An ongoing project to imagine a world where challengers to the NFL found their way and changed the game.
Welcome to Footballt History
The history of pro football is dominated by the National Football League, but from its inception until today there has been no shortage of alternative leagues, some direct rivals, some feeder leagues or attempts at creating a minor league of pro football. Few survived past a handful of years, many died on the vine, some even before playing a single game.
This site is devoted to imagining a world where some of the most famous alternative or rival football leagues actually found a way to survive. It began with my love of the USFL and the firm belief that the 3-year league from the mid-1980's could have had a real shot of making football a year-round sport with just a few changes to their history. It continues with a look at the short-lived World Football League of the 1970's, lasting only a season and a half before collapsing under the weight of their own financial and structural shortcomings.
So, what will you find here?
In "The USFL Lives" you will find a project in simulated football games, alternate history imagination, and nearly 6 years of work, initiated in November 2020 as a Covid-19 coping mechanism, and just kept plugging, with 2-3 stories published each week until the conclusion of the 2022 USFL season in May of 2026. This project put together 40 seasons of a successful spring USFL that spanned 1983 to 2022, one that not only survived but thrived, becoming the nation's 2nd most popular professional sports league and rivaling the NFL step by step. You will find stories, game recaps, stats, offseason reports, and championship seasons that included not only famous USFL players like Herschel Walker, Kelvin Bryant, Doug Flutie, or Bobby Hebert, but 40 years of stars that would go on to include the likes of Randy Moss, Eddie George, Calais Campbell, and a certain late-round draft pick QB from Michigan, Tom Brady.
The "WFL Reborn" section kicks off in August of 2026, and will begin with the 1973 announcement from Gary Davidson of a rival league to the NFL. The plan is to move from there to a 1975 kickoff (one year later than in our reality), more stable ownership, fewer PR gaffs, and a real chance to impact the NFL through acquisition of draft talent and NFL stars in an age before Free Agency was a feature of pro football. As with our USFL project, we will see leaguewide and team history changed, we will also see offseason moves and every game of every week of every season explored through a series of weekly articles published on the site. We hope to imagine a WFL that is different from our USFL experiment, that maintains its vision of an international pro football league, and one that offers an exciting brand of football. Will they attain the level of success our alt-history USFL did, or will they end up as something very different. Starting this September you can follow along, and through online polls, help mold the alternate history of a very alternative league.
The USFL Lives
Playing for only 3 seasons from 1983-1985, the USFL was ambitious, a true threat to the NFL. The league signed Heisman winner Herschel Walker its first year, opening the doors to sign future Heisman winners, NFL veterans, and respected coaches. But as the league was bringing in star players, it was also hemorrhaging money. A proposed move to the fall in 1986, along with a disastrous anti-trust court case proved to be too much for the league to survive. This Alt History of the USFL asks what if the league had stayed in the spring? What if their lawsuit had produced a true windfall, not a check for only $3.00? What if the league had survived, finding a niche in the American sports scene for spring football? This Alt History follows that USFL from their ambitious 1983 start all the way through their 40th season in 2022, with big names, big games, and big money in a world where the league not only lasted, but thrived
The WFL Reborn
The World Football League emerged in 1974 as a potential rival to the NFL less than a decade after the American Football League successfully challenged the senior league, producing a merger that would form the modern NFL. The brainchild of ABA and WHA founder Gary Davidson, the WFL mixed NFL markets and new cities with a promise to eventually go beyond the borders of the USA. What the world got instead was a chaotic array of financial malfeasance, botched public relations, teams folding or relocating mid-season, and general disarray. The WFL Reborn will imagine a WFL that recognized its shortcomings before even kicking off, delayed a year, got its house into some semblance of order and put into place some plans to control costs and market more effectively. Will this produce a longstanding rival to the NFL? Another merger with the king of pro football leaugues? Or something entirely different? We begin our alternate history of the WFL in 1973, with plans to build the league, and a fateful decision to delay the league's debut until 1975. What happens after that is anyone's guess, but we will follow the league as it escapes early disaster and tries to find a place in the marketplace of the American sports fan.
