Every now and then we get requests to look into alternative Earths that have differences that seem of minor consequences. One such world was Earth 1986.1.1.1986-D. Upon arrival, as customary, we picked up a newspaper and flipped through. What caught our eye was on the first page of the sports section was the headline “Renegades upset Packers” It took us a moment for that to sink. We quickly realized that on this Earth the United State Football League, an upstart league from the 80's, had ended up merging with the NFL rather than folding as it had in 1986. 

Here is the newspaper article depicting Orlando’s upset win.

Being that our agent was interested in sports, he had to immediately open the paper to learn more about this league. Here is the inside sports section.

We were frustrated though in our attempts to find out what had caused the divergence. The paper we had only described the opening weekend of games. There was little to no mention of the circumstances of what had happened to bring the USFL into the NFL. The only thing we knew for sure was that the USFL's Tampa Bay Bandits had been relocated to not compete with the existing NFL's Buccaneers. In this reality, the Bandits now played in Carolina.

We quickly scanned the magazine rack and the answer to our questions was found in an issue of Sports Illustrated.

The divergence was easy to identify. In our reality, the USFL won the lawsuit against the NFL but despite the victory was awarded only $3 in damages. This was due in large part to the USFL failing to prove that the financial damage they had suffered was due to the NFL rather than their own mismanagement.

In this reality the USFL also won the lawsuit, and the NFL was ordered to pay the rival league $1.32 billion in damages. The leagues quickly got together and announced a merger.

The exact reason the lawsuit when a different direction on Earth 1986.1.1.1986-D is unclear. It may have simply been that a few of the jurors were different. While we'd have liked to have spent more time studying this reality, it was classified a D reality and had little value other than entertainment.