USA Football League
Article from 6-9-2001

USA Sports Began As The USAFL In 1997
June 9 - Philadelphia: The USAFL is a league with nearly five years of history with humble beginnings. The USA Sports Daily is pleased to present this chronological history of the league. For the GMs who have been with the league before, this will be a very sentimental trip.

Most of this article was written two years ago. I made additions to bring it up to date.

The USA Football League officially began as a 12 team league during a late night phone call sometime around April 1997, between Andrew Lewis and Jim Maurer.

A little background info for you :
I, Andrew, am married to Jim's sister. Jim couldn't be happier having an avid PC Sports simmer as a brother-in-law. Jim and I have been playing sports simulations with each other since the old 8088 game called XOR NFL Challenge. We also played a a lot with ActionPC Football and Strategic Gaming's Nothing But Net, a basketball career simulation.

Jim discovered the first advertisement for Sierra's Front Page Sports Football sometime during the summer of 1992 and the two of us thought we had died and gone to heaven. I advanced ordered my copy and Jim bought his the day it came out. I had my copy two days before him, and he wouldn't let me off the phone while I was playing it!

Jim and I realized within a week that the game did not do everything we were wanting a sports simulation to do. We really wanted to play a game that brought into play all the realistic characteristics of being a GM, Coach, or Player in a sport. Any sport is not just about what is happening in the field of play, it is about contract negotiations, salary cap issues, press releases, players having run-ins with the law, coaches fighting with their players and then trading them, GMs wheeling and dealing picks and players, the behind the scenes stresses of a draft day war room, team revenues, stadium expansion and upkeep and building costs, the politics of moving franchises from one city to another, etc.... I could go on and on. The point being, we wanted a realistic simulation of everything that happens when you run a team in a league in real life.

After creating and playing countless FBPRO leagues, we finally came up with a league formula that satisfied almost, and I mean almost, everyone of our desires for the perfect league simulation.

That night in April 1997, we finalized our ideas for free agency and salary cap issues. Within a few hours I had the 1997 USA Football League ready to get it's original Dispersal Draft underway. We decided to begin our league by dumping all the players into a common pool.

For the first three seasons, it was just Jim and I playing. Jim would come over to the house, I'd set-up the PC on our dining room table, we'd order out for pizza, and we'd settle in for a long night of drafting, running camp, then simming the season. Yup - all in one night.

By the 2000 off-season, we had recruited two friends to join our late night parties. Nate Rupple, my nephew, and Dave Fuguet, a friend of mine and Jim's, joined up. Man, was that first draft with them a blast.

A little background on Nate :
In another coaching league that Jim and I ran, Nate came over to watch the opening dispersal draft. Nate was only nine years old, so we let him run the Shaun Sullivan Draft Tool (for you newbies to FBPRO, in the early days Shaun Sullivan was the ONLY 3rd party utility writer for FBPRO and it was the greatness of his utilities that made Sierra encrypt their files). Anyway, when we had finally got down to the final couple round of a 53 round draft, when the application crashed without saving, and the entire 5+ hours of drafting was lost. It wasn't Nate's fault, but since he was sitting at the CPU when it happened, we teased him about it  forever. To this day I am a little jumpy whenever he sits at my PC. UPDATE: In Nascar4, there is a default fictional driver with the name Sean Sullivan. Sierra has a sense of humor after all.

Well the 2000 season was a blast, with 4 humans competing in a 12 team league. I started using a webpage as an interface for our league. So everyone could sit and browse the stats at their convenience.

We continued along, getting together for pizza drafts and sims. Fuguet left after two seasons. Then as the summer of 97 came upon us, we sort of slowed down. We really didn't have a schedule we followed. We just got together whenever it was most convenient for all of us. We simmed up through the 2003 season, and we then hit a wall. Everything was working fine, but the competition wasn't much fun.

By the time late August came around, I decided I would try and publish our league on the Internet and see what kind of response I could get. I had never seen a league like ours on the net and I was highly doubtful about the kind of attraction I would get.

I published our URL on FBPRO Data Central, FICA, A-1 Simulations, and the now defunct FBPRO Network. Within 24 hours, I got my first response.

At 8:15PM EDT, on September 15th, 1997, an email from Garritt Grandberg arrived in my InBox. Garritt was so excited to have finally find a league that did not require designing plays and coaching games as he had never been in a league before. Garritt is a computer programmer and was looking for something to fill his spare time. The USAFL was a perfect opportunity for him. Which is why he has been here ever since.

