Posted Thursday afternoon, December 13, 2018.
Trump may not be the worst person in Jeff Pearlman’s history of the of short-lived United States Football League, “Football for a Buck”, but he’s still far from being one of the best. One of the best is NFL Hall of Famer Steve Young who spent the first two years of his pro career as the quarterback for the Los Angeles Express---which was owned by one of the worst, Bill Oldenburg, who rivaled Trump in sheer despicability as a human being.
“Though Trump and Oldenburg had never met, commonalities existed. At 37 (Trump) and 45 (Oldenburg), they were two of the USFL’s younger owners, as well as the most bombastic and narcissistic. They both fancied blonde, large-breasted women, automobiles that cost more than most houses, and anyone (and everyone) to quiver in their presences. They reveled in being called “Mister,” and would happily tell you how much they spent on this, how much they spent on that. Trump’s family crest was stitched onto every piece of clothing he wore. Oldenburg’s initials were stitched onto the sleeve of every shirt he wore. For Trump and Oldenburg, linen was never merely linen. It was imported, 1,600-count Greek Utopian.”
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Oldenburg didn’t spend much time at team headquarters, but those who met him recalled a volatile, erratic, simple, and clinically insane man. He was a tiny figure to behold, five foot six in shoes, with thick brown eyebrows and a disconcerting, almost sinister smile. He referred to himself as Mr. Dynamite, and spoke in a booming voice that filled 100 auditoriums. To know Bill Oldenburg was to dislike Bill Oldenburg. “He was an absolute idiot,” said Jerry Sinclair, general manager of the Birmingham Stallions. “He didn’t have the slightest idea what he was doing.”
That detail from Jeff Pearlman’s “Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL” about Trump having the family crest stitched onto all his clothes both amuses me and makes me curious. I want to know whose family and where it came from.
Family crests feature in coats of arms but they aren’t by themselves like coats of arms. You don’t have to apply for one. You don’t need to have them approved by the office of heraldry.. They’re signifiers. Pretensions to membership in an aristocracy. “I belong to a distinguished family” is the message stitched in gold thread. The implication is that you come from a long line of distinguished ancestors. This is a hard case for Trump to make. His paternal grandfather was a barber’s apprentice who immigrated from Bavaria when he was sixteen, partly to avoid doing his mandatory military service--- probably had bone spurs--and made his fortune here as a brothel-owner. Trump’s mother was a poor immigrant from a poor part of Scotland. (Can you say “shithole country”?) Possibly Trump’s grandfather adopted it---I’m getting a kick out of imagining his crest---possibly Trump’s father, but it’s curious that Trump would wear it. It’s off-brand. Contradicts the official story. Trump has always sold himself as self-made men. Self-made men don’t inherit family crests.
“I walked barefoot and in rags to Manhattan from a hardscrabble precinct in Queens with only a modest stake from my dad that included a little money and a handful of magic beans. But through my own hard work with only my stable business genius to guide me, here I am, the billionaire you see today. By the way, like my suit? Notice the family crest? That’s real gold thread, you know.”
I’m guessing Trump himself had the crest designed to give himself his own savvy rich guy seal of approval. It’s part of the packaging, a piece of advertising that says “I made lots of dough for myself, and now I want to make lots of dough for you!” That’s been his sales pitch from the beginning. That’s been his chief product---he sells himself as the guy who will make you rich. When you think about it, that’s what Make America Great Again means to a lot of his voters, particularly the would-be multimillionaires, the small business owners and small-time and small town and small city wheeler-dealers, for whom Trump is a role-model, ideal, and totem and for whom “The Art of the Deal” is both a how-to manual and holy writ.
But it’s not Trump I’m interested in here. It’s Bill Oldenburg, the owner of the Los Angeles Express at the time Trump bought the New Jersey Generals in 1984.
When I first wrote about “Football for a Buck” back in October in a post I called “Donald Trump is not the worst person in this book,” some of my readers and Twitter followers scoffed.
How could Trump not be the worst person in the book? He’s history’s greatest monster!
Well, yeah. Now.
