In 1983 the upstart United States Football League (USFL) had the audacity to challenge the almighty NFL. The new league did the unthinkable by playing in the spring and plucked three straight Heisman Trophy winners away from the NFL. The 12-team USFL played before crowds that averaged 25,000, and started off with respectable TV ratings. But with success came expansion and new owners, including a certain high profile and impatient real estate baron whose vision was at odds with the league’s founders. Soon, the USFL was reduced to waging a desperate anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL, which yielded an ironic verdict that effectively forced the league out of business. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, Academy Award-nominated and Peabody Award-winning director Mike Tollin, himself once a chronicler of the league, will showcase the remarkable influence of those three years on football history and attempt to answer the question, “Who Killed the USFL?”
The real life counter parts of the 1999 Richmond basketball team that were portrayed in the 2005 film of the same name. Discuss what there coach means to them.
Michael "Mike" Tollin (born June 10, 1955) is an American film director and film/television producer. His career highlights included Radio, Coach Carter, and Varsity Blues. He frequently collaborates with Brian Robbins in which they own a production company together called Tollin/Robbins Productions. They created and produced such shows like All That, The Amanda Show, Kenan & Kel, One Tree Hill, Smallville, What I Like About You, The Bronx is Burning and a few others. Tollin was the producer of the weekly highlights show for the United States Football League, the springtime football league which played from 1983 through 1985. In 2009, he served as executive producer for the hour-long documentary Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL? for ESPN's 30 for 30 series. He was also part of a number of the series films, as one of the production members. Tollin is originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Description above from the Wikipedia article Michael Tollin, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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