Tampa Bay Bandits

The Tampa Bay Bandits' primary founder was Canadian businessman John F. Bassett, who was still in litigation against the NFL over his previous Memphis Southmen franchise from the World Football League in the mid-1970s. Bassett was initially skeptical about getting into another football venture. However, he soon warmed up to the USFL after discovering that he was nowhere as well off as the other owners. While he had been by far the richest owner in the WFL, he realized that he would be one of the poorest owners in the USFL. Believing that the USFL was on far stronger financial ground than the WFL ever had been, he agreed to sign on.[1]

Bassett's original plan was to place his team at Ivor Wynne Stadium in Hamilton, Ontario.[2] Not only was this outside the league's namesake United States, but it would have been by far the smallest market during the USFL's first season had it gone through; Bassett intended to draw from Southern Ontario, the largest market in Canada when factoring in nearby Toronto, and possibly from Buffalo as well (coincidentally, Buffalo's National Football League team, the Buffalo Bills, was one of the teams most negatively impacted by the USFL's existence, even without a team less than 50 miles away from its home stadium as originally proposed). Hamilton also had the advantage of not having any other major league sports competition apart from the Canadian Football League's Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

However, Canadian government officials were dead-set against any other league challenging the CFL's monopoly on professional football in Canada, even if their seasons did not overlap. Senator Keith Davey, a former CFL commissioner, threatened to re-introduce the Canadian Football Act, a bill originally proposed in 1974 (in the wake of Bassett's previous proposal to put a WFL team–what became the Southmen–in Toronto) that would have had the government endorse the CFL's monopoly and prohibited any other league from playing in Canada. Bassett's proposal came at a time when the CFL's Montreal Concordes had been saved from bankruptcy in 1981, two years prior to the USFL's launch (the Concordes would collapse again in 1987).[3] Davey's threat convinced Bassett to abandon his plans in Ontario and establish the franchise in the United States. Tampa was soon chosen as the best fit.

After it was decided that the franchise would play in Tampa, Miami attorney Steve Arky joined Bassett as a majority owner; Arky was the son-in-law of Marvin Warner, who owned another USFL franchise, the Birmingham Stallions. Several minority owners bought stakes, among them Hollywood star Burt Reynolds, a former college football player at Florida State who was one of the most popular motion picture actors in the world. The team was soon dubbed the "Bandits", a name that referenced both Reynolds' role in the hit Smokey and the Bandit movies and the name of Bassett's daughter's German Shepherd.[4][5][6] Reynolds was prominently involved in the Bandits' early marketing campaigns, and the cover of the team's 1983 media guide featured a photo of the actor wearing a Bandits trucker hat.[5]

Also building interest was the hiring of former Florida Gator and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Steve Spurrier to be the team's head coach. Spurrier had been the offensive coordinator at Duke University for three seasons before coming to Tampa to accept his first head coaching job. His innovative offenses at Duke had broken many records, and at 37, he was the youngest head coach in professional football at the time.[7]

The Bandits began play in 1983 in Tampa Stadium, and were immediately more successful than the area's NFL franchise, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, with whom they shared a home field (though the Bucs played in the fall and early winter while the Bandits played in the spring and early summer). The Bandits narrowly missed the playoffs in their first season and made the postseason the next two years. Spurrier's aggressive offense was usually one of the best in the league; Bandits players are among the USFL career leaders in touchdown passes (John Reaves, 4th), touchdown receptions (Eric Truvillion, 2nd), and rushing touchdowns (Gary Anderson, 3rd). However, an average defense and Bassett's insistence on adhering to the USFL's original financial plan while other franchises spent millions on free agent signings kept the team from serious championship contention.

