Catching Up With Jim McVay

From 1982-1986, Jim McVay served as the Director of Marketing for the Tampa Bay Bandits of the United States Football League. During that time, he devised the marketing strategies for the most innovative and fan-friendly product in the entire league. Today, McVay serves as the President/CEO of the Outback Bowl, one of the most popular and successful games of the college bowl season. McVay recently sat down to reflect on the era of good times and fun known around these parts as “Banditball.”

Q. What were the challenges of introducing a new football team into this market?

A. The Bucs were not successful when we started out. They were getting ready to go on strike. Nobody liked Hugh Culverhouse. He was not universally accepted. The guy wouldn’t spend any money on the team. Then the labor strike during the 1982 season enabled us to get the door open.

Then along came John Bassett hiring good-looking Steve Spurrier, a Heisman Trophy-winner from Florida with a great reputation. You had John Reaves, Jimmie Jordan, Florida, Florida State, Miami kids with local connections. Then you had Burt Reynolds, the number one box office draw. Back then was bigger than Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, all these guys combined. He was number one by far. Jerry Reed did our in-stadium music.

So here comes this fun, show-bizzy atmosphere built around Steve Spurrier and his wide-open offense. You talk about putting it together with a marketing blueprint. We had all the elements lined up. You have to have the right product, you have to have the right promotion, you have to have the right packaging, and you have to have the right pricing. It was a wonderful combination, and that’s why the Bandits did so well. It’s the other teams in the USFL that struggled a little. Not everybody was as well-managed as the Bandits and had the same organizational philosophy as John Bassett.

Q. Why is it that the Bandits seemed to have figured out the secret to succeeding, but so many other markets struggled?

A. If everybody would have followed John’s blueprint, the league would have had a chance. What really caused the problems was losing control of the salary parameters that had been established for the players. You don’t need to pay the players a ton of money. You hire a couple of high-priced guys and pay them some glamour money. When you start competing with the NFL, position by position, salary for salary when their revenues dwarf ours, sooner or later owners are going to say, “Why are we taking these losses?” That’s where the league got in trouble. Too many owners were spending money they didn’t have.

Q. Was this a league-wide problem or just a few rogue owners?

A. There were a few rogue owners, but it’s tough to tell guys who are multi-millionaires or billionaires how to run their business. They’ll do what they want to do. But what needed to be done was to get everyone to agree to stay within a certain financial parameter that met our television revenue and projected gates so that we could sustain ourselves and build an audience year after year. Then you get your larger television ratings and then your gate grows. Guys got ahead of themselves, didn’t like the idea of losing games, so they started throwing money at different players and positions that really didn’t make sense in our league. There is a market and there is a need for spring football. We really could have made that thing work, but guys got a little anxious, got a little spendy, and that’s how we got in trouble.

Q. The Bandits were known for their creative promotions. What were some of your favorites?

A. We did a little of everything. We had a Miss Tampa Bay bikini contest, we had a Krazy Karat contest where we gave away diamonds, we had mortgage burnings, we gave away a million dollar deferred annuity, we had car giveaways. We had seven automobiles out on the field for one game. We gave away seven brand new beautiful Dodge cars, and as the cars were being taken off the field, one of the cars disappeared. It was gone. Somebody got in the car, drove out the stadium and kept going. The police said what happened, were there any witnesses? I said, “yeah, there were 50,000 witnesses!” We never did find that car.

We did enough things around the game to add an element of entertainment and pizzazz to a product that people wanted. You can’t have a bad product and do all this fun, gimmicky marketing stuff. People want to watch football, and if they’re treated properly with the right promotions, packaging, pricing, then you’ve got a chance. John and the group were smart enough to give it a local flair with guys who had local ties, and then you do all the fun stuff. We used to get complaints from the concessionaire during our games. They’d tell us to stop doing all this halftime stuff because nobody was coming down to buy popcorn or hot dogs.
Everybody was staying in the stands at halftime!

