The Brilliant Closer

The weather in Birmingham is almost sure to be unbearably hot. The All-Star game that is big-league baseball's midsummer breather will not yet have taken place. But no matter. Come July 10, the pro-football season is going to start. On that date the new World Football League will make its debut in five cities, beginning a five-month season of midweek games. That odd, extended schedule will not be the league's only novelty. Determined to upstage the N.F.L., the W.F.L. will offer everything from singular team names (among them the Chicago Fire and the Southern California Sun) to sudden death overtime, two-point conversions and other rules designed to put some added razzle-dazzle into the game.

The arrival of the W.F.L., just eleven months after it was first proposed, can be credited to Gary Davidson, a handsome lawyer who has made a career out of playing David to the Goliath establishments of sport. Before organizing the W.F.L., he put together the American Basketball Association and the World Hockey Association. By creating 34 new teams in three major sports in the past eight years, Davidson has become an acknowledged master builder in a field that includes such lusty franchise spawners as Football and Tennis Tycoon Lamar Hunt.

Cold Calculation. Unlike Texas Millionaire Hunt, Davidson has not had a family fortune to back his enterprises. What the son of a poor Montana farmer has lacked in money, though, he has more than made up in flair, shrewd business sense and sheer moxie. He set the tone for his climb to fortune eight years ago when he was running a modest law office in Southern California. "If people came in my office with money," Davidson says, "I took their cases."

When a couple of friends who owned a basketball team came to him in 1966 with the idea of starting a new league, he quickly dropped his tax cases to barnstorm the country looking for prospective owners. In the hunt, Davidson coupled his penchant for cold calculation with a latent but awesome talent for salesmanship. Davidson, 39, makes an impressive appearance with his year-round tan and robust physique (he plays tennis and basketball at least three times a week). His pin-stripe suits, moderate Republicanism and background as a Beta Theta Pi at U.C.L.A. tend to reassure businessmen. In the final crunch of negotiation, they discover that he is a tough bargainer. To use his own favorite word, Davidson is a brilliant "closer"--a combination of salesman and lawyer who knows how to wrap up a deal and make it stick.

He is also audacious. Almost before he had completed organization of the A.B.A., Davidson turned his attention to hockey. Though he had never seen a hockey game in his life, he went to work rounding up owners for a new twelve-team league. When the Miami franchise started to buckle, he negotiated a move to Philadelphia in less than an hour. In Canada he managed to stop a revolt among owners angered by his frequently abrasive negotiating style. "Gary has a great creative imagination," says an associate, "but tact is not his cup of tea." Davidson disagrees. "The Canadian owners told me I was acting like Hitler. All I said was that if they didn't like it, they could leave the league." The owners gave in, and the W.H.A. was on the ice just two years after Davidson had begun work.

By the time he decided to challenge the N.F.L., Davidson had devised a blueprint for starting new leagues to go with his natural gifts as a salesman. The plan is largely composed of strategies for marketing, promoting and, of course, profiting. Davidson analyzed market potential and player supply, selected promising sites and sold franchises to early buyers at a reduced rate, increasing the price by $100,000 with every sale.

He picked a Thursday-night slot for nationally televised games in order to give the W.F.L. visibility. Next, he put together the controversial package of rules that startled the N.F.L. into speeding up its own plan for similar changes. The established league got another jolt when W.F.L. owners began to lure stars like Larry Csonka and Calvin Hill with fat contracts. Finally, Davidson took to the road like a campaigning politician. In ten months he covered 200,000 miles, making at least a dozen emergency runs to shore up weak franchises. So far, the travel seems to have paid off. Six of the W.F.L.'s twelve teams look financially sound--an unusually high number for a new league.

Global Ambitions. Davidson intends to serve as commissioner of the W.F.L. for the next decade at an annual salary of $100,000. He has already collected a reported $700,000 from the sale of the Philadelphia franchise he had kept for himself. As the leading exponent of spectator-sports expansion, he has had offers to organize rugby, water polo and Ping Pong, but football remains his obsession. "By 1975 I want teams in Mexico City and Tokyo," he says. "The Japanese already know how to play, the problem is they're just not big enough.

We'll probably be able to put them in defensive positions, or make one a kicker." And after Japan? Davidson drops names like Duesseldorf, Frankfurt and Rome. Surveying the 34 clubs he has created and outlining his global ambitions, Davidson is still not entirely at peace with himself. "I wish I had taken legal accounting, worked in a bank, acquired a Southern accent and sold used cars," he says with a straight face. "With that background I think I would be a better closer."

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