled their way through their first scrimmage against the Steve Spurrier-coached Tampa Bay Bandits. After Washington closed camp with a better performance against the Birmingham Stallions, excitement began to build for the regular season opener and Allen’s return.

“Everything that we’ve been working for has been leading to a confrontation with George Allen,” Federals team president James Gould told The Post after it was announced that Washington would open against the Blitz. “George Allen reminds me of the Howard Cosell theory: you either love him or hate him, but you respect him and 90 percent of the people recognize him.”

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Allen won 67 games over seven years in Washington and led the Redskins to their first Super Bowl in January 1973. He had been out of coaching since the Los Angeles Rams fired him during the 1978 preseason, eight months after the Redskins replaced him with Jack Pardee. (Zorn won 12 games in two years before being replaced by Mike Shanahan after the 2009 season.)

On March 6, 1983, 38,010 fans showed up on a drizzly, cold Sunday to witness the USFL’s birth and Allen’s first game at RFK since Dec. 17, 1977.

“I’ll be honest with you,” ABC’s Jim Lampley said at the start of the 3 p.m. broadcast. “I will wait to see how many of you are that anxious to see football in spring, but everything I’ve seen and heard in the last three weeks leads me to believe that this experiment — the United States Football League — has a great chance at flying. Clearly, in my view, there are enough pro football players to go around for this league to field a credible product, and clearly there are enough big-name football coaches, some of them with long-standing identities in American football, who are willing to commit themselves to this product. The rest is up to you.”

Lampley’s broadcast partner was former Indiana coach Lee Corso, who said of the 45-year-old Jauch, “He looks a lot older than he is, but that’s because he’s been a head coach for a long time.”

David Remnick, who chronicled the Federals’ inaugural season as a reporter for The Post 15 years before he became editor of the New Yorker, wrote on the eve of the season opener: “George Allen is second only to Florida congressman Claude Pepper in his regard for the rights of the aged. In a new league stocked with scores of rookies, Allen made sure to assemble a Chicago Blitz team that is about as over-the-hill as any you are apt to find in the U.S. Football League.”

The Blitz’s starting quarterback was 36-year-old Greg Landry, who had played 14 seasons in the NFL for the Detroit Lions and Baltimore Colts. He didn’t look past his prime against Washington.

“I don’t know when I’ve seen a half more dominated by one team,” Lampley said after the Blitz outgained the Federals 271-27 and built a 21-0 lead after two quarters.

Chicago rookie wide receiver Trumaine Johnson of Grambling caught 11 passes for 158 yards and a touchdown in the Blitz’s 28-7 win. Washington starting quarterback Kim McQuilken, a former backup for the Redskins, completed 2 of 7 passes and fumbled twice before he was replaced by Mike Hohensee, while Federals rookie running back Craig James was limited to 34 yards on 14 carries. Washington scored its only touchdown with eight seconds left on a touchdown pass to Walker Lee after Blitz cornerback Virgil Livers lost his footing on the slick field.

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“I love a team that doesn’t quit,” Corso said after Washington’s ensuing onside kick attempt was recovered by Chicago.

After the game, Allen said: “Coming back here was a traumatic thing for me. Winning, whether it’s in the NFL or the United States Football League or playing tiddlywinks, is it. I’ve said it before: When you win you are reborn, and when you lose you die a little.”

In the victorious visitors’ locker room, Blitz return man Eddie Brown, who played for Allen’s Redskins from 1975 to 1977, led the cheers: “Hoo-ray for George, Hoo-ray for George, for he’s a horse’s ass.”

“It made him the happiest man in the world,” said Brown, who presented Allen a game ball. “A storybook tale — to take a bunch of rejects, himself included, and prove to people we’re a good football team and he’s a good football coach. Everybody wrote him off, blackballed him, whatever. But here he is back and winning again.”

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The Federals lost their next game, 20-3, on the road against the Los Angeles Express. Only 11,423 fans braved freezing conditions to attend Washington’s next home game, an overtime win against the Michigan Panthers on March 27. The Federals finished their first season 4-14, while Allen’s Blitz went 12-6 and lost to Philadelphia in the divisional playoffs.

The expansion Jacksonville Bulls blew out the Federals, 53-14, in the 1984 season opener, leading to Jauch’s ouster and Bernhard to remark that the team played like “untrained gerbils.” Bernhard would sell the Federals to Florida hospital magnate Donald Dizney later that year. The franchise relocated to Orlando and rebranded as the Renegades in 1985 after compiling a 7-29 record over two seasons in D.C.

“It’s a tough, tough town because it’s been spoiled by winning teams,” Bernhard told The Post in May 1984. “We were starting at the height of the Redskins’ success. Then you’ve got Georgetown and Maryland and the Caps and Bullets in the playoffs. If you don’t win, they drop you, just like they drop politicians who don’t win. To make a new idea work at a new time of year here, you probably couldn’t even be marginally successful. They aren’t going to spend their money unless you are a success."