You’ve got 100 beautiful girls on the field in bikinis or Jack Harris standing out there in a fireman’s suit burning mortgages and the table catches on fire, or we’re giving away diamonds. We made the fans feel like we respected them and weren’t going to take advantage of them. These things worked because they were wrapped around professional football. You’ve got to have the right product.

Q. What do you remember about the Smokey and the Bandit saga of 1985?

A. This was great. In the beginning, we developed an idea to have a black horse named Smokey, and a man dressed in black with a red bandana who was The Bandit. This became our logo. We thought it would be appropriate to have guy ride out onto the field to the “Banditball” theme song by Jerry Reed. It was really a great entrance.

So we’re doing some promotion, engaging and activating local sponsors. Kash n’ Karry was one of our big sponsors, and the horse and rider were part of the marketing and promotional concept with the store.

Before the 1985 season, the rider – who also owned the horse -- came to us and said because we are using their likenesses in advertisements that he wants to be paid “x” amount of dollars more. So I sat down with John Bassett in his office and I told him that the guy who rides the horse wants some more money or he’s not going to do it. Bassett, in his quick-witted and clear-thinking way, looks at me and says, “You think that’s the only black horse in Florida?”
I think the guy ended up coming around, but the brand had been built with a lot of money invested in advertising and promotions. There were a lot of moving parts that made us successful.

Unfortunately, the strength of who we were, and our model, couldn’t carry over to every team in the league to build the continuity and sustainability to make the league work. All we could do from our perspective is run our franchise the best that we could, and we did. We were called the model franchise of the USFL. The logos, the colors, the music, the atmosphere, everything was first class.

Grudge Match at Tampa Stadium, 5/26/85

Due to the brief history of the league, few rivalries were truly able to take hold in the USFL. Between expansion, relocation, and owners swapping franchises, the familiarity between teams that breeds contempt was hard to find.

There were two teams, however, who were exceptions to the rule: the Tampa Bay Bandits and the New Jersey Generals.

New Jersey running back Herschel Walker explained it as such: “There is no love lost between these two teams. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they’re from the South, and we’re from the North. Plus, the owners don’t like each other.”

In 1983, the Bandits won the first USFL game played at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, a 32-9 victory over the Generals. The Bandits were able to hold Walker to 39 yards on 19 carries. A year later Tampa Bay again defeated New Jersey, this time 40-14 in a laugher at Tampa Stadium.

Tampa Bay nearly pulled out a third win in their first of two meetings in 1985. Although quarterback John Reaves passed for 410 yards, the Bandits blew a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter and lost to the Generals, 28-24, behind a rushing touchdown by Walker with 24 seconds left.

"Of all the games we have lost in three yeas," head coach Steve Spurrier said, "that hurt the most because we gave it away."

By the time of the rematch on May 26, 1985, the Bandits had won two lopsided contests and suffered one heartbreaking defeat to the Generals. If the competition felt heated on the field, by this point some serious competition had already taken place off the field between New Jersey owner Donald Trump and Tampa Bay owner John Bassett.

It is well known that Trump garnered the most headlines and attracted the most attention during his two seasons as owner of the Generals. He led the charge among USFL owners to move from the spring to the fall and compete head-to-head against the NFL.

Standing in direct opposition to him was Bassett, who believed that the USFL could only succeed as a spring alternative to the NFL. When USFL owners decided on April 29 to officially move to the fall, Bassett announced his intention to break away from the USFL and form his own spring league.

The two clearly had major philosophical differences on the future of the USFL, and while many fans and media members might have liked to view the game as a grudge match between Bassett and Trump, in actuality neither owner even planned on attending in person. While Trump watched the game from his weekend home in Connecticut, Bassett recuperated in his Toronto-area home from radiation treatments for his brain tumors.

