As recently as a few weeks ago, Mouse Davis received a telephone call that jarred his memory back more than 20 years.
The voice on the other end of the line was talking about reviving the United States Football League.
Davis quickly thought about the Denver Gold team he coached in 1985, the USFL’s final season.
Although he has left the Gold far behind in a coaching career that has spanned more than 50 years, the ghost of the USFL seems to follow Davis around. The recent call wasn’t the first contact over the years from someone professing interest in starting a new pro football league. From his office at Portland State, where he is the Big Sky Conference team’s offensive coordinator, Davis has learned to keep things in perspective.
“The caller wanted to know if I’d be interested in coaching in his league,” said Davis, 76. “Interest doesn’t go very far these days. The price of doing something like that takes people out of the market.”
Davis always listens. He doesn’t tire of talk about the Gold or the league. He’s learned that a Denver Gold website exists.
“The Gold was my first head coaching job in the pros,” Davis said. “I have good memories. It was a fun time. The league was good, and the players were good.”
Not long ago, the operator of the Denver Gold website sent Davis a DVD of the 1985 game between the Gold and the Arizona Wranglers. The Wranglers were the top defensive team in the USFL, and Davis was a top offensive mind with his high-scoring, run-and-shoot offense.
It didn’t take long before Davis was totally focused on the tape. The game unfolded just as he remembered it.
“I could pick out all the players,” Davis said. “No. 44 was Vincent White. We called him Bubble Butt.”
The USFL was a spring league, playing its games after the NFL finished its season. But after the 1985 season, a group of the league’s owners, led by Donald Trump, owner of the New Jersey Generals, decided to move the season to the fall and go head-to-head with the NFL.
Theory had it that the USFL’s move to the fall would force the NFL to add some USFL teams in a merger. It didn’t happen, and the USFL didn’t play another game, despite partially winning an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL that provided $3 in compensation. However, the USFL did not win the part of the suit that claimed the NFL had a monopoly on television broadcasting rights.
So after three seasons of play (1983-85) and operating losses of more than $163 million, the USFL said goodbye.
“The NFL is king,” Davis said. “If it wants to kill you, it kills you. I think the USFL owners believed they would get two NFL franchises.”
To this day, Davis believes the USFL might have survived had it remained a spring league.
His one-year record was 11-8, including a playoff loss to the Memphis Showboats. He followed Red Miller and Craig Morton at the helm of the Gold.
“It was a better league for a coach than the NFL,” Davis said. “In the NFL, you get interference from so many people.”
Davis remembered having “a great working association” with Doug Spedding, who owned the Gold.
Older brother Don Davis gave him the nickname “Mouse” because he was younger and smaller than other players when he made his high school baseball team.
“I can’t shake it and I’ve accepted it,” Davis said. “I recently remarried, and I was introduced once as Darrel Davis. My wife asked, ‘Who’s Darrel?’ ”
Coaching was almost a foregone conclusion for Davis. He claimed he knew he would become a coach when he was in the eighth grade. He made stops at the high school, college and professional levels, proclaiming the merits of his run- and-shoot offense most of the way. On several of his coaching stops, he was associated with June Jones, also a member of the Gold’s coaching staff.
“You name the league and I’ve been there,” said Davis, who coached in the NFL with the Atlanta Falcons (1994-95) and Detroit Lions (1988-90). “I once figured out that we moved 22 times. Coaching has been good to me, but one of these days I’ll hang it up.”
Davis bio
Born: Sept. 6, 1932, in Palouse, Wash.
High school: Independence (Ore.) High School
College: Western Oregon
Family: Wife Mary Lou, sons Brad and Brent, daughters Debbie and D’Ann
Hobby: Golf
Desire: Winning more football games.
