This podcast episode delves into the fascinating narrative of the Memphis Showboats, a team from the United States Football League (USFL) that made significant strides in the realm of professional football during the 1980s. Our guest, Keith Wood, has meticulously chronicled the Showboats' journey in his recently published book, which highlights not only the team's on-field exploits but also the broader implications of Memphis's pursuit of major league status. The conversation elucidates the remarkable talents that graced the Showboats, including the legendary Reggie White, who left an indelible mark on the sport. As we explore the origins of the USFL and its ambitious attempts to rival the NFL, we uncover the complexities and challenges that ultimately led to the league's demise. Join us as we traverse through this rich tapestry of football history, revealing the triumphs and tribulations of a team that sought to carve its niche in the annals of American sports.

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Takeaways:

• The USFL, established in the early 1980s, captured significant attention by attracting notable players such as Reggie White and Doug Flutie.
• Keith Wood's book delves into the Memphis Showboats' journey and the broader narrative of Memphis seeking major league status.
• The USFL implemented innovations like instant replay, which have since become integral to modern football broadcasting and officiating.
• The Memphis Showboats experienced a quarterback controversy that reflected the competitive nature of the league during its brief existence.
• The financial backing and strategic decisions behind the Memphis Showboats were crucial for their initial success in the USFL.
• The USFL's attempt to compete directly with the NFL ultimately led to its downfall, highlighting challenges faced by emerging sports leagues.

Links referenced in this episode:

• pigskindispatch.com
• keithbwoodauthor.com
• facebook.com/keithbwoodwrites
• mcfarland.com
• amazon.com
• sportshistorynetwork.com

Well my football friends this is darren hayes of pigskindispatch dot com welcome once again to the pig pen your portal to positive football history and we have a real treat for you tonight we're going to go back about forty some years into a very interesting league that not a lot of people know about the details of it but you'll know about what we're talking about in a moment here we have our guest who's just wrote a book about one of the teams his name is keith wood keith welcome to the pig pen darren.

I appreciate you having me on man i'm so excited to talk about some usl football and from the nineteen eighties and you know the memphis showboats were probably one of the better teams and all your fans are gonna know reggie white right let's just start with reggie white because when you talk showboat football.

The minister of defense everybody knows him.

Right and the minister of defense so for your fans out there reggie white's a tennessee guy grew up in chattanooga attends the university of tennessee all american defensive end and i tell you what the usfl not only did they grab three straight heisman trophy winning quarterbacks or to me heisman trophy winners they also grabbed reggie white and in the nineteen eighties the usfl got the nfl's attention quick fast and in a hurry right steve young doug flutie jim kelly reggie white the the big names were signing for big bucks in spring football and this league of david dixon's the spring idea of playing football you know most colleges because we live down here in memphis and sec country that's spring football season and then here comes the usfl invading that territory and winning and that's that's the key the usfl put a quality product on the field and they gave the nfl a run for their.

Money absolutely well before we even get into that let's let's dig into to you a little bit you know you told me when you came on earlier that you're actually not originally from that area area so i'm interested in hearing a little bit about how you got interested in writing about the memphis team and you know a little bit about your football background right so first off.

I'm i'm a kid from upstate new york played high school basketball played a couple of years in college moved to memphis in ninety four and coached high school basketball for seventeen years when i got my dissertation and my phd i did it on larry finch for your fans that know basketball a little bit he brought memphis state to the nineteen seventy three ncaa championship game where they lost to bill walton so that was my first book my second book was on a negro league baseball team in memphis and you're going to love this darren i'm at lunch at christian brothers high school and the tons of cbas around the country lasalle cba saint mary's same group of catholic brothers and the english teacher that i had lunch with goes wood what's your next book and i went i don't know what do you think and he goes man i just read this jeff perlman book on football for a buck you need to do something on the showboats so i read perlman's book and i thought about it i went you know what football absolutely has become america's pastime and so jumped in as maybe not a memphis son of memphis but an adopted son of memphis and man just love telling.

The story oh i mean that's great especially when you're going you know halfway across the country from where you grew up and you're you know you're absorbing into your atmosphere that you're living in so that's awesome so you you have a little bit of coaching background and stuff in you too right right right.

