A consulting firm recommended sticking with a spring season. Despite the protests of many of the league's "old guard", who wanted to stay with the original plan of playing football in the spring months, on August 22, 1984 the owners voted to move to the fall starting in 1986. On April 29, 1985, the league's owners voted 13–2 to reaffirm their decision to begin playing a fall season in 1986. Tampa Bay Bandits owner John F. Bassett, who had registered one of the two "nay" votes, declared his intention to pull his team out of the USFL and organize a new spring football league. However, failing health (he died from cancer in May 1986) forced Bassett to abandon his plans and sell the Bandits to minor partner Lee Scarfone, who agreed to keep the franchise in the USFL. The spring advocates had lost, and the fall advocates now set their sights on forcing a merger with the NFL, or at the very least winning a sizable settlement and securing a TV network for fall broadcasts. The USFL had jettisoned its original model of spring football in favor of the risky gamble (but potentially lucrative return) of going head-to-head with the NFL.