But Pearlman’s story is limited to the USFL’s short time in the spring sun from 1983 to 1985 and back then Donald Trump was just getting his criminal career started. He was just one of the many Reagan-era greedheads on the make, taking advantage of morning in America to connive, cheat, hustle, swindle and steal their way to fame and fortune while the honest competition was still rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Trump plays an almost emblematic role in “Football for a Buck”. He’s the era of “I Got Mine, You Get Yours” and “He Who Dies With the Most Toys Win” personified slithering into what could have been a successful and fun for all concerned enterprise and poisoning and corrupting and ultimately crippling it with its ethos of selfishness and greed, the way it did for most every other aspect of American life over which Ronald Reagan chuckled, twinkled, and smiled.
Besides which, the world has always been well-stocked with the despicable and deplorable of modest means and ambition who are able to commit as much evil in their own humble ways as the rich and powerful. The cast of characters of “Football for a Buck” includes many low-level villains and scoundrels who at the time rivaled Trump in ruthless pursuit of their own advantage and satisfaction of their egos, vanity, appetites, and desires, as well as reckless and destructive and self-destructive wheeler-dealers on Trump’s level with money---not necessarily their own or even actual---to throw around in the cause of making themselves even more money at somebody else’s expense. The relatively young and unknown Donald Trump of the book appears in the company of plenty of other equally morally and ethically-challenged hustlers, con artists, sharpers, and thieves.
And one of them is Bill Oldenburg.
Oldenburg as portrayed in “Football for a Buck” is greedier, nastier, more conniving and ruthless than Trump, and at least as vain and prone to self-aggrandizement---
His firm Investment Mortgage International was based on the top floors of San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid building, and the chairman had his own penthouse suite. When the office opened in November 1983, Oldenburg gave a welcoming speech, as, behind him, mist rose from blocks of dry ice. The walls were painted in gold, a gong sounded with every $1 million transaction, the doors and windows were voice-operated. “You would say, ‘Wall, open,’ and the damn wall would open,” said Steve Ehrhart. “It was awful impressive. You’d be staring at the wall, something would rotate and it’d suddenly become a full bar.” A scrolling digital ticker tape, a la New York City’s Times Square, greeted visitors in the lobby. There was a wall of clocks that doubled as a crystal sculpture, as well as a large Jacuzzi. A press release described the facility as “the most spectacular office space ever seen in San Francisco (or perhaps anywhere in the world).
“It was so opulent,” said Leigh Steinberg, the agent. "Glitter everywhere, trying to show his importance.”
---he was a mean and violent drunk---
Oldenburg could not believe [the team wasn’t drawing huge crowds]. He [had] purchased the Express with the understanding the franchise would own Los Angeles. A week before the opening of the 1984 season, Oldenburg hosted a dinner for team management at the Bistro restaurant in Beverly Hills. Midway through a seemingly joyful meal, he barrelled toward one his marketing executives, jabbed a finger in the man’s face, and screamed, “Are we going to get 100,000 people for the first game? Are we?”
“Um, no,” the employee replied. An inebriated Oldenburg began kicking and throwing chairs, then he fired his entire marketing staff and ejected them from the restaurant. A few weeks later, Oldenburg threw a plate of spaghetti at John Hadel, the head coach. During a game against the [Denver] Gold, Oldenburg grabbed Dick Daniels, the Express personnel director, shoved him in the chest, and screamed, “It isn’t the fucking young players! This is shit coaching!”
---and he was crazier or at least more publicly and demonstrably and unrestrainedly so---
To the other owners, Oldenburg remained a mystery until, on the night of January 17, 1984, he arrived in New Orleans for a USFL meeting. It was the first time many came face-to-face with Mr. Dynamite, and if there were expectations of a carnival, no one was disappointed. Joe Canizaro, owner of the New Orleans Breakers, hosted a dinner for his peers, and Oldenburg was the only one who entered with an entourage (which included Wayne Newton, the famous Las Vegas performer). As the entrees arrived and the alcohol flowed, Oldenburg went from agreeable to obnoxious to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest psychotic. At one point he stood up, ripped open his silk button-down dress shirt, pulled down his pants, and, pointing to Newton, promised his team would open to a pregame concert, a win, and a sellout crowd. He then bellowed...that the Express would “beat the shit” out of everyone in the USFL. “I believe that you do not save souls in an empty church!” he screamed. “If you want to boogie-woogie with the king of rock and roll, you better get some dancers!”...