So when i got down here was an assistant basketball coach at the high school i was hired at there was a coaching change my principal offered me the head job i'm a head basketball coach at twenty five and if you know anything about high school basketball in memphis it produces a lot of division one guys and the league i was in was an inner city league with a lot of guys that are going to have careers in division one and a few nba guys so got broken learned the ropes the hard way but rebuilt the program and then moved to another school in the county stayed there for ten years and just really enjoyed the relationships with the guys right people ask me if i miss coaching i do i miss with two minutes left on the clock in a huddle having all the guys right there and being able to look in their eyes and know which one wants it and which one doesn't because you can see that in a heartbeat but i don't miss parents going to be honest and you know the game i haven't coached in fifteen years and this portal transfer paradigm it's trickled down to high school athletics here in memphis i wouldn't miss that in any way shape or form i love developing kids over time and watching them go from a to z and that to me is the successes weren't just in games one and banner song but really in young men who developed as people as citizens who are now married children and in a lot of places you wouldn't think that kids from those neighborhoods would have so for me coaching was that opportunity to connect and do what guys did for me in schenectady new york i really remember three guys specifically that were my middle school basketball coach my freshman coach and my varsity coach i still talk to them all the time and i just wanted to return the favor and pass it.

Forward that's awesome i love that when you have great mentors and they can inspire you to carry on yourself to teach other youngsters on forward so let's you mean you spoke a little bit about the portal and some of the modern era of the nil and you know people switching teams we have free agency in the pro sports and it's hard to follow a team but you know the team you're talking about the memphis showboats and actually let's take this opportunity why don't you tell the title of your book and where people can get it we'll mention again later absolutely.

The title of the book is the memphis showboats the usfl team and the city's fight for major league status right so the book is available at amazon you can hit my website which is www dot keithbwoodauthor dot com i know it's lengthy it's a domain i could get but i've got a facebook page keith b wood writes and you can dm me there and i can get you a copy that way signed sealed delivered lots of ways to get the book and really you know having that book out there and mcfarland is the publisher you can go on their website and they do a great job putting it out there and so really that's how you get the book right and.

So and folks if you missed it you're driving or you can't or you don't have a pencil and pen right now we'll put it in the show notes of both the youtube video and the podcast it will link you up get you to keith's book and get.

You connected here appreciate that darren because you know what i think when your fans sit down you know one of the football coaches at the school i work at his dad was one of the first african american football players in memphis state and he played himself with the buccaneers and the dolphins and he was like coach i got to get a copy of this book i know these guys these guys about five ten years older and you know like one of the big stars for the showboats is a local kid receiver derek crawford who is a speedster at memphis state and stays in memphis with his showboats in eighty four and again in eighty five leads the team in receptions at eighty four also a kickoff return guy gets a cup of water with the niners in eighty six when the usfl folds right so dudes that are local know this story but like i said guys like reggie white have national appeal the minister of defense the quarterback was walter lewis about paul bear bryant's first starting black quarterback is the quarterback for the memphis showboats and we actually have a little bit of a quarterback controversy lewis gets hurt in eighty four mike kelly who had played for our head coach pepper rogers at georgia tech comes in finishes up the last five six games does a great job little bit of tension starting in eighty five middle of the season there's a four game lull kelly replaces lewis so we've got it i mean we've got everything an nfl team has we got quarterback controversy baby it's here so if you're an alabama fan walter lewis i mean some.

Great stories yeah so okay so let's get into a little bit more about how so we have a brand new league starting up and it was kind of you know this is this is a big deal they were advertising it you know there was other startup leagues i think this was even a little bit bigger than the world football league which happened in the early seventies and some other leagues that came here and there but this one was really highly advertised they said spring is ours and this is what we're going to do we're going to build a competitive league how did they put together this team how did they get the walter lewis's and the reggie whites and some of.