On the field, the Bandits would have their hands plenty full containing Herschel Walker without also having the weight of league matters on their shoulders. Walker came into the game having rushed for over 100 yards in seven consecutive games. If the Bandits could control Walker -- who happened to be both New Jersey's leading rusher and receiver -- they could force quarterback Doug Flutie to beat them, and Flutie had yet to become anything more than a deft scrambler and mediocre passer in his rookie season.

Without the services of star nose guard Fred Nordgren, who had been lost for the season due to a broken leg, the task of stopping Walker may have been too much to expect.

Still, anyone hoping to see a good game did not leave Tampa Stadium disappointed. In fact, the estimated crowd of 35,000 may have witnessed one of the most exciting games in Bandit history.

A first half duel between Walker, and Tampa Bay's own rushing star Gary Anderson, set the tone for the game.

Walker started the scoring late in the first quarter with a 12-yard rushing touchdown to give New Jersey a 7-0 lead. Anderson answered back less than three minutes later on an 8-yard pass from John Reaves to nod the game 7-7.

Both Walker and Anderson added second quarter rushing touchdowns and the teams headed into the locker room tied 14-14.

Midway through the third quarter, Reaves found tight end Marvin Harvey on a 21-yard strike to give the Bandits a seven-point lead. Walker and the Generals would not go away, however, and the running back notched his third rushing touchdown of the day early in the fourth quarter to once again even up the contest.

With the score tied and time winding down, the Bandits marched 63 yards on 11 plays to set up a potential game-winning field goal by Zenon Andrusyshyn with 1:36 left in the game. The kicker known as "Z" to his teammates nailed a 29-yarder to give Tampa Bay a 24-21 lead. Still, the fireworks in this game were just getting started.

A hallmark of his collegiate and 21-year professional career, staging late comebacks was simply Doug Flutie's specialty. Despite only pedestrian statistics to that point (5 completions for 68 yards), Flutie would go on to produce the finest comeback of his rookie season.

Working with no timeouts and the Bandits running a prevent defense, Flutie completed five passes for 44 yards while driving the Generals 51 yards in 1:32 to set up a game-tying field goal. With just four seconds left in regulation, Roger Ruzek split the uprights from 40 yards out to send the game into overtime.

Tampa Bay punted after their first possession of overtimes, setting the stage for Flutie to cap the comeback. It didn't take long, as he connected on a much-disputed 49-yard strike to receiver Clarence Collins.

One referee ruled offensive pass interference on the play, which would have nullified the catch. He then changed his mind, calling defensive pass interference on corner Warren Hanna. Safety Marcus Quinn disputed that Collins even made a catch, saying that the ball hit the ground. A second referee ruled the pass a catch, but said that he did not see any interference on the play.

"It was a real mess," Quinn said after the game.

The "catch" and declined pass interference call set New Jersey up at the Tampa Bay 18-yard line, almost certainly guaranteeing a Ruzek field goal attempt to win the game.

With 11:07 remaining in overtime, the Generals lined up for the game-winning kick. Punter Rick Patridge, on for the hold, fumbled the snap. Instead of dropping on the ball -- which because the play came on second down would have given New Jersey another chance to kick -- Patridge scooped up the football and made a break for the end zone. Diving towards the pylon, Patridge became the unlikeliest of heroes as his nine-yard rushing touchdown delivered New Jersey to victory.

It was a stunning end to another late-game collapse against New Jersey. The defeat cost the Bandits a chance to clinch a berth in the playoffs. The defense, which had kept Tampa Bay in the game despite a three-touchdown, 166 yard rushing performance by Walker, simply could not stop Flutie when it mattered most.

Defensive end Mike Clark called the game a "tough loss."

"It's going to be kind of tough to get over this one for the whole team."

Indeed, if the next few games were any indication, it may have been a loss from which the franchise never truly recovered.

Rowdies Avenge Soccer Bowl '79, 5/18/80

On September 8, 1979, the Vancouver Whitecaps defeated the Tampa Bay Rowdies 2-1 in the Soccer Bowl '79 championship game. For the second straight season, the Rowdies fell just short of a North American Soccer League championship.