Three days later, on the 18th, our website won it's first award. GSN gave us a 4-Star rating for our website design. I was very proud, as my HTML was really starting to come along.

At 1:38AM, on September 21st, 1997, Tim Arkwright's email arrived. Tim was pumped to join. Tim wanted to see if he had what it took to start from the bottom and build a dynasty like the NFL's Jimmy Johnson.

Fourteen days after Arkwright joined up, at 8:43PM EDT, on October 5th, 1997, the day before the 2004 College Draft, Mike Manuel asked to join. Manuel to was very excited about playing in a GM Only league as he had never played in any leagues on the Internet and thought the coaching leagues to be to labor intensive.

On Monday, October 5th, 1997, the 2004 Draft Night was held online. The first official online meeting of the USA Football League. At that time, we used Microsoft's NetMeeting 1.0 as the software platform for our meetings. It was very buggy and we endured several crashes. Garritt even got spammed with a not-too pleasant streaming video image.

That first draft took a few hours to complete and we didn't get done until way past midnight. I realized I had a lot to learn to make this league run more efficiently. But even so, it was a blast for the six of us, Me, Jim, Nate, Garritt, Tim, and Mike.

That first season on the net was incredible. Sure the new guys teams stunk, but what was fun, was teaching them how to play the game. Showing them how to scout rookies, what ratings were important for each position, and good ideas about depth charting. Jim and I both are teachers. Jim is a History teacher and I taught classical piano for close to 10 years. So both of us enjoy watching the learning process occur. Watching these guys take ownership over their teams and begin the building process was pure joy.

In 2005, Nate had to quit the league. His Dad had grounded him, thus limiting his ability somewhat. :o)

By 2006, we had a few more people join the league. It was around this time I learned that alot of people join stuff on a whim, and then pay no attention to what they joined. Over the first ten seasons on the net, I had several people join and then do nothing. After which I had to ask them to resign.

Also in 2006, Owen Deakin joined the league. Owen was very excited to be involved in our growing community and was quite talkative during our meetings. I could tell right away that Owen was going to be with us for a long while.

By the time the 2007 season ended, we had about seven committed GMs and expansion was on the minds of some of the GMs. I contacted Lorne Sundby and he assured me that his EXPAND utility would work perfectly for us to expand the league to 18 teams.

Expansion was difficult for most of us, because we had all developed a great community of friends and none of us had a strong competitive spirit. We all just loved the idea of pretending like we all were GMs in the NFL. We were scared that by having an influx of a ton of new people, that the league would turn into a hot bed of fiery competition, with GMs developing angst against one other.

It was decided that each of us would have to make sure that our friendly attitudes would be the prevailing attitude for everyone in the league. If we noticed anyone taking the simulation a bit too seriously, we would do our best to show that person that this was just a game, and that we were all here to have fun, a laugh or two, and enjoy trying to create a realistic football simulation.

In 2008, we expanded to 18 teams. Sundby's utility worked marvelously. It created six more teams and 320 free agent players to help fill their rosters. Unfortunately, these players were of mediocre quality as well as having foreign names. I had a couple days off from work, so I test simmed the league, having all the new players on the expansion teams. The results were not good, The average score of a vet team playing an expansion team was 40-3.

Since the beginning of the league, our free agency system for 6yr players went like this :

All 6yr players were dumped into the Supplemental pool. If you wanted to keep your 6yr player from going, you had to double his new salary demand.

So in order to give the expansion teams some talent to keep the statistical balance of the league in order, the Expansion teams each got six of the top 36 picks in the Supplemental Draft. They also got the top six spots in the College Draft order. Statistical integrity was spared.

To further complicate matters, Mike Manuel had asked if he could move his team to Washington and become the Redskins, then have the existing Redskin team move to Kansas City. This took a little work, but we made it happen.

Once we expanded, the emails asking to join started flooding in. In 2009, Ryan Silvis and Claude Boman entered the league. In 2010, Mike Breeden and Chris Kampitsis signed on. In 2011 Mike Morton jumped on the bandwagon too.

We had finally hit our stride. The league size was perfect. Everyone had developed a great friendly atmosphere. Garritt, Tim, and Mike's teams had finally grown into Super Bowl contending teams, thus showing the new guys that Jim and Andrew's teams could be beat.

By the end of the 2010 season, Jim Maurer's work schedule had increased enough that he had to step down from the league. It was devastating for everyone. The league's co-founder was no-longer going to be around to guide the league into the future. Everyone wondered what the future would hold.

