TheMemphis Showboats were anAmerican football franchise in theUnited States Football League. They entered the league in its expansion in 1984 and made the 1985 playoffs, losing in the semifinal round to theOakland Invaders. Perhaps the most prominent players on the Showboats' roster during their two seasons of existence were futurePro Football Hall of Fame memberReggie White and future professional wrestler"The Total Package" Lex Luger.

Memphis food manufacturerLogan Young was awarded an expansion franchise for Memphis on July 17, 1983. However, soon after hiring Memphis native and former college coachPepper Rodgers as head coach and signing a lease to play in theLiberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, he discovered that most of his assets were tied up in a trust fund that he couldn't access. Ultimately, he was forced to take on limited partners, then sell controlling interest to cotton magnateWilliam Dunavant, remaining as team president.

Despite White's play, the Showboats finished fourth in the Southern Division and missed the playoffs. Like the rest of the division, they were left far behind by theBirmingham Stallions andTampa Bay Bandits. However, like most of the USFL's other Southern teams, they were a runaway hit at the box office. Indeed, they were one of the few teams whose crowds actually grew as the season progressed.

The Showboats broke through in 1985, finishing fourth in the East and earning a playoff berth. They should have traveled toDenver'sMile High Stadium to face theDenver Gold. However, the Gold were forced to travel to Memphis under pressure fromABC Sports. The Gold's local support had all but vanished due to the USFL's planned move to the fall, and ABC did not want the embarrassment of showing a half-empty stadium. It forced CommissionerHarry Usher to give Memphis home-field advantage in the first round, since the Showboats had been among the league's attendance leaders once again. ABC had an outsize influence on the USFL due to the structure of the league's television contract. The Showboats thrashed the Gold 48–7 before losing to theOakland Invaders 28–19 in the semifinals.

The Showboats represented a serious attempt to form a viable professional football organization, and seemed to have a realistic chance to have been a viable business if the overall management of the USFL had been more realistic and financially sound. Indeed, like theWorld Football League'sMemphis Southmen before them, the Showboats appeared to be on more solid footing than the league as a whole. The Showboats' attendance figures made Dunavant a supporter of the USFL's move to the fall. Although Memphis was only a medium-sized market (while Memphis proper had 650,000 people, the surrounding suburbs and rural areas are not much larger than the city itself), Dunavant believed his team's popularity would have made it very attractive to the NFL in the event of a merger. After the USFL's antitrust lawsuit failed, the Showboats threw their support behindCharlie Finley's proposal to convince theCanadian Football League to expand into the U.S. market; the CFL rejected the plan, bringing the Showboats' operations to an end.^[1]

Despite the eventual failure of the original USFL, the success of the Showboats franchise was noticed by the NFL, indicating a viable market in Tennessee. In 1997, theHouston Oilers franchise would move to Nashville, though they played their first season in Memphis, before moving to Nashville and being renamed theTennessee Titans in 1999.^[2][3][4]

Dunavant emerged as an investor in the proposedMemphis Hound Dogs franchise that entered the NFL's 1993 expansion sweepstakes (the Hound Dogs lost to theCarolina Panthers andJacksonville Jaguars). Rodgers and general manager Steve Erhart would later emerge with theMemphis Mad Dogs, aCanadian Football League franchise that played one season in 1995; Erhart would also manage theMemphis Maniax of the originalXFL in 2001.

TheMemphis Showboats name was revived for the 2023 season ofthe USFL's second iteration.^[5]

In theSpongeBob SquarePantsSeason 2 episode "Band Geeks", the band led bySquidward Tentacles plays at the "Bubble Bowl", during which clips of a Showboats game (vs. the Tampa Bay Bandits atLiberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis on May 25, 1984) are shown.

A player from the Memphis Showboats appeared as a contestant onPress Your Luck in 1985.

Sources^[6][7][8]

Sources^[9][10][11]

• Rushing Yards: 789 (1985),Tim Spencer
• Receiving Yards: 1143 (1985), Greg Moser
• Passing Yards: 2128 (1985), Mike Kelley

• http://www.remembertheusfl.8m.com/teams/memphis.html
• USFL.info - Memphis Showboats

• Memphis Showboats
• 1983 establishments in Tennessee
• 1986 disestablishments in Tennessee
• American football teams established in 1983
• American football teams disestablished in 1986

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use American English from September 2019
• All Wikipedia articles written in American English
• Use mdy dates from September 2019