The Bandits were also successful off the field. They drew the highest average attendance over the three-year history of the USFL, coming in second in attendance in 1983 and leading the league in that category in 1984 and 1985 with over 40,000 fans per game.[8] Also, their memorabilia outsold that of the Buccaneers in the Tampa Bay area. A fan-friendly atmosphere (including a theme song, "Bandit Ball", penned and sung by Reynolds' friend Jerry Reed[9]) was one factor, and the Bucs' futility during the period (they went 10–38 from 1983 to 1985—the start of a 12-year stretch of 10-loss seasons) also helped the Bandits' success. Another key factor in the Bandits' success was the fact that there was no Major League Baseball team in Tampa at the time (the Tampa Bay Devil Rays would not debut for another decade), meaning that unlike other USFL teams, they did not have to compete with a baseball team for spectators. Due to broad local support, the Bandits were one of a very few USFL teams with a stable home and steady finances - they were the only franchise to have the same coach, owner, and home city throughout the league's three-year existence.[10] Due to these factors, the Bandits are considered one of the few USFL teams that had the potential to be a viable venture had the league been better run.[11] The Philadelphia Stars played Tampa Bay at Wembley Stadium in an exhibition game on July 21, 1984.

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In week three of the 1984 season, the Bandits faced their inter-state rivals, the Jacksonville Bulls for the first time. Jacksonville was 1-1, after soundly defeating the Washington Federals and nearly beating the New Jersey Generals. Jacksonville, led by former Jets and Broncos quarterback Matt Robinson, raced out to a 12-0 lead. The Bandits stormed back to take a 25-18 lead. The Bulls came back to tie the game, but the Bandits won when Zenon Andrusyshyn kicked a field goal to give Tampa Bay a 28-25 lead.[15]

When the season was over, quarterback John Reeves was the leading passer on the squad. Running backs Greg Boone and Gary Anderson ran for 1,009 and 1,008 yards respectively. Eric Truvillion lead the receivers with 1,044 yards on seventy catches and nine touchdowns. [16]

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Bandits' majority owner John Bassett was a strong proponent of the "Dixon Plan", which was a plan formulated by the USFL's founding owners that sought to build a sustainable league with budgetary restraint and a commitment to spring football. However, to gain a competitive advantage and draw attention to their teams, some owners attempted to sign more high-profile players to free agent contracts, sometimes engaging in bidding wars against more financially powerful NFL teams. This led to USFL teams losing substantial amounts of money, causing much instability throughout the league. The Bandits did not overspend on player contracts, keeping the franchise stable but making it difficult to compete with the USFL's higher-spending teams, despite making a very good account of themselves on the field.

In April 1985, the USFL (led by New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump[23][24]) voted 12-2 to switch to a fall schedule for 1986, hoping to compete directly with the NFL and possibly force the more established league to accept a merger. Bassett, who had registered one of the two "nay" votes, immediately declared his intention to pull the Bandits out of the USFL and organize a new spring football league.[25][26]

However, by mid-1985, the Bandits' ownership group was in disarray. Bassett was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and staffers suspected that his illness was impairing his judgment. At the same time, co-owner Steve Arky's wealth was raided by the Securities and Exchange Commission on fraud charges, triggering the savings and loan crisis; Arky committed suicide not long after.[27] The team began signing mediocre players, most infamously defensive back Bret Clark, to large contracts, and plans for a new spring football league were abandoned. The size of the contracts, particularly Clark's contract, led Spurrier and other team officials to question whether Bassett was acting or thinking rationally.[28] As his condition worsened, Bassett decided to sell the team. He died in May 1986.[29][30]

In August 1985, minority owner Lee Scarfone, a local architect, agreed to purchase Bassett's and Arky's stakes and field a team in the USFL for the fall 1986 season, with Tony Cunningham coming on as an additional partner.[31] However, the league could not secure a TV contract for its new fall schedule (while declining broadcast contracts to continue playing in the spring) and had difficulty finding investors, putting the upcoming season in doubt. After the USFL's anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL failed in July 1986, the league suspended operations, leaving its remaining franchises in limbo.

In March 1986, Bret Clark took the Bandits to arbitration for $159,980 in back pay owed under his contract. He won the case on May 29, but the Bandits did not have any funds available to pay the judgement, as Scarfone and Cunningham had gone into considerable debt to buy the team and had already depleted most of their assets.[31] On August 4, a federal judge placed a lien on the franchise and ordered that the franchise's remaining assets - including everything from weight-lifting equipment to office furniture to memorabilia from the team store - be confiscated to pay off the debt, all but ending any realistic chance of the Bandits returning to the field. Coincidentally, the USFL canceled its 1986 season on the same day, though the league did not formally shut down until 1988.[28][32]