However, under pressure from baseball's Padres, the NFL's Chargers and the NASL's Sockers, the city refused to grant Tatham a lease for Jack Murphy Stadium.

Moreover, the only viable facility, the University of Tulsa's Skelly Stadium, needed major renovations in order to bring it to something approaching professional standards.

The club was the second major-league sports team to play in the state, after the North American Soccer League's Tulsa Roughnecks.

On July 7, 1983, at the same time the USFL announced the expansion team, Tatham introduced Hall of Fame member Sid Gillman, who came out of retirement at age 71 to serve as the Director of Operations.

In what proved to be a harbinger of things to come, Tatham and his son, Bill Jr.–who was tapped as general manager despite being fresh out of law school–discovered soon after the ink dried on his lease with TU that school officials had vastly inflated attendance figures for Tulsa Golden Hurricane football games in hopes of maintaining their Division I-A status.

However, business manager Bill Wall, TU's former athletic director, told them after the season opener that the Hurricane actually drew 17,000 per game.

[1][3] Fortunately for the Tathams, they had a lifeline in Gillman's highest-profile signing, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Doug Williams, who bolted to the upstart league when the Bucs rejected his offer for a significant pay raise out of hand.

Williams was not a very refined, efficient, or consistent passer at that point in addition to being a little rusty, but had a big arm and a knack for making plays.

A young out-of-work oil worker, defensive end and part-time musician named Toby Covel played during the Outlaws' preseason but failed to make the team and played that season with the Oklahoma City Drillers, an unofficial farm team; under his middle name Toby Keith, he eventually emerged as a major country music star.

The team only drew 15,937 to their first game, a home opener versus the expansion Pittsburgh Maulers on a rainy and cold spring day.

However, the deal collapsed at the last minute because Invaders owner Tad Taube was unwilling to give control of the team to the younger Tatham.

Despite advancing all the way to the USFL title game after essentially trading rosters with the Chicago Blitz, the Wranglers' 1984 attendance figures—although respectable—were not enough to cover expenses.

Owner Dr. Ted Diethrich, who had swapped the Blitz for the Wranglers in the 1983–84 offseason, had anticipated much higher attendance after bringing most of a team reckoned as an NFL-caliber unit to Phoenix.

Additionally, he never was paid in full for selling the Chicago franchise rights after the new Blitz owner, James Hoffman, saw his finances collapse.

With few exceptions, they retained the 1984 Wranglers' defensive players and coaches, while bringing Williams and most of the 1984 Outlaws offense with them to Arizona.

By this time, they had become strong proponents of moving to the fall, and ultimately forcing a merger with the NFL (in which case their investment would have more than doubled).

Years later, defensive line coach John Teerlinck claimed that Kush told him not to worry too much about winning, since it was very likely that the Outlaws would be one of the surviving teams in any merger with the NFL "and our owners will make a lot of money."

It did not help matters that the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles and St. Louis Cardinals were taking a serious look at moving to Phoenix which had rocketed to major-city status due to its explosive growth in the second half of the 20th century.

On one of those flights, from Houston back to Phoenix, the simmering tension on the team finally boiled over when Teerlinck got in a fight with offensive tackle Donnie Hickman.

After the Portland Breakers folded while the antitrust trial was still underway, the Outlaws were the only team west of the Mississippi River left in the league.

The Outlaws, and the rest of the league, had been counting on the lawsuit money to finance their move to the fall and bail out their unsustainable spending.

In a last-ditch desperation move, in January 1987, Tatham met with the Canadian Football League hoping to transfer the Outlaws, along with any other USFL team that was willing and able, to the CFL.

The CFL's owners, who were facing their own financial crisis due to the loss of its television sponsorship, doubted that any commitment by a U.S. team to honor Canadian player quotas would withstand legal challenges.

[9] The CFL commissioner ultimately rejected the proposal (along with a similar one from Charles O. Finley), stating: "if any expansion takes place, it will be within the bounds of Canada.