The others i think darren you started with this the world football league in the nineteen seventies memphis had long sought after a nfl team we were hosting exhibition games in the late sixties and the early seventies and to be honest memphis got left at the altar a lot quite frequently and in nineteen seventy three john bassett calls us and says canada won't take my world football league team do you guys want it and memphis at the time are like you know what if the nfl doesn't really want us sure and so john bassett comes down and he brings his toronto northmen and down they become the memphis southman or the memphis grizzlies of the world football league and bassett does a great job elvis is at every game absolutely elvis is a grizzlies fan through and through isaac hayes shaft he's at every game like bassett is this great like the bill veck of baseball and so basset's in memphis selling football and he does pretty well now he signs i'll ever remember this zonka pick and warfield off the seventy two dolphins and so he's got more money than any other owner seventy four league collapses memphis is left at the altar again so in eighty three when david dixon starts up the usfl we're on the outside but john bassett has taken his talents to tampa bay hired steve spurrier as the bandits coach right and in between the eighty three eighty four season the usfl is looking to add six to eight teams and bassett absolutely just campaigns from memphis he said in the world football league i had more money than everybody else in this usfl football league everybody else has more money but memphis it's definitely a city you need to look at and so locally alabama booster logan young is going to bankroll and campaign go all the way to denver when they have their first usfl championship game and he's going to be like look we need a team and so that's how the memphis showboats originates and so pepper rogers comes on board and the liberty bowl is in and it's really the dynamics are working but to be honest logan young doesn't have that type of money and so in january bassett picks up the phone and calls a good friend of his and the friend is billy donovan see they played each other in tennis in the youth group coming up right the usda versus the canadian tennis they're going back and forth well billy donovan is one of the top five cotton producers in the world he's the first cotton exchange guy to sell cotton with china through richard nixon so when we talk about money this guy has as much money as anybody in the usfl including the general's owner donald trump and he might have more money at the time so billy donovan buys the team on the recommendation of johnny bassett and then once once donovan's in donovan loses twelve million dollars the first year and he goes that's fine he goes up to new york city signs steve earhart the number two in the league to come to memphis to be our gm and then puts twenty million more on the table and he says steve build me an nfl roster that's memphis showboats football wow that's.

Amazing okay so how did they do this was it mostly coming out of the college draft were they taking guys off of nfl teams right so i.

Had a great conversation with carter tate who worked in the office the first and second year trying to get draft picks and he said you'd be surprised a lot of the nfl scouts shared notes shared where to go in sec schools because i mean if you've never been to starkville mississippi especially in nineteen eighty three it can be an interesting experience right so or athens georgia a lot of these places that these guys are going so they had two drafts they had a territorial draft and then they had the usfl draft which was a national thing so we had a lot of schools like tennessee state tennessee ut chad memphis arkansas ole miss right where our territorial schools logan young i think i'd have to go back and look might have got us alabama because of his connections there and so then there's the big draft right and the key with the big draft is our draft took place before the nfl draft so the usfl really was able to sign herschel walker right now to be honest darren i've read perlman's book i'm talking to steve earhart he does the forward for my book steve was great and he would be like well we i was there when we signed urschel walker and he goes i'm gonna give you a general idea but he's not giving out details right which is understandable because the nfl and the usfl is very cutthroat and so you got herschel walker reggie collier and doug flutie i think collier was the the the third heisman trophy winner really the usfl steve young like bringing him to la was huge and now his contract looked good up front but it was backside heavy you know when when the houston gamblers they get jim kelly in eighty four i mean that's it doug williams takes the tampa bay buccaneers to the nfc championship game twice and just leaves and goes you know what i'm gonna play in oklahoma and so he plays with the oklahoma outlaws for two years in the usfl so there's some big names and memphis in eighty four we've got an expansion roster let's be honest we win seven games which means we're seven and eleven and the summer between eighty four and eighty five when steve earhart comes in earhart turned down three nfl clubs five usfl clubs i mean he's highly sought after and he comes in and he absolutely redoes the lineup keeps the guys that can play and darren here's the key steve always talked about this when the usfl folded the showboats had twenty guys on the eighty five roster who five years later were still playing in the nfl wow so that's.

One deep a little less than half the roster probably right they're probably fifty.

Band roster it was a forty man.

Roster forty man roster so exactly wow.

One deep twenty two our nfl caliber so there's a couple of guys besseldou comes in late i think we picked him up from the dolphins back in the the backfield and he gets them down and he goes these dbs in memphis are as good as what we had in miami i promise you they're younger they're younger but in two to three years these guys have had more talent so steve does an incredible job lining the roster with nfl talent yeah.

So i mean i can't even you don't even know like most nfl rosters today will have twenty guys playing five years from now you know really i.

Think i looked this up recently darren the average nfl career is three point three years yeah so and we got guys playing five right so when naysayers are like well the usfl didn't have nfl talent they're crazy look at these lineups look at the rosters now are we too deep not not a chance but we're close and i think to be honest if the usfl sticks to the plan and in eighty six plays again in the spring eighty seven plays in the spring then four or five years down the line by ninety the nfl because of the number of players the usfl was was taking would have talked about an afl nfl merger and they would have been talking that with the usfl in the same same thing right now to be honest you know half the coat half the owners wanted to go play in the fall and go head up with the nfl and billy donovan he joined that group he's like well you know what if we're gonna do it let's do it he was much quieter than say a donald trump was in new jersey he wasn't about the headlines he believed that earhart would put together an nfl roster and he believed that the nfl would lose in this lawsuit and so you know to fast forward to the eighty five season ends the showboats lose in the semifinals to bobby abair and the oakland invaders and i know your your fans are gonna know this name because he burned rdbs chris carter minnesota vikings he absolutely torched the memphis showboats that sunday afternoon in memphis and i was it was a hot day it was late june and then it was sultry like the field was steaming and ac i watched the game we couldn't stop him if we tried we could put four dudes on them and we couldn't get to a bear in time reggie they were double teaming reggie so hats off to ac now let's keep going in eighty six they're setting up this lawsuit now billy donovan and some of the other owners are like okay we're in on the lawsuit but do it in memphis because the argument was the usfl is a little brother the nfl is.