“What can I say,” said Fred Bullard, the Jacksonville Bulls’ owner. “He was unstable.”
But he was a more responsible and savvier owner. Like Trump, he didn’t know much about football, as a game or a business, but he understood that you couldn’t own a winning team without someone running things who did know the game and the business and knew them both better than everyone else, and that’s what he wanted: a winning team. Trump wanted his team to win to have something to boast about. Oldenburg wanted a team that would do his boasting for him. Trump looked to fill his roster with stars. Oldenburg hired the formidable Don Klosterman, a former Los Angeles Ram executive who’d built the 1979 Rams into a Super Bowl contender as the Express’ general manager and left it to Klosterman to fill the roster with star players. One of Klosterman’s first moves was to assemble an outstanding (and expensive) offensive line on the well-proven theory that it didn’t matter how great a running back you had (Trump’s Generals had Herschel Walker.) if he couldn’t get past the line of scrimmage, and it didn’t matter how great an arm your quarterback had (The Express would soon sign future NFL Hall of Famer Steve Young) if he didn’t have time to find an open receiver and throw.
Oldenburg, however, was, at the time, the bigger fraud---
Well before the rest of the USFL knew Bill Oldenburg was a con man, the FBI knew (or strongly suspected) Bill Oldenburg was a con man. That April it began investigating an Investment Mortgage International Utah land deal, then started looking into Oldenburg’s full business portfolio. By June his image graced the front page of the Wall Street Journal, beneath the headline LOAN BANKER IS SAID TO LURE WEAK S&L’S INTO MANY SHAKY LAND DEALS. According to the piece, Oldenburg bought a piece of property for $800,000 and sold it to a savings and loan under his control for $55 million. Wrote G. Christian Hill and Victor F. Zonana: “IMI apparently is, indeed, kind of magical. Its aura of success is mostly an illusion spun out by Mr. Oldenburg, according to regulators, former employees, developers and lenders across the country, and court documents.” Oldenburg’s biography as a business genius was a fiction. He was “nearly broke” in 1970 and settled a civil suit in 1974. He was named in 17 fraud lawsuits. One S&L regulator interviewed for the piece said many of Oldenburg’s successes were “largely a figment of his imagination.”
Here was a man who shopped for designer clothing on Rodeo Drive, who travelled via a Rolls-Royce and chartered jets, who dropped thousands upon thousands on single meals---and he had no money. “There have always been people who thought they could make 2 plus 2 equal 5,” explained John French, head of mortgage banking for Grubb and Ellis, a San Francisco-based firm. “Mr. Oldenburg is trying to make 2 plus 2 equal 50.”
As miserable a specimen as he appears, Oldenburg isn't the worst person in “Football for a Buck”. That's because he's in the company of so many people behaving badly in so many different ways.
Oldenburg only threw a plate of spaghetti at the Express’ head coach John Hadl. A defensive lineman named Greg Fields Hadl cut from the team punched him in the face, then after he’d been thrown from the Express’ offices, threatened to come back and kill Hadl and, for good measure “beat down” Keith Gilbertson, the defensive line coach. It’s not certain Fields was angry and crazy enough to follow through if he got the chance, but later in the day, when instead of having cooled down, he’d grown even angrier, he repeated the threat by phone with the added detail that he had .357 Magnum loaded with bullets with Hadl’s name on them. At some point in the tension-filled days that followed he called the security specialist the Express hired to keep a watch out for Fields to tell him he had a rifle and he would use it to take out the security expert and anyone on the practice field he set his sight on. What snapped him out of his rage was being signed as a free agent by the San Antonio Gunslingers who were so desperate for decent players they were willing to take a chance on this “pass-rushing whack job with a gun fetish.”
Even so, Daniels is not the craziest, most violent, and substance-abusing player in the book. And those other crazy, violent, and drug and alcohol-fueled players are monks and ascetics compared to Houston Gamblers quarterback Jim Kelly---Yep. That Jim Kelly.---who wasn’t violent or crazy but led the league, and most of the sports world, in ego, arrogance, self-importance, sense of entitlement, and self-indulgence. But he wasn’t the worst person on the team or in the organization. The Gamblers’ offensive line coach Bob Young bullied players into taking steroids. He held the offensive unit’s weekly meetings at a strip club and everyone was expected to attend, even the married guys. Players who missed a meeting were fined $200.
