Every September, as the baseball and football seasons converge, newcomers arrive to begin inheriting a game, minor-league baseball players in buses, major college football players in limousines. If they have always been connected, this year they seem entwined.
The most prominent National Football League rookies -- Dallas Runner Herschel Walker and Buffalo Quarterback Jim Kelly -- have come from a kind of minor league, the dormant U.S.F.L. The preeminent college football player of 1985 -- Auburn's "Bo" Jackson -- has gone to baseball. If the football scouts are right about Jackson's being a "bigger and stronger O.J. Simpson," and the baseball...