# United Soccer League (1984–85)

The United Soccer League was a professional soccer league in the United States in 1984 and 1985.

## History
### Background

By the end of 1983, professional outdoor soccer in the United States was crumbling. Both the higher-level North American Soccer League and de facto second division American Soccer League had undergone a period of ambitious growth in the1970's, but the majority of teams at both levels had yet to figure out how to translate the attention generated by high-profile players such as Pelé and the recent surge in American youth participation in soccer into stability or profitability for the professional game. Both leagues had been marked by a constant turnover in teams, with multiple clubs folding or relocating after every season. In the ASL, the expansion from the league's long-time base in the northeastern states into the midwest and west coast in the '70s and southern states in the early '80s overstretched the travel budgets of its member clubs, who were operating at a smaller scale than their counterparts in the NASL. The league completed its 1983 season with just six teams, most of whom were on shaky financial footing.
When the ASL owners came together in Atlanta for their annual meetings in January 1984, the Pennsylvania Stoners and Oklahoma City Slickers announced plans to go dormant, and Stoners president William Burfeind also resigned as league president. This left only four active teams plus the Rochester Flash, who had planned to re-activate after sitting out in 1983. In an effort to keep the league from shrinking to the point of collapse, they were considering allowing as many as four new teams to join the league in the coming season. However, a dispute arose when the expansion committee, chaired by Jacksonville Tea Men owner Ingo Krieg, granted a franchise to a group in Fort Lauderdale (which had just just seen the NASL's Strikers move to Minnesota) led by former Striker Ronnie Sharp. League by-laws allowed the owners of dormant franchises to retain voting privileges and territorial control, and the owner of the dormant Miami Americans wanted to control a Fort Lauderdale expansion team. This led Krieg and Bill Spears, the owner of the Dallas Americans, to conclude that the ASL, which at this point had significantly more dormant owners than active ones, was in a hopeless situation. They spent the weekend discussing the idea of breaking away to start a new league that would be better organized and more sustainable than the ASL had proven to be.
Their vision was a league that would avoid the overspending and over-expansion that had plagued both the NASL and ASL and would be more successful at building a grass roots connection between its member clubs and local supporters. Reasonable budgets, year round operation with an indoor season in the winter months, rosters featuring mostly American players to promote fan connection to home-grown talent, and measured expansion were a few of the cornerstones on which this new organization was to be structured. Almost immediately, the Detroit Express and Sharp's Fort Lauderdale group elected to join Jacksonville and Dallas in the new circuit, to be called the United Soccer League, and Dr. Burfeind agreed to be their commissioner (though he chose not to have the Stoners franchise come to the USL with him). In Oklahoma City, David Fraser, who had stepped in midseason to bail the Slickers out of a financial crisis in 1983 but then released his controlling interest following the season after learning that the team was still saddled with significant debt, revived most of the operation as a new franchise (on paper) in order to join the league with a clean slate financially. Similarly, staff and players from the Carolina Lightnin' were not out of a job for long following owner Bob Benson's decision to shutter the ASL team in February. An ownership group led by Felix Sabates hired a number of them when they were granted a Charlotte USL franchise in April. Initial excitement for the new league was strong enough that two NASL teams, the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Tulsa Roughnecks, were reportedly willing to consider the USL's overtures about moving over in 1985. By late March, Rochester chose to follow the crowd, and the ASL quietly ended operations.

### Debut season (1984)

By the time the dust settled, Detroit elected not to field a team due to the new league not being sanctioned by the USSF. This left the USL with three direct transfers from the ASL (the Jacksonville Tea Men, Dallas Americans and Rochester Flash), two teams with new or modified ownership and new names but many of the same staff and players as their recently folded ASL predecessors (the Charlotte Gold and Oklahoma City Stampede), and four new teams (the Buffalo Storm, Fort Lauderdale Sun, Houston Dynamos, and New York Nationals). The clubs were organized into three regional divisions: Northern (Buffalo, Rochester, New York), Southern (Charlotte, Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale) and Southwest (Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston). In keeping with the league's commitment to modest budgets, a salary cap was put in place, and the schedule had teams playing an imbalanced 24-game slate with 12 games against the other two members of their regional divisions (allowing the road team to travel by bus) and 12 games against the six teams in the other two divisions. They also arranged the schedule to have teams play all of the road matches against the members of another division in one trip so that there were only two stretches just short of a week each during a season that any club might need to travel by plane and stay in hotels between games.
The 1984 season got underway on May 12 and lasted until September 1. For a minor league that had been organized in just five months and had four members that were brand new, this debut season was relatively stable and successful. Several of the teams managed to sign players with experience in the NASL and/or MISL, elevating the quality of play, and a league-wide parity (even the top two teams only managed 15–9 records) produced largely engaging and competitive games. Some troubling signs emerged out of the Northern Division, where all three teams finished below .500. The New York Nationals started 5–0 but then collapsed to a 10–14 record after money troubles led the head coach and several key players to leave the team a month into the season, and the Buffalo Storm, whose home field had no lights, routinely attracted small crowds and declined the chance to host a playoff game. But even with these challenges, all nine teams completed their full schedules. Oklahoma City, Fort Lauderdale and Buffalo qualified for the playoffs as division winners, and Houston and Dallas made the field as wild card teams. The Sun, whose roster featured former NASL Fort Lauderdale Strikers players Teófilo Cubillas, Keith Weller, Jim Tietjens, and Ernst Jean-Baptiste, won the league title in a three-game series against the Houston Dynamos.