Breaking the sherman antitrust act and they're.

Treating us like a stepchild and they're not allowing us our rights as owners in the marketplace they're probably right yeah but trump in new jersey says oh no no no no i've got my lawyers we're going to use our guys and we're going to do it in new york city and pretty much everybody i talked to said that if you had tried it in memphis because we've got a federal court in memphis right downtown not too far from the liberty bowl we would add a smaller judge smaller courtroom less press without all the fanfare of people showing up in limos arguably we would have won and in fact the nfl when you read roselle's biography he talks about it the nfl paid lawyers to do a mock trial and roselle was worried because in the mock trial the usfl won well technically.

They did win the court case but but they they lost in the financial gain from it yes lawyers danced around.

The issue and didn't the jury thought that if they just gave the usfl one dollar the judge could take that and do whatever by law the only thing the judge could do is treble it so the usfl won dollar three and so although the usfl wins they lose now here's a good one for your fans darren what year did the nfl sign a contract with espn.

With espn god it had to be probably in the nineties wasn't it eighty six eighty six okay right so right out a year after that all right absolutely.

Right so chet simmons who was the first commissioner of the usfl had been at the founding of espn so the first thing he did was he signed espn and then abc imagine the nfl.

Without espn right now what would the nfl look like without espn football sunday.

Nights sports center the whole thing shen simmons vision to have espn really gave the usfl the money to go get the heisman winners and to survive like these guys have money but you need tv money to compete with the nfl and so when the usfl folds espn quickly reaches out to the nfl roselle is stabby enough to sign the contract and the rest is history but really the usfl with espn here's another one great usfl ploy the red flag the review the nfl in eighty four and eighty five like this is stupid this is ridiculous part of the game is the human experience the referees are human in eighty five the usfl tosses the red flag and they're using instant replay from the whole season and it really changes professional football good bad or indifferent i'm sure some of your fans would like to go back but i mean the kickers in the usfl use the tees right lots of innovations galore in the whole league and in fact for your viewers i would suggest paul reith's.

Book r e e t h s.

On the usfl he does a great job on the whole league and i really periodically throughout my research i was in paul's book really trying to understand the bigger picture and he does a.

Great job yeah it's interesting now what do you what do you think okay i'm trying to look at this you know the successful model you talked about was the afl and the the the fourth afl that in the nineteen sixties ended up merging in nineteen sixty nine you started the super bowls everything so right they had basically a decade of building the fan bases out in in same season as the nfl so you know the dallas texas became the kansas state chiefs they had a good solid fan base in there i don't think the usfl you know and i think taking your point if they would have stayed in the spring you know a couple more years maybe they would have got you know that point where they had the fan base but the nfl it's hard to go against a dallas cowboy fan base or a green bay packers or these the raiders or something you know these teams that have been around for decades when you're right a startup league and you've been around for two or three years do you find that maybe that that's the case too that they tried to compete early to.

Merge well once the grid when the grizzlies of the world football league fell.

Apart in nineteen seventy four memphis started to look for you know the boston patriots before they moved to new england in the afl like we considered opening them robert irsay with the colts who you know is absolutely a live wire right like pete roselle probably would have gotten rid of irsay as quick as he could irsay comes to memphis and he's probably got a pretty good deal to get to indianapolis and then in indianapolis you know he's so sort of trying to work out a dome so he plays memphis like a fiddle a couple of times and really scars memphians the guy that had spearheaded our nineteen seventies nfl trip sort of thing goes to minnesota with the vikings after we lose the well now lose when we choose the wfl over that the new orleans saints you know they actually i forget the name of the senator from louisiana but he was able to quid pro quo offer pete roselle an exemption from the sherman antitrust act and in the nineteen eighties before the showboats get here we are trying to do the same thing with a senator from tennessee.

So we're really trying all sorts of.

