Could the USFL return as an NFL developmental league?

Gather round the fire, friends, and listen well: you know those myths about there once being another football league besides the NFL? A league that boasted stars like Steve Young, Herschel Walker, Doug Flutie, and Jim Kelly? A league brought low, some say, by none other than Donald Trump? You probably dismissed such tales as legend, the fanciful musings of sportswriters too jacked on pressbox coffee. But, like Han Solo says in the new Star Wars trailer: It's all true. All of it.

The USFL, one of the last great audacious gambles in American sports history, existed only from 1983 to 1985, yet still managed to corral some of the greatest football talent of the day. The USFL tried a novel gambit, playing football in the spring, yet ran into disaster when it tried to challenge the NFL in the fall. (ESPN's 30 for 30 documentary on the USFL, "Small Potatoes," is a must-watch.)

Jim Bailey, a former executive vice president with the Browns and the Ravens, is looking to bring back the USFL, but not as a competitor to the NFL. Instead, the "new" USFL would serve as a feeder league to the NFL, a place where players who fail to make the cut for an NFL roster could play their way into future opportunities.

"We are strictly a developmental league," Bailey told Fortune magazine. "We’re going to work with guys who have been in NFL camps that didn’t make it, that need more time to mature or to learn the pro system. The pros don’t have time to nurture guys. So that’s our focus."

It's a decent enough idea, but according to Fortune, the new USFL is still struggling to raise the "modest" $5 million in seed money, primarily for startup costs. The "league" is still in its infancy, with a bare-bones website and only 2,000 Twitter followers and less than 5,000 Facebook fans, but Bailey is optimistic that the league will come to fruition without waiting on the NFL's blessing.

"The NFL is aware of us, and we haven’t asked them for anything and don’t intend to," Bailey said. "As we develop, something may or may not develop, but we plan to operate independently indefinitely."

The new league would play in the spring and conclude in July, finishing up in time to send players to camps. Teams would play in markets not already serviced by professional teams. Bailey would like to start play in 2016, but he's not planning on it.

And no, after leading the old USFL into its disastrous court battle with the NFL, Trump will not be allowed anywhere near the new USFL. As the league posted earlier this summer on its Twitter account:

 

	USFL @theUSFL
Anybody but Trump! 9:00 AM - 16 Jun 2015