Several retired members of the New York Giants — all Super Bowl champions — credit the USFL with kick starting their NFL careers.
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The USFL is back and this time it’s likely to stick around a bit longer. The league has kicked off this spring in eight of its original 1983 cities (although they won’t play in each) but this time not as a competitor to the NFL but more of a feeder league.
That’s what the original USFL became when it when defunct in 1985. With the league’s eventual financial demise on the horizon, the NFL began to prepare to pick up the pieces by holding a supplemental draft of their players in 1984.
The New York Giants held the third pick in that draft and chose tackle Gary Zimmerman, who the team was forced to trade to Minnesota in 1986 after he refused to play for them. He wasn’t the only Hall of Famer to come out of the USFL.
Quarterbacks Jim Kelly (Houston Gamblers) and Steve Young (LA Express), defensive lineman Reggie White (Memphis Showboats) and linebacker Sam Mills (Philadelphia Stars) all went on to have Hall of Fame careers in the NFL.
Despite Zimmerman’s rebuff, the Giants did very well with USFL refugees. They landed both a Pro Bowl center and punter in Bart Oates and Sean Landeta from the Baltimore Stars, and fullback Maurice Carthon from the New Jersey Generals. All three were vital cogs in the Giants’ championship teams of the 1980s-90s.
“I’m a perfect example of a guy, I would have never made it in the NFL, I don’t think, because I wasn’t that big,” Oates told the New York Post. “I played three years in the USFL, I was able to improve my trade, and become a better, more well-rounded player… I had such a good time. I would never have left. I would’ve stayed in the USFL, if they had maintained it.”
“I got a whole lot out of the league,” Carthon told The Post. “I was just graduated from college, and then I went to the USFL, and then the rest is history. We’re talking about playing with Doug Flutie, Herschel Walker, people like that. There was some good football in the USFL.
“It helped me as a football player because I played with Herschel, and we both played together. Then being a 1,000-yard rusher, I couldn’t believe that I did it, but I was able to do that.”
A footnote to this story goes back to that 1984 Supplemental draft where the Giants chose Zimmerman over Reggie White, who was taken by the Philadelphia Eagles with the next pick.
Head coach Bill Parcells wanted White to pair with Lawrence Taylor but general manager George Young wanted Zimmerman to bolster the wobbly offensive line. White went on terrorize NFL quarterbacks and the Giants traded Zimmerman to Minnesota for two second-round picks in the 1986 NFL draft. The chose cornerback Mark Collins and defensive back Greg Lasker with those selections.
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