Sean Landeta

Sean signed a three-year contract with the Philadelphia Stars after being drafted out of Towson University in Maryland. “I thought if I got a chance to go there, it might help my chances to get to the NFL,” says Landeta. “I came from a small school and I wasn’t sure I’d be drafted by an NFL team.”

The first camp was hectic and nerve-racking for Landeta because football teams carried only one punter on the 41-man roster. “It was a very competitive training camp,” he says. “There were good college players, NFL veterans and guys with limited NFL experience.”

The Stars won a league-best 15 games in ’83, but lost the USFL Championship to the Panthers 24-22. The Stars had NFL veterans like John Bunting, Brad Oates (older brother of rookie Bart Oates), Pete Kugler, Jon Sutton, Bill Hardee, Booker Russell, Scott Fitzkee and Ron Coder.

Though stocked with veterans, Philadelphia would be the breeding ground for future NFL Pro Bowlers and mainstays like Sam Mills, George Jamison, Mike Johnson, Bart Oates, Irv Eatman, William Fuller, Kelvin Bryant and Landeta himself. All seven players went on to NFL careers that lasted at least 10 seasons.

The Stars also made a huge impact on the coaching scene in the NFL to this day: Coordinator like Vic Fangio, Bill Tobin and Joe Marciano all served under Mora in the early days of the USFL.

The Stars offensive coordinator, Dom Capers, led the Panthers to the NFC Championship in '96 as the head coach.Capers also too over the coaching reigns for a second expansion franchise in 2002 with the Texans. Capers currently is the offensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins.

But it was Mora who had the biggest impact in the NFL as a head coach. Mora led the Stars to a USFL-best 41 regular-season wins in his three years in Philadelphia. So, when he was offered the job with the Saints in ’86, it didn’t surprise Landeta that Mora was successful in turning the beleaguered franchise around. “You knew he was an outstanding coach because we went to three title games in a row [in the USFL], and won two of them,” says Landeta. “When the league ended, he went to a team that didn’t have a lot of success and had them in the playoffs a year later. His record shows he was an outstanding coach.”

Although the Stars lost the first USFL Championship, Landeta remembers the feeling of 50,000 exuberant USFL fans that attended the game at Mile High in Denver, Colo. “It was exciting, there was a huge crowd, it was well-played, it had the feeling of a title game,” says Landeta. “It would have been perfect if we beat the Panthers.”




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