Not every person in the book is a villain. There aren’t any outright heroes but there are many decent and well-behaved people who are seen trying to do the honest and responsible things required of them as businessmen, executives, coaches, players, and human beings, while being thwarted and compromised and even somewhat corrupted by the parade of fools and carnival of thieves they found themselves, despite best intentions and better judgment, having to deal with on their level. One of the more decent was Steve Young.
Young is the closest “Football for a Buck” has for a hero. If he wasn’t a saint, he was one of life’s innocents, the antithesis to Kelly, modest, unassuming, self-sacrificing, self-deprecating, and self-controlled. The Express signed him out of Brigham Young University where he was majoring in international relations for $40 million and touted him as the star player who would do for the USFL what Joe Namath had done for the AFL twenty years before---make the league competitive with the NFL. All that money and attention did the opposite of turning his head. It plunged him into an existential panic---
He felt like vomiting. The money, the fame, the attention, the Broadway Joe comparisons---none of it was him. Young was the guy who kept a couple of dollars folded up in the pocket of is ripped blue jeans. He drove a 19-year-old Oldsmobile Dynamic (police in Provo, Utah, once tried to tow the vehicle because they presumed it had been abandoned), and if the muffler dragged, hey, the muffler dragged. He had yet to own a credit card, and still wasn’t a college graduate.
Just before the press conference at which he was to be introduced to the media, he told his agent he wanted to give up football, go to law school, get married, and lead a “normal” life. At the press conference----
Young was peppered with questions about money, and money, and money. No one seemed interested in his throwing motion, his footwork, his plans for USFL success. No, the dollars were the story. Young was horrified. When asked what he planned on doing with his new riches. He swallowed hard, rubbed his palms against his pants, and said, “I hope to fix up my car and take my girlfriend out to dinner for the first time in four years…”
There were chuckles. Not many, but a few.
“Look,” he added, “the Express is a topnotch operation, and I felt like I would be well-coached. A quarterback couldn’t ask for a better offense than this one.”
No one bought it. This was about the money…
Except that it wasn’t. Not entirely. It was about football. The money more or less appeared in escalating increments during contract negotiations between Young’s agent and Klosterman and Oldenburg with little input from Young, who was in another room studying for his finals. Young, through his agent, had no intention of selling himself cheap. Self-effacing as he was in temperament, he didn’t under-appreciate his own talent. The reason he was going with the USFL instead of the NFL is that he knew he would be the Number 1 NFL draft pick and that pick belonged to the Cincinnati Bengals and Young did not want to play in Cincinnati---
The team was notoriously cheap, the weather was terrible, and the incumbent quarterback, Ken Anderson, was a four-time Pro Bowler.
---Young didn’t want to begin his pro career standing on the sidelines in the cold, backing up Anderson, for an organization that wouldn’t spend the money not just that he deserved but on building and maintaining a great team.
The more Young thought about it, the more the Los Angeles Express made perfect sense. He would play in warm weather for two offensive masterminds on a well-stocked team in a city he enjoyed. He could start immediately and, worst-case scenario, later join the NFL as a free agent, thereby picking his team.
Which isn't exactly how it happened that Young wound up with the 49ers, but however it happened, it happened, to the city of San Francisco’s eternal gratitude.
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“Football for a Buck” by Jeff Pearlman is available in hardcover and for kindle at Amazon and as an audiobook from Audible.
I recall the USFL as a carny show; loud, gaudy, entertaining, tawdry, and ultimately ridiculous, and I wouldn't know Oldenburg if he bit me on the backside while humming "God Bless America". Trump, that real-estate buffoon, fit right in.
Posted by: FDChief | Monday, December 17, 2018 at 10:17 PM
"to the city of San Francisco’s eternal gratitude."
But not to Joe Montana's.
Posted by: Linkmeister | Thursday, December 20, 2018 at 02:35 AM