By the beginning of the 2012 season, an emergency medical situation occurred in my life requiring major surgery. This surgery was to be my fifth major surgery in 26 months. All stemming from a birth defect. We were able to finish the season, but we were going to have to stop the league for at least a month.

Those two events were difficult for everyone involved in the league. Many were wondering if the USAFL had seen it's last season.

Fortunately, my recovery went better than expected and I was able to get myself in front of a computer within three weeks of the surgery.

The 2012 season saw the first time the Super Bowl was broadcast LIVE on RealAudio. The game was a HUGE success as the Bengals took the Falcons down to the wire, winning 22-20 on a last second FG.

Seasons 2013-2015 flew by. Everyone was having a blast. In 2015, Amy Morton, Mike's wife came on board, adding a unique twist to the USAFL. It took some getting used to having a woman in the midst of our once Male-Only late night meetings. But Amy's pleasant disposition and warmth immediately put everyone at ease.

During this time, we experimented with creating a College feeder league. This league was not run by me, it was a sister league. The league never really developed into what we had hoped it could. We also realized what we thought to be true about a feeder league. It was a lot of work. The college league only lasted roughly 3 seasons.

Over this time period, the 6yr Free Agency system changed as well. With my eyes looking for anyway possible to make the league more efficient, I decided to remove the 6yr player Free Agents from Draft Night. Thus shortening the time constraints of the Draft Night Monday event. During the first few years, that event would take anywhere from 4-6 hours to complete. The past 10 seasons, our Draft Night Monday event averages about 100 minutes in duration, sometimes going through about 18 rounds in that time. Our GMs have definitely gained experience in the draft selection process.

The 6yr Free Agency system changed into an online Bidding Period that lasts over a 4 day period. The exact rules of the bidding changed several times over a time, as we sought to make it as efficient and fair as possible.

Just when everyone thought the USAFL was back on track, I made a career change. I left my Computer Training and Network Support job for a part-time job as a music arranger for a local church. This required me to take up an additional part-time job. All of the sudden, I had no free time to run the USAFL.

I announced to everyone, in a very long message on the site, that the USAFL had seen it's final season.

There was not one happy person in the league. I hated having to do it. I had had so much fun hanging out with everyone and learning HTML I think everyone went into a major withdrawal mode. Ask any of the GMs who went through that time period, and most of them do not like to talk about it . . without throwing ::anti-jinx::: pixies out for fear of it happening again.

My job at the church was, and still is for that matter, going great, but my other job was not. My health situation was deteriorating such that, it made it very difficult to maintain that job. My doctors decided it was best for me to leave that job and just focus on the one job. I then planned a couple surgeries for the near future.

I then worked feverously to get the USAFL HTML updated and get the league back online, exactly as we had left it. I did all this without telling anyone.

Then once I had everything in place, I announced to everyone that had been in the league before, that the 2016 Season of the USAFL was about ready to get underway!

Within 24 hours, 16 of the 18 GMs from the 2015 season were back in the fold. The USAFL was back and ready to forge into the future. Many of the guys had joined other leagues in the meantime. Several of them quit those leagues immediately after hearing about the USAFL re-opening.

A few people asked why we were not starting over. I wanted to continue the great history of our league as I felt the greatest benefit of a GM Only league was that you could sim so many seasons in a short amount of time. I knew that our league stood out from others because our league had so many seasons of statistical history.

2016 was to be the final season for me as a GM. I had been working on so many ideas for our league, but they all required me to no longer be a GM. That season was very fun for me. Every GM in the league was rooting for my team. We all appreciated the sentiments of the history of our league.

The 2016 season also saw the league win it's second award. FBPRO.COM started a program where they would review league sites. The first site they reviewed was.... us of course! They gave us it's highest rating, 4-Footballs. Everyone in the league was so excited.

The 2017 season saw the implementation of the first of my new ideas, the College Scouting System. I had devised a way to run all the rookie's ratings through some formulas and the get real stat output for scouting use. This idea would then hide the actual ratings from the GMs until they scouted the college that they player attended. This idea also made for a more fairer draft for everyone. No one had access to the complete list of actual ratings of the rookies.

The Scouting idea was an instant hit. A couple GMs thought it peculiar, but came around after a season or two.

Before the 2018 even began, we found out that FBPRO.COM had named our league the FBPRO.COM Site Of The Month for June 1998.

With all of the hardships the league had endured the past couple months, the three weeks the league had been back online was the greatest. First seeing everyone come back to the league and then winning two awards, one right after the other.

