USFL remains a spring league. Develops good relationship with NFL. It evolves into smaller developmental league.
Main rivalry is with CFL
Kind of like NFL Europe but domestic, bigger and probably more wide-open and wild. I see it as less a purposeful developmental league and more a place where guys who don’t catch on go. Or in time, if the NFL stubbornly refuses to lift its three-year wait time, players who don’t like college go there to develop as an alternative, so it kind of combines a minor league, a G-league, and NFL Europe, and a second-tier league. Players there maybe make $100,000 instead of millions. Some major cities keep their teams but it becomes a hallmark of medium-size cities and college towns (I see Columbus, OH having a team along with the likes of Vegas, Fresno, Jacksonville and Baltimore.)
An interesting wrinkle - what about cities that got NFL teams after the dawn of the USFL? Say the Stars stick around in Baltimore - is the city so eager or even willing to rope in the Browns? Does this stall NFL expansion - or act as a catalyst? Does Phoenix snap up ten Cardinals when it has the Outlaws? And are some cities big enough to handle both? I’m looking at places like NYC, Houston, Chicago and LA; for that matter, if the USFL sticks around and the Invaders Park it in San Jose, is there any reason for the Raiders to leave LA?
If I had the time, I’d put in a POD where Donald Trump buys an NFL team and doesn’t get near the USFL, and it remains a spring league that, while it falls on some tough times, survives and grows beyond the 1980s.