### Contraction and collapse (1985)

Though the USL survived its first season seemingly intact, the league found itself in crisis heading into the winter of 1984/85. Revenues were not keeping up with expenses despite the league's measures to keep travel and salary costs manageable. The owners were passionate about building up the sport, but almost none of them had the deep pockets and/or patience necessary to persevere through unprofitable early years while they gradually built up a strong network of sponsors, investors and fans. The indoor season planned at the league's founding never materialized, and in February, most teams failed to post a performance bond to demonstrate their readiness for another season. The NASL likewise found itself with only a handful of teams willing to commit to another outdoor campaign, and there were discussions about merging the leagues to stave off the demise of both. The sides failed to come to an agreement, though, and USL commissioner Burfeind announced that there would be no merger on March 5. By the end of the month, the NASL had abandoned plans for a 1985 season, and Houston had left the USL to be independent while five other clubs (New York, Rochester, Buffalo, Charlotte and Jacksonville) had gone dormant or folded. Only Dallas, Fort Lauderdale (who were renamed South Florida Sun), and the Tulsa Tornado's (who had re-located in December from Oklahoma City and had also been renamed) chose to return. The El Paso/Juarez Gamecocks were added as an expansion team to bring USL membership to a paltry four teams for the 1985 season.
Once the league line up had been finalized, they re-organized the schedule to be divided into two halves (with slim hopes that they may manage to attract some more members before the second half was to begin). They opened play with a round-robin style tournament for the "USL Cup" with each team playing the other three once at home and once on the road. Signs of trouble were all around. Commissioner Burfeind resigned just as USL Cup play got underway. The Dallas Americans were forced to offer their players stock options to cover unpaid salaries. Tulsa fell behind on stadium rent and payroll, and the unpaid players and coaches refused to suit up for a home exhibition game on June 6 or travel to Dallas on June 8 for a Cup game. When a new investor group led by former University of Oklahoma and professional football player Jimbo Elrod made an offer to become majority owners of the Tulsa franchise and take some other steps to help the league avoid collapse, the Tornado's did manage to piece together a roster and travel to Fort Lauderdale to play the final match of the USL Cup round on June 15. Despite having payroll issues of their own, the South Florida Sun defeated Tulsa 1-0 to clinch the best record and claim the cup. As a harbinger of things to come, there was no physical trophy on hand to present to the winners, causing Sun player-coach, Keith Weller, to quip, "There ain't no cup." No new teams had joined the league by June 22, when the 12-game regular season was scheduled to begin. The Tornado's/Gamecocks match scheduled for that night was cancelled because the Tornado's stadium rent and payroll issues remained unresolved. This may have been just as well, as the Gamecocks owner had already quietly ended his relationship with the league, paid bills and salaries through the end of the month, and released the players as of then. The Sun beat Dallas 3–1 at Lockhart Stadium on the same day in what would turn out to be the USL's final match. A few days later, creditors locked league officials out of their offices. Play was suspended league-wide on June 25, and a few days later, the Oklahoma-based investors who had been exploring ways to rescue the league withdrew their offer, leaving no way for the USL to carry on.
The demise of the USL and NASL (which would never realize its stated goal of relaunching in 1986) meant that for the first time in over fifty years there was no professional outdoor soccer league in the U.S. This was a temporary void, however, as the Western Soccer Alliance and third incarnation of the American Soccer League would form and grow in the latter half of the 1980s, eventually to merge into the American Professional Soccer League, precursor to the USL First Division.

## Champions

| Year | Champion | Runner-up | League Cup |
| 1984 | Fort Lauderdale Sun | Houston Dynamos | Not held |
| 1985 | Season canceled | Season canceled | South Florida Sun |

## Teams

* Buffalo Storm (1984)
* Charlotte Gold (1984)
* Dallas Americans (1984–85)
* El Paso/Juarez Gamecocks (1985)
* Fort Lauderdale Sun (1984) → South Florida Sun (1985)
* Houston Dynamos (1984)
* Jacksonville Tea Men (1984)
* New York Nationals (1984)
* Oklahoma City Stampede (1984)
* Rochester Flash (1984)
* Tulsa Tornado's (1985)