The NFL has faced rival leagues in the past, and routinely squashed them without breaking so much as a sweat. The NFL’s powerful commissioner, Pete Rozelle, assumes the USFL will be no different. He sees the rival league as a joke. A blip on the radar. But then the new league does something no one saw coming: it signs University of Georgia junior Herschel Walker, the biggest star in college football.

When Walker signs with the USFL’s New Jersey Generals, he leaves more than his college diploma on the table. The Heisman trophy-winner passes up a seat at the table of America’s Team, the legendary Dallas Cowboys. “This,” Rozelle tells his colleagues, “is war.”