Author: Scott Adamson

The Birmingham Americans were the Magic City’s first professional football champions, winning the World Football League title in 1974. But they never had a chance to repeat because the team folded (and the reorganized WFL followed suit midway through the 1975 season).

Forty-eight years later, the Birmingham Stallions claimed the United States Football League crown.

Staring Saturday, they can take the first step toward doing it again.

Both the USFL and the Stallions have returned for a second season, and Birmingham will kick off Year Two by hosting the New Jersey Generals at 6:30 p.m. CDT at Protective Stadium.

“We’ve talked a lot about how hard it is to defend,” Stallions coach Skip Holtz said. “There’s only been eight Super Bowl champions repeat and four of them were like in the first 15 years, so it’s hard to repeat … it’s hard. Everybody shoots for you, and you’ve got to be at your best each and every week.

“But you’ve got a new team and what I’ve said to these guys is if what you did yesterday seems big to you, it just means we haven’t accomplished anything today.”

A brand-new league meant a whole new experience for players and coaches last year. There was no real point of reference in how to best structure camp and practices.

“Last year we went to camp with 45 players and we put everybody in a bubble,” Holtz explained. “It was like, ‘Don’t touch each other … we’ve got to get everybody to game day.’ This year we had 58, so there were 13 more players in camp than we had in 2022. And there are cuts this year.

“I feel a whole lot better going into year two because I’d never gone out there in fall camp without about 120 players. I was looking around last year going, ‘Where’s the defense?’ This is half of them. That’s your whole team now. But for me, I’m a lot more comfortable.”

As Holtz said, this is a new team, and there are some missing pieces from the 2022 squad.

Receiver Victor Bolden Jr., who led the squad in punt return yards, kick return yards and all-purpose yards a year ago, is now playing with the XFL Arlington Renegades.

Another former Stallions receiver – Osirus Mitchell – will be suited up for the Memphis Showboats in 2023. They’ll host the Philadelphia Stars Saturday at 3:30 p.m. CDT in the first game of the new season.

And there are also three offensive linemen gone from the inaugural USFL champions.

But there are plenty of familiar faces – and playmakers – back in the fold.

J’Mar Smith and Alex McGough are expected to share quarterbacking duties, and wideout Marlon Williams, who led the team with 474 receiving yards in 2022, will be their primary target.

The pass catching corps also features Davion Davis, Deon Cain and Jace Sternberger, and on Monday, the Stallions signed former LSU tight end Thaddeus Moss, who holds single-season school records for receptions (45) and receiving yards (570).

“There’s more of a sense of urgency this season,” Smith said. “We know we have a big target on our chests and on our backs, and we’re gonna get everybody’s best shot. The bottom line is to put points on the board.”

The Stallions have a terrific 1-2 punch in the backfield with the return of Bo Scarbrough and CJ Marable. Marable paced the club with 401 yards and five rushing TDs last season before getting injured in May, while Scarbrough averaged more than four yards per carry after joining the team midseason.

Defensively, the squad looks solid across the board. The line returns almost completely intact; Brian Allen is an experienced veteran leading the secondary; and Scooby Wright brings high intensity and big play capabilities to the linebacking unit. It was his interception return for a touchdown that sealed Birmingham’s wild 33-30 win over the Stars in the 2022 championship game in Canton.

“I think it’ll take the first couple of games to form an identity,” Wright said. “Being defending champion, there’s some added pressure, but it’s just a case of canceling out the noise and focusing on what’s important. I know on the defensive side we’re gonna be a team that flies around the football.”

Birmingham follows its opener against New Jersey with home games against Memphis (April 22) and New Orleans (April 29). The Breakers share Protective Stadium with the Stallions in 2023 as part of the league’s four hub model.

Birmingham’s first regular season road game is May 7 when it travels to Canton to play Pittsburgh. It’s back home on May 13 to face Houston, then off to Detroit on May 20 to meet the Michigan Panthers.

The Stallions and Breakers play for the second time May 27 in Birmingham, and Philadelphia comes in for a Week Eight showdown on June 3.

Birmingham’s final two regular season games will be held in Memphis, where Holtz’s team faces Houston on June 11 and Memphis on June 17.

“We’ve got to keep a chip on our shoulder,” Holtz said. “We’ve got to stay hungry and we’ve got to keep working because that’s how we won it and that’s the only way we’re going to be able to have any chance to go out there and have some success this year. I like the attitude and like the way they work, but this football team … we haven’t talked about defending or repeating since the opening meeting. “We’re a new football team, this is the 2023 football team … the 2022 team was an awesome experience, an incredible team, incredible togetherness, the way they were able to come together and what they put together, but this is a new year and I’m excited to watch them play.”

