The Philadelphia (Stars) Story

As thoughts turn to football football football and my hands twitch from tuning in preseason games and wondering if now is the time to finally develop a college football fetish...

and as the weather outside remains resolutely summer, with jungle humidity and the unstoppable insect rampage that is Life in Mid Jersey...

well, it's making my brain push back to an earlier, simpler, time, when the local team was just a relentless machine of excellence, with a lockdown defense and an effective ground game, a great coaching staff and a QB that didn't make mistakes and always gave his team a chance to win.

I am talking about, of course, the most effective football team on a per capita basis in Philadelphia history. The Philadelphia Stars, of the USFL.

Nowadays, if you find anyone talking about the USFL at all, it's in three contexts:

1) The always fun notice of royalty-free images in advertising that wants a pro football look, but can't justify NFL scratch. The Houston Gamblers and the LA Express will be with us forever.

2) The periodic notifications about various USFL alumni (finally) hanging it up. Doug Flutie and Sean Landeta have collected a lot of checks.

3) A punchline for the big $3 antitrust payment the league won from the NFL in its final death gasp. More proof, not that anyone needs it, that Donald Trump is less effective than offensive.

But there really was more to the league. Like the ABA in the 70s, it provided a comic but welcome breath of life to a game that was a little too full of itself. And just like the ABA, the alumni list was some of the best and brightest of the game. Consider:

> Jim Kelly ran one of the first versions of the run and shoot for the Gamblers

> Steve Young was at his rawest for the Express

> Jim Mora went to the playoffs? playoffs! in all three years as the coach of the Stars

> His linebacker was Sam Mills, who showed he was big enough for 10+ years after this in New Orleans and Carolina

> Herschel Walker failed to dominate this league, too, despite having a huge amount of name recognition, creating a Foreshadow that the Minnesota Vikings really should have seen coming

> Bobby Ebert was at his pre-Saints, pre-Seinfeldian best for the Michigan Panthers (still one of the coolest looking uniforms ever for a pro football team)

> George Allen (yes, that George Allen) was the Schottenheimer-esque head coach for Vince Evans and the Chicago Blitz (gagged up a 21-point playoff lead with 8 minutes left to Mora's Stars)

> A very young Reggie White had a LT-like impact for the Memphis Showboats (23.5 sacks in two seasons)

At the height of the Stars' 3-year-run of 49er-like dominance, they brought a championship to Philadelphia, and I went to the parade. There really wasn't that much to it, probably no more than 10 to 15 thousand people all told, and the insecurity was in the air; everyone knew that this wasn't really the dawn of a new era or serious threat to the old order, which became especially apparent when the team quietly moved to College Park, Maryland and became the Baltimore Stars the next year.

But for that era, as the Eagles slid back from the Vermiel years into the slow torture of "Swamp Fox" Marion Campbell, and the LT Giants arose as the guys that would sack Ron Jaworski over and over again... well, there was something appealing about having your allegiances vied for by a team that was just refreshingly competent.

It's been 25 years since the Red and Gold were my sneaky favorite team, and in that time, it's become apparent that the American appetite for football -- real, honest to God football, and not some watered down minor league WLAF or pinball variant AFL -- remains something that is more than a half-year occupation.

At some point, the law of markets dictates that the void will be filled. When it does, we can only hope that the same talent level will be there.