Alumni Album

Point Man of the Federals

In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloodied, but unbowed.

— from Invictus by William Ernest Henley

You would expect BERL BERNHARD '5 1 to own a yacht dubbed Invictus it is precisely the kind of bravado Ed Muskie's campaign manager must have needed in 1972. You would expect him to adorn his office with the framed words of some frenetic American hero like Teddy Roosevelt he was President Kennedy's director of the Commission on Civil Rights. You would expect him to counsel Ford Foundations, corporate magnates, and the Democratic National Committee he is one of Washington's best-connected lawyers.

You would expect all of this of Berl Bernhard; you would not, however, expect him to own a professional football team. Yet he stands at the helm of the Washington Federals, one of the nascent United States Football League's premiere franchises. "It isn't entirely as bizarre as it sounds," he claims, his pipesmoked baritone flecked with youthful enthusiasm as he prowls his downtown office. "I've spent a good part of my life in various forms of competitive activity, whether it's been law or government or politics or ocean yacht racing."

Not surprisingly, it was a combination of all his pursuits that led Bernhard to this most recent venture.

He had iust finished slooping around Antigua in November of 1981, after closing a big oil deal for his old friend, Marvin Warner. The head of Warner International (who had also served as President Carter's ambassador to Switzerland) mentioned that he was starting up a springtime competitor to the National Football League. Warner said he was planning to direct the D.C. team, and he was looking for legal counsel.

Bernhard was skeptical. "Football in the spring? he recalls with a smile. "My first reaction was that's un-American.

So the subject was dropped. The lawyer returned to Washington and had nearly forgotten the incident when he received another call. Warner, it seemed, was being pressured by the hometown folks who wanted him to assume the Alabama franchise. Would Berl take over the *D.C. team?

"C' mon I don't have that kind of money." Won't need it," came the reply.

Warner and his people began unfolding their master plan, rePlete with lessons gleaned from the World Football League debacle of the mid-70s. The revamped approach: assault major markets housing big stadiums that could handle growing popularity > strive for intra-league balance to prevent media dominance by one or two teams; and, above all, why go head-to-head with the fully ripened NFL when the spring season lies fallow?

"They had a nationwide marketing survey showing that 76 percent of the people who were contacted would like to see pro football in the spring," says Bernhard. "That blew my mind."

"It became clear to me that this was incredibly well organized, well financed, well planned, and based on a very disciplined constitution. So I started talking to a number of people, and I finally decided that it was possible to do."

Bernhard became the point man in a six-partner ownership. His personal ambition, coupled with 25 years of connections in and around the nation's capital, fired the organizational engine.

For Bernhard, launching the Federals was not so different from engineering a presidential campaign. "Politics,' he says, seem to be one thing on the outside, but they are something else on the inside. Any campaign has to be extremely well-organized, and there is much of that in trying to put this together. The key issues are capability and credibility. Without that, the media will discount you and you're dead."

The media obstacle was hurdled in late 1982, though that yielded no guarantees of success. A league contract with ABC and carefully negotiated local radio deals promised a spate of coverage, but the central questions remained: Would the people watch? Would they come to the stadium?

For Bernhardt franchise, a slew of Washingtonians answered that question by the time a squad had entered training camp in late January. More than 15,000 people had purchased season tickets before the team ever touched the field.

One important boost for the Federals was provided by the multi-million-dollar signing of running back Craig James, who would have been snapped up early in the NFL draft. Then the league's New Jersey franchise staged the biggest, most controversial coup to date, signing the University of Georgia's Heisman Trophy winner, Herschel Walker.

The tempestuous dispute that raged in the wake of the college junior's signing brought the new league a bit of bad press. But oh, did it bring press! And while some observers fretted over the danger of competing leagues inundating undergraduate phenoms with lucrative offers, Bernhard and others defended the action.

"There's been a lot of self-righteous chest thumping," he says. "But I don't think this augurs any wholesale destruction of the professional-collegiate relationship. We simply have to develop some way of balancing the colleges rights against a young mans right to seek employment."

You would expect that kind of even-handed, proportional selfinterest from Berl Bernhard he is staring down the barrel of a high-caliber business risk, but he is also one of the charter trustees at a 200-year-old college. So he surrenders another chap- ter of his future to the clutch of circumstance and the bludgeon- ings of chance. Invictus.