Cable television pioneers Alan Harmon and Bill Daniels were awarded a USFL franchise for San Diego when the league announced its formation in 1982.
However, it was a relatively antiquated facility (built in 1915) that had not had a major tenant since the Chargers moved into Jack Murphy in 1967, and was now largely used by high school teams.
However, upset losses to the New Jersey Generals and Washington Federals in weeks 16 and 17 respectively cost the Express the Pacific Division title and allowed the Oakland Invaders to claim the last 1983 playoff berth.
[1] The crowds looked even smaller than that due to the cavernous size of the Coliseum, which seated almost 95,000 people at the time, far and away the largest stadium in pro football.
rookies in italics 40 Active, 9 Developmental Harmon and Daniels grew alarmed at their fellow owners' increasingly reckless spending.
Soon after taking over, Oldenburg hired veteran NFL executive Don Klosterman as general manager and former Chargers and Los Angeles Rams quarterback John Hadl as head coach.
Agent Leigh Steinberg negotiated for Young what was then reported to be the largest professional sports contract ever signed – a 10-year deal worth over US$40 million.
But despite the all-star lineup, the team struggled to compete with the popularity of the Raiders (who had just won the Super Bowl) and the Rams: the Express only drew 15,361 people per game, down from 19,713 a year earlier.
The Express won the division title on a tiebreaker, and got to play the Michigan Panthers, who had limped into the playoffs with a 4–8 record in their last 12 games since losing star wide receiver Anthony Carter for the season, while Arizona got Jim Kelly's red hot 13–5 Houston Gamblers.
As it turned out, the contest was the longest in professional football history: a three-overtime, 93 minute and 33 second marathon won by the Express 27–21 on a touchdown run by Mel Gray.
But since the Coliseum was being readied for the 1984 Summer Olympics, the game was shifted to the Wranglers' home, Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona.
Multiple exposés by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times revealed Oldenburg not only had a habit of luring savings and loans into questionable deals, but was also nowhere near as well off as he had long claimed.
With Oldenburg as the only credible bidder for the Express after Harmon and Daniels pulled out, the league only conducted a cursory review of his finances.
While Oldenburg had gained a reputation as the enfant terrible of the league, no one even suspected that he was a fraud until the FBI and newspaper investigations revealed that he had virtually no money.
Subsequent investigations suggested that much of that figure came from buying a piece of property for a discount, then selling it to a small bank that he owned for ten times its actual worth.
[5][1] Late in the season, just days after the Times article, Oldenburg told league officials that he could no longer afford to pay the Express' bills.
[1] Real estate magnate and Houston Gamblers minority owner Jay Roulier got preliminary approval to take over the team in October.
Despite this, the turmoil surrounding the Express led league insiders and reporters to wonder when, not if, the team would implode, even with the trove of talent on the roster.
The expected implosion happened in February 1985, when Roulier's lawyer sounded wary about discussing her boss's finances with league executive director and general counsel Bill McSherry.
At one point late in the season, the team was so short of healthy offensive linemen that one player had to back up the entire starting line.
[5] Even without this to consider, the young Express players suspected that the team wouldn't be around for the planned move to the fall in 1986, even if the league managed to survive the 1985 season.
[1][5] Even as the team's infrastructure fell apart, the players still got paid, thus avoiding a repeat of situations in Portland, Arizona, Houston and San Antonio.
In a bizarre scene, the players rolled into team headquarters in Manhattan Beach in luxury cars and toting Gucci bags, but the grass on the practice fields went uncut for much of the season because the landscapers hadn't been paid.
[1][5] Attendance continued to plummet; the club drew just 67,533 fans for their eight dates at the Coliseum combined – well short of the stadium's capacity for even a single game – or 8,442 per contest.
That game almost didn't occur when the team's bus driver refused to take them to Pierce College without being paid up front, in cash.
However, the contest was still not a sellout; only 8,200 people (barely half of the stadium's capacity, and actually less than their average in the Coliseum) saw Young and the Express lose 21–10 to Doug Williams and the Outlaws.
However, many of the very issues that plagued the Express in 1985 made it very likely the team would not have returned even if the league had succeeded in winning a large payoff from the NFL to finance a move to a fall schedule in 1986.
The "Los Angeles Express" name was briefly revived in 2013 for a proposed A-11 Football League team, but those plans fell through in April 2014 due to California's workers compensation situation.