Sport: On Flutie's Wing, and a Prayer

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As the United States Football League's scrappy new hero, Doug Flutie has been cast in the role of David trying to lift Goliath. After losing $100 million in its first two years, the league is pinning its latest hopes on the star power of Flutie, Boston College's miracle missile launcher and now New Jersey's , littlest General. But the U.S.F.L. started its third season last week long on pricey players, short on revenues and looking down the barrel of its own decision to take on the towering National Football League with a switch to a fall schedule in 1986. Even so, new U.S.F.L. Commissioner Harry Usher, fresh from his triumphs as second-in-command of last summer's Olympics, insists that "the state of the league has never been more positive than it is now." Looking back, he may be right.

Last year's Official U.S.F.L. Guide was a collector's item for trivia buffs before the season was out. Of the 18 teams listed in 1984, 14 are still functioning, and three of those only marginally. Just for starters, the 1983 champion Michigan Panthers have merged into the Oakland Invaders, and the Arizona Wranglers have combined with the Oklahoma Outlaws as the new Arizona Outlaws. The Philadelphia Stars, last year's champs, subsumed the Pittsburgh Maulers and emerged, farther south, as the new Baltimore Stars.

Other teams relocated in hopes of attracting more interest: 1984's Washington Federals are 1985's Orlando Renegades, while the New Orleans Breakers, who had just finished moving down from Boston, packed up again and are now playing in Portland, Ore. The Chicago Blitz is a paper franchise, having suspended play for this season and dealt out its squad like so many cards to other U.S.F.L. teams. While a few U.S.F.L. franchises are catching on, none of them are breaking even. Indeed, the L.A. Express played its opener last Sunday on welfare, so deep in the red that it is currently being supported by the other teams.

Can this league be saved? "I don't know," says Tampa Bay Bandits Owner John Bassett. "It's like being in a canoe and rowing like hell against a wind and tide moving 200 m.p.h. You have to wonder." That from a man whose team has enjoyed good attendance by U.S.F.L. standards, an average of 36,900 spectators in 1984.

What most worries Bassett and some of his fellow owners is the U.S.F.L.'s plan to move to the fall in its fourth year. Says he: "I don't like it at all. We've done well. But the league decided, and we have to go along." Critics thought that the spectacle of 100 degrees football weather and electric fans to cool players on the sidelines gave the league the look of a fish out of water. "If you want to play big-time football, you have to play it in its natural environment," says Myles Tanenbaum, co-owner of the Stars. "Trying to convince fans otherwise has been futile."