They would not have to wait very long, however, for their first crack at avenging that defeat to Vancouver.

In a nationally televised showdown on ABC -- with a special in-stadium appearance by the San Diego Chicken -- the Rowdies hosted the Whitecaps at Tampa Stadium on May 18, 1980.

While the names of the teams were the same, both Tampa Bay and Vancouver bore little resemblance to the teams that faced off in Giants Stadium eight months earlier. With the Rowdies at 5-3 and the defending champions a mere 4-5, the matchup proved somewhat less glamorous than their previous contest. Injuries had taken an early toll on the Rowdies, while the Whitecaps had struggled with some high-priced new talent.

The Rowdies were hopeful that new acquisition Manny Andruszewski could have an immediate impact. A noted defensive specialist, the Rowdies acquired him from Southampton Football Club in the English First Division. Andruszewski had previously played for the Rowdies in 1979 while on loan from Southampton. On May 16, the Rowdies purchased the 23-year-old fullback's contract outright, a transaction rumored to have cost $250,000 ($642,493 in today's dollars).

He made his Tampa debut almost exactly one year earlier in a sweltering home contest against the New York Cosmos. His first experience in Florida weather proved memorable, as he needed to get iced down at the half to combat his 103-degree body temperature.

On another hot and humid day, the Rowdies welcomed back another important player as well: Oscar Fabbiani. Known as the "Big O," Fabbiani had been sidelined with an injured ankle since an April 20 game against the Cosmos in New York. Injuries to Fabbiani, Wes McLeod and Peter Anderson had contributed to the team's recent lack of scoring punch. Teams could also concentrate on shutting down Steve Wegerle and Neill Roberts without the presence of an additional scoring threat such as Fabbiani.

In front of 27,504 fans at a sweltering Tampa Stadium -- the gametime temperature was 93 degrees -- the Rowdies regained that scoring punch thanks in large part to Fabbiani.

The Rowdies energized the crowd early with two goals in the game's first 15 minutes. Peter Baralic set up the first goal in the 9th minute with a nifty pass to Steve Wegerle, who weaved through three defenders before putting the ball in the back of the net. For Wegerle, it was his fourth goal of the season, and just the start of what striker Neill Roberts called a "classic" performance.

"It was the best display I've ever seen in the NASL," Roberts said of Wegerle following the game.

Barely more than 5 minutes later, Oscar Fabbiani celebrated his return to the lineup by putting a penalty kick past Bruce Grobbelaar to make the score 2-0.

Despite trailing by two goals, Vancouver would not go away quietly. Trevor Whymark, who tallied both of Vancouver's Soccer Bowl '79 goals against the Rowdies, beat Winston DuBose in the 26th minute to make it a 2-1 game.

The Whitecaps would eventually even the score early in the second half. Bob Boltho beat DuBose inside the near post, putting it just over his shoulder to tie the game 2-2.

To curb Vancouver's momentum, Tampa Bay head coach Gordon Jago moved Andruszewski from fullback to midfield to shadow Vancouver midfielder and English soccer legend Alan Ball. The move worked, as Tampa Bay successfully stifled the Vancouver attack and created an opening for the eventual game-winning goal.

In the 73rd minute, team captain Jan Van Der Veen found an opening in the middle near the penalty box, and rather than taking a shot on goal, dished off to Fabbiani on his left. Fabbiani made a move around one defender and then slipped the ball past Grobbelaar for the deciding goal, his second of the game. Not a bad performance for someone playing in his first full game in nearly eight months.

"That was a world-class goal," Ball said after the game. "And it took a world-class goal to beat us."

The Rowdies would hold on for a 3-2 victory over the Whitecaps, an important win that while not offering complete redemption for Soccer Bowl '79, instilled the Rowdies with a renewed sense of swagger.

"The result today and the manner of it will be a confidence builder," said Jago. "This was a good side we beat."