Political routes and really you know memphis really gets this you know the weight on their shoulders like why aren't we major league and it's it's really an interesting phenomenon it still carries forth today you know memphis the university of memphis has tried to get into the sec they've tried to get into the the big twelve they tried to get into the big east on the collegiate level and then we keep getting stonewalled and i mean if you want to think about it like memphis had billy donovan in the eighties we got fred smith now fred smith just passed away this past year but fedex is in memphis tennessee the orange bowl in miami has the fedex name and money on it like we've got fedex money why can't we you know you know we could bankroll the team there's money here pit hide with autozone and really it becomes you know within with the collapse of the showboats memphis is left at the altar once again it's really the story within the story because the book's really about the showboats but underlying that is this desire by the city of memphis to be considered major league and really in our current moment you know we have an nba team the memphis grizzlies a little different than the world football league team same moniker and and the word around town here in memphis is that the grizzlies are going to pick up and go to nashville so i.

Mean do you remember darren do you remember when bud adams i was just.

Gonna i was just gonna ask you about that oh my gosh like yeah because it was a tenant it was a tennessee oilers and i was gonna say was memphis in the running over nashville you know for the oilers in.

The picture behind me on the screen.

I've got a picture of the liberty bowl and the showboats are playing in the eighties and so in the in the what was it like mid nineties mid to late nineties when bud takes.

Leaves houston he's going to take a stop in memphis for two years and then he's going to go to nashville.

We all knew in memphis that he was only going to be here for two years now they come into the university of memphis which has a royal blue and he paints the entire stadium.

Euler blue powder blue the love your blues are like what's this this is ridiculous now it got so bad that if your fans remember correctly pittsburgh steeler fans on week sixteen could fly to memphis get a ticket to the liberty bowl for cheaper than going to three river stadium and they did so the final home game of the bud adams era is nothing but black and yellow with the terrible towels and bud adams gets so mad he takes a team to nashville and plays at vanderbilt stadium which is incredibly small so even then there's like drama misconceptions i just this this bad blood that memphis feels because we're seen as minor league.

So all right that that you answered my question because i said i remembered something with memphis and they were still called the oilers for two tennessee oilers while they were there it wasn't until they went to nashville they became the titans am i correct on that you're correct have.

You seen their new uniforms for this.

Year no they're going back to the.

Bud adams are they are they absolutely.

No not the two tone blue anymore.

Huh no they're dishing that and they're coming back with powder blue and a symbol that looks a little bit like.

The tennessee state flag right which is it's a red flag with a blue.

Circle with three stars okay huh interesting.

Once again there's not a lot of memphians that drive the three hours in.

Nashville why like we we you could.

Have been right here why why are.

We going to drive in nashville right.

Like so right we get blacked out for nashville but i don't think many.

Memphians really are that concerned about it.

You know and it's it's part of the story of the nfl leaving us at the altar one too many times so memphians are like the packers the patriots there's not a real loyalty in memphis because we've never really had our team since the showboats in essence wow.

But what a heck of a team they they had in there so keith you know we are getting a little low on time here to go this but let's give it one more time your title of your book where folks can get it and you know maybe.

Some last words darren i appreciate it number one before before we i give you the name of the book and that again where to find it thank you so much for having me on man this is a great great story the usfl is a great story in itself and the story of the memphis showboats there's some great players we haven't even talked about pepper rogers the colorful coach yet man so there are so many great stories in there i really hope your fan your fans enjoy it the name of the book again is the memphis showboats the usfl team and the city's fight for major league status you can get it at amazon dot com you can probably find it at barnes noble i haven't looked on there yet to see if it's there book came out april sixth first or second and so you know this is the books recently out hot off the presses if your fans want a copy they can jump on my facebook page keith b wood writes and can find me there or if they jump on my website www dot keithbwood author dot com i can get them a signed copy for thirty dollars and i'll personally play the shipping and handling amazon's charging forty so i'll if you contact me personally i'll give you the offers rate and cover the shipping and handling to get some of your fans out there and.

To to get the story in their hand because man i you can tell i'm excited i just really love this.

Story and man i just you know.

Can't wait to see how this plays.

Out down the road well there you go folks you get twenty five percent off and an autographed copy so get to talk to the man that wrote it so that is an awesome offer and from an awesome guy on an awesome story so yeah keith we really appreciate you tuning in and joining us tonight and telling the story and we're not going to ask you too many questions take you to me rabbit holes because we want to leave something for them to enjoy in the book too.

So absolutely appreciate it so all right.

Keith well thank you very much and we'll talk to you again soon appreciate.

It darren thanks a lot have a good one boss go boats that's all.

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