The next idea to be implemented was the team revenue and stadium system. This too was an instant hit, as all the GMs scrambled to build the best stadiums for their teams.

Over half of the current GMs have only been in the league since we came back online in May 1998.

To thank everyone for returning to the league, I ran a USAFL Super Tourney, creating a tournament bracket filled with every Super Bowl winning team. It was a blast putting the early 1990's Tampa Bay teams against the then current Super Bowl teams. Chris Kampitsis' 2016 Carolina Panther team manhandled their opponents and were declared the greatest Super Bowl team in USAFL history.

The 2020 season saw the first time the USAFL season scores and highlights were featured on the FBPRO Show, a weekly RealAudio radio show hosted by Jason Tudor, of Blitz Sports.

Right before we began the 2022 season, I decided that because our waiting list had grown so larger, and the fact the a lot of the guys on the waiting list were already hanging out at our online meetings, I created the Assistant GM (AGM) position. Every person on the waiting list got a job as an AGM while they waited for their chance to be a GM.

This AGM system allowed for guys to learn all about the league before they even get a GM job. It also increased the size of our community, but still kept the small-league size feel.

Also in 2022, the FBPRO Show started a segment on the show were they reviewed websites. Their first site choice to review was... us of course! We got a great review and everyone in the league felt very proud of all we had accomplished.

By 2023, the first guys from our AGM crop got jobs as GMs in the league. Thus giving hope to the other AGMs that their chance will soon come.

The USAFL had to shut down again due to my job requirements, and the newly promoted GMs barely got a taste of their new positions. The league remained quiet for quite some time, until I was able to free up some time in my schedule and re-launch the league.

One of the many coding problems with the FBPRO game, is that it constantly corrupted it's files as the league files aged. Fortunately, my relationship with the utility writer, Lorne Sundby, was such that I could call on him anytime, give him our files, and he would have it repaired within hours. When I re-launched the league, I decided to create a brand new league file, and import the players from the old league. Sadly, we would have to have the 1999 timestamp for a season year and we would lose all the cumulating career stats. I still kept the old archived career stats on the site for comparison.

So, with the USAFL players having to endure a mysterious time-warp, going from 2023 to 199, with no valid explanation available for a story, logic was suspended and the USAFL continued on!

Just as before, to a man, every GM who was in the league previously, joined back up within hours of my "THE USAFL IS BACK" email going out. We all enjoyed the rebirth of the league and I began delegating more authority to league officials to ease the burden of all the responsibilities.

But the joy was short-lived as we had to stop the league again once I got a new job. The USAFL laid dormant for over a year . . . .

In the meantime, I had spent time sim-driving with the Sierra/Papyrus NASCAR games. I found it to be quite exhilarating out on the track with 40+ other drivers online. But, in the back of my mind, I kept wondering what this game would look like from a GM-Only perspective. As I drove, I considered that the game had everything in place to be a career simulation. The AI cars all had driver and crew ratings and the game could run races without a human car on the track. So, why not just run races with all computer cars on the track. And have all the cars be owned by humans, with them having to hire drivers and crew. And those drivers and crew abilities would make up the car's ratings. All I had to do was design an application to pump out players with ratings, then have them age, improve their ratings over time, and then retire.

Once I had it all figured out, I was dying to put it into action. But where was I going to get people to test out this concept? I didn't want to ask strangers to sign up, as it would be too confusing to try and teach a bunch of people the whole GM-Only concept of leagues.

Then it dawned on me - I could bring back the USAFL . . . on the condition that all the USAFL guys participate in my test racing league. That way I could have my good friends critique the concept and help me shape it into a viable online league. The "USAFL IS BACK" email went out . . . and you guessed it. Hours later, we had twenty plus people on board ready to go.

I must say, I am continually honored by the loyalty of the USAFL community. Whenever we get back together, it's as if we never left. For some of us, we have been friends since 1997 and the USAFL is our baby. We have fed and nurtured it, watched it gain fame in the FBPRO world online . . and blossom into what it is today.

The USA Football League, now part of the USA Sports community with the USA Racing League, continues to be a very active community, striving for creative success, an exciting online league experience, and to be the most friendliest environment for sports simulation competition.

About the Commissioner :
My wife, Kathy, and I have been married since 1990. I work as a music arranger for a local church. We have five cats, yes - five. We live just outside of Philadelphia, PA. We are huge 76ers fans. The USAFL has been a great opportunity for me to practice my HTML skills as well as my MSExcel skills!