A SEASONED APPROACH As a business, USFL coming to Ford Field is a whole new ballgame

JAY DAVIS

e Pontiac Silverdome hosted events for 26 years and was home to two major title wins — Hulk Hogan pinning Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania III in 1987 and the Michigan Panthers winning the 1983 USFL championship.

Fast forward to 2023 and the Panthers will return to the Detroit market this spring in a new incarnation of the United States Football League. e professional football spring league announced ursday in Detroit that the Panthers and Philadelphia Stars will play their home games at Ford Field, also home to the NFL’s Detroit Lions. e season begins April 15. e Panthers, who went 2-8 in 2022 in Birmingham, Ala., will play their rst home game April 30.

Ironically, the Panthers beat the Stars 24-22 in that 1983 title game.

What’s di erent for the USFL this time around? Plenty, including that the league is owned by a single entity — Fox Sports — not by ashy single team owners like real estate mo- gul Donald Trump, who owned the New Jersey Generals (and who went on to become president of the United States, if you recall) and metro Detroit-based mall developer A. Alfred Taubman, who owned the Panthers in the ’80s. is time, the Lions and Panthers are partners of a sort, according to league Chair and Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks, with the NFL team as the landlord for the USFL a liate.