Did Donald Trump Kill the USFL? 'Small Potatoes' Aims to Find Out

If Michael Moore had been a passionate fan of the United States Football League, he might have made a movie like Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL? The documentary, directed by Mike Tollin and premiering on ESPN on October 20, has many of the hallmarks of a Moore movie: It's funny, it's opinionated, and it takes glee in needling the rich and powerful.

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In this case, the rich and powerful target is Donald Trump, who bought the USFL's New Jersey Generals in 1984 and is blamed by some for the league's demise following an unsuccessful antitrust suit against the NFL in 1986. Trump is portrayed in the film as a man whose enormous ego smothered the USFL, which for three seasons played professional football in the spring.

So what did Trump do wrong? He insisted that the league needed to compete head-on with the NFL in the fall, explaining, "If God wanted football to be played in the spring, he wouldn't have created baseball." Hard to argue with that kind of logic.

But it didn't work out for the USFL, and there are still a whole lot of people associated with the USFL, from players to coaches to owners to members of the media, who blame its failure on Trump. Small Potatoes is probably a little unfair to Trump -- what killed the USFL wasn't so much Trump's hubris as declining TV ratings and attendance -- but it's still one of the most entertaining sports documentaries I've ever seen.

At this point I should probably disclose that I'm biased for the simple reason that one of my favorite childhood memories is of my father taking me to a USFL game when I was in kindergarten. It was the Michigan Panthers vs. the Denver Gold at the Pontiac Silverdome, and from my 6-year-old perspective, football didn't get any better.

The best part of Small Potatoes is hearing the recollections of dozens of other people who think football didn't get any better. Great players like Jim Kelly, Steve Young, Doug Flutie and Herschel Walker talk about how proud they were to play in the USFL. Tampa Bay Bandits coach Steve Spurrier talks about how innovative offensive systems like his own were welcomed in the USFL at the same time that they were shunned by the NFL. Bill Simmons makes an appearance wearing a Boston Breakers jersey and reminiscing about going to the games.

But the truth is, the USFL was small potatoes, relatively speaking, and the documentary takes its title from Trump making that point at the start of the film. It's amusing to hear Howard Cosell refer to a "$20 million, two-year deal" as a major commitment to the USFL from ABC. The NFL was making about $400 million a year in TV revenue at the time.

Realistically, the USFL never had much of a chance of succeeding. Its teams offered huge contracts to players like Kelly, Young, Flutie and Walker without having a sound business plan in place to make sure they could afford those salaries. And yet the USFL did succeed in one sense: For three years it gave us a lot of good football. Small Potatoes is a great documentary if for no other reason than it gives us a chance to see that good football again.