USFL Commissioner Harry Usher said his league...

USFL Commissioner Harry Usher said his league is dying and put the blame on the rival NFL, saying that the 4-year-old USFL had been “pushed and shoved” by its larger rival into its tenuous situation.

Usher made the statements in New York under cross-examination in the trial of the USFL’s antitrust suit against the NFL.

Usher outlined the series of financial failures that led the USFL to move out of major markets into smaller, less lucrative ones. He said it was all the work of the NFL, which followed the plan laid out for it during a seminar by a Harvard Business School professor in February, 1984.

NFL attorney Frank Rothman asked Usher if he was aware of a 1984 offer by ABC’s Jim Spence to extend the USFL’s contract for three years at $175 million if the league would not switch to a fall schedule for 1986. Usher said he did not know of any such offer.