Background As the year 1984 began, 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 the 1970'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 suffered from a constant turnover in teams, with multiple clubs folding or relocating after every season. The ASL's push for national relevance included hiring Basketball Hall of Famer
Bob Cousy as commissioner in 1974 and opening a headquarters in Manhattan as they expanded beyond their traditional base in the northeastern states and eventually became a coast-to-coast league. This boom turned out to be short-lived as the ASL teams operated at a smaller scale than their NASL counterparts, and travel costs for the far-flung league overstretched club budgets. The last of the west coast clubs folded in 1980, and the league completed its
1983 season with just six teams, all of whom were on shaky financial footing. When the ASL owners came together the following January in Atlanta for their annual meetings, 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 franchises plus the
Rochester Flash, who 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 adding as many as four new franchises in the coming season. However, a dispute arose over plans to have one of them based in
Fort Lauderdale. The city had just just seen the NASL's
Strikers move to Minnesota and was a choice location with a community of soccer fans already in place. But when the expansion committee, chaired by
Jacksonville Tea Men owner Ingo Krieg, granted a franchise to a group led by retired NASL all-star
Ronnie Sharp, the owner of dormant teams in New York and Miami claimed that he had the right to lead the Fort Lauderdale expansion effort instead, citing league by-laws that allowed inactive owners like him to retain territorial control and keep full voting privileges. By this point, the ASL had eleven inactive owners, meaning that league decisions were being voted on by a group comprised mostly of members that had no skin in the game anymore. The Fort Lauderdale dispute prompted Krieg and
Dallas Americans owner Bill Spears to conclude that the league was in a hopeless situation. Despite the fact that they both had been ASL members for only one season, they agreed that they had seen enough. 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 that November after learning that the team was still saddled with significant debt, revived the operation as a new USL franchise so that they could start out with a clean financial slate. 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. and the Buffalo Storm, who were unable to host night games during the summer's hottest months due to their home field having no lights, averaged less than 1,000 fans per game at their home fixtures. In the very tightly contested best-of-three championship series, Fort Lauderdale prevailed over Houston two games to one with both the first and third games being settled by a tiebreaker shootout. 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. Once the league line up had been finalized, they re-organized the schedule to be divided into two parts (with slim hopes that they may manage to attract some more members before the second part was to begin). They opened play with a round-robin 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. 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 Jimbo Elrod's group withdrew their rescue 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 ==