ABOUT 10 YEARS AGO, Gary Davidson sat down at a bar and noticed a giant man a few seats down staring at him.
Like … really staring at him. Dangerously staring at him. Davidson tried to nod his head in acknowledgment and leave it at that. But the guy wouldn’t look away. Davidson was in his late 70s back then, still with a poof of blondish hair and the looks of a man 20 years younger.
“Are you Gary Davidson?” the guy asked. Davidson smiled his movie-star smile at the guy, the one that has always gotten him out of trouble.
The man’s eyes never left him, though. Davidson was used to getting recognized — he’d been a rabble-rousing, trouble-making entrepreneur for decades. But this was getting unsettling, especially since this guy looked like he could have pretzeled Davidson up and stuffed him in a beer mug.
“Yes, I am,” Davidson said with some reluctance.
“You owe me f—ing money,” the guy said.
Davidson sipped his drink for a few seconds, wondering if maybe he was going to need to head for the exits.
The guy eventually gave him a pained smile, and the tension dissipated — a little bit, anyway. The guy had been a member of the World Football League, the first great rival of the post-merger NFL in the early 1970s. And he was one of many large men roaming Earth who probably feel like Gary Davidson cost them a few bucks.
Davidson paid for the guy’s tab, and they ended up reminiscing about the good old days of trying to take down the NFL. Many have tried in the past five decades, including the USFL reboot that kicks off this weekend. But the NFL has always retained its crown as the king of pro football, strengthening its hold every year for more than five decades now. Davidson doesn’t remember the guy’s name — just that he told Davidson he’d finished playing football and had become a successful real estate broker. “No hard feelings,” the guy said. “I’m glad we went for it. And besides, it gave me a bunch of good stories for the rest of my life.”
That’s one big thing about the WFL: It is a nonstop fountain of stories and a story unto itself. The story of the WFL is one that includes a mortally wounded NFL dynasty, Elvis Presley, Arnold Palmer, the guy who played Sloth in “The Goonies,” an enraged Canadian Parliament, sheriff raids on locker rooms, and a member of the witness protection program trying to buy a team. It’s a story of a remarkable dumpster fire that damn near kneecapped the NFL.
And in retrospect, the WFL might have had the only real chance at supplanting the king of the football mountain, launching a broadside to the modern NFL in its infancy that didn’t work out … but changed football forever.
IN THE LATE 1960s, Davidson was on a heater the likes of which we’ve never seen before or after. He was a lawyer and real estate developer in California, with the irrational confidence that sometimes accompanies being good-looking and wealthy, with lots of wealthy friends. He was the perfect front man for the wildest, most aggressive blitz attack on professional sports that this country has ever seen.
Before he went after the NFL, Davidson took aim at the NBA by forming the American Basketball Association in 1967. Then he launched the World Hockey Association in 1972. Both leagues had all sorts of innovative ideas — the ABA brought the 3-point line and the dunk contest to the mainstream, to name just a few.
But at the core of both business plans was one overarching strategy: Aggressively pay players and cater to them, then broadcast to the world how much the entrenched leagues used and abused their talent. He was 50 years ahead of his time on player empowerment.
Davidson pushed hard to blow up the leagues’ strict hold over when players could turn pro, creating a hardship rule that allowed college players to leave early for the ABA. That led Julius Erving and a stream of other young stars to leave college and join the ABA. The league ultimately folded, but four teams — the Nets, Nuggets, Pacers and Spurs — were…
Read More: The renegade who took on the NFL (and the NBA and the NHL)