The USFL began with eight teams in one city in 2022.

This year, four cities will house two teams each.

And in 2024?

It’d be great for all the clubs to have homes of their own by then, but league president Daryl Johnston says the “crawl, walk, run” approach will determine how the spring league will be structured going forward.

“Well, I think you look at the expansion we did from year one to year two, and one of the big things that we had during the course of year one was to crawl then walk,” Johnston said during a Tuesday press conference. “We wanted to do things in a methodical manner. When we found out that we were going to expand into four hubs going from year one to year two, that was probably more than a lot of people were anticipating.”

Except for the playoffs in Canton, Ohio, all games were played in Birmingham last season. While the hometown Stallions drew anywhere from 10,000 to 17,500 for games involving them, contests featuring other teams were witnessed by only a handful of fans.

Johnston hopes additional hubs (Memphis, Detroit and Canton) will mean more fans will have a bigger stake in the teams.

“One of the things that the USFL has done is when we come into the markets, we want to make an impact,” Johnson adds. “We want to build those relationships. And it’s not just about football, we talk about sustainability and for sustainability to happen, you have to create relationships.”

From a cost containment standpoint, I understand the slow rollout, although having the New Jersey Generals and Pittsburgh Maulers playing in Canton means the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame will have no local team to cheer for.

Seems weird to me – I mean, why not just put a team in Canton?

Johnston has an explanation for that.

“We wanted to continue the relationship that we started last season with the playoffs in Canton,” he said. “It was something that I was really excited about. When somebody says you’re going to have the chance to play your playoffs and your championship game at the (Tom Benson) Hall of Fame Stadium, that’s something that we couldn’t say no to.

“We had such a great experience while we were there and we wanted to actually expand that relationship and continue with it, so we’re using the Canton hub to be kind of a satellite for Pittsburgh with the proximity to the city, and also put the New Jersey Generals there.”

TV ratings were relatively good in 2022 – which is a primary concern since the league is owned by FOX and partners with NBC – but the in-house fan experience is also important.

“When we heard the feedback about our fan base, wanting to get the teams into their home markets, there were opportunities that we felt were too good to pass up, going from year one to year two,” Johnston said. “So, we all kind of buckled down and got ready to move those teams into the market. As we move forward, it will always be done on a case-by-case basis based on what’s best for the USFL, what gives us the most opportunity to be sustainable, and to have that success. So, we continue to come back and talk about going on to that next season and surpassing what other leagues have done during the course of spring football attempts.”

Memphis Showboats coach Todd Haley said the fans he’s met are excited about cheering on their team in the friendly confines of Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.

“I thought last year everything was great in Birmingham, but you know though, at times, you weren’t excited about not having your home crowd there,” he said. “We had a huge clinic out here and tons of kids showed up – parents, everything. But the biggest thing as the head coach of the Showboats has just been seeing my players and coaches embrace being part of this community.

“We’re obviously all excited about seeing fans come into the stadium and cheer us on and make some noise.”

Even Birmingham coach Skip Holtz welcomes the chance to take his team away from Protective Stadium to play a few regular season games.

“We have four road games and yeah, I am kind of excited to go on the road and watch this league continue to expand not just with more players, not just with the product on the field, but also expand with our fan bases,” Holtz said. “I think that’s all part of the excitement and fun and I love going on the road, you know, getting booed running out of the tunnel and stuff. It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, here we go.” I mean, that’s all part of the fun and part of the competition of football.”

Ultimately, of course, the goal is for each team to find a home of its on. When that will happen, however, is still anyone’s guess.

“We hope to get all of our teams into their home markets at some point, but it will always be done on the basis of what’s best for the league,” Johnston said. “And we’ll stick with that crawl, walk, run mentality to make sure we’re doing it the right way.”

Daryl Johnston has been on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to startup football leagues.

In 2019, he served as general manager of the Alliance of American Football’s San Antonio Commanders, and watched the circuit implode before completing its first and only season – leaving behind bad debts and bad feelings.

Now the former Dallas Cowboys fullback is president of football operations for the United States Football League. And after meeting all its financial obligations in Year One and garnering solid television ratings, the USFL has returned.

Johnston likes where it’s headed.

“We hosted the Birmingham Stallions (on Monday at Protective Stadium) and passed out their championship rings,” Johnston said during a Tuesday morning press conference. “And it was really kind of a full circle moment for us because the room we hosted the event in was actually the room we did our inaugural draft back in February of 2022.

“We’re just really, really excited to kick off the season here in Year Two and bring high quality football to the fans of the USFL, and I cannot wait until we are crowning our Year Two champion next season as we get ready for season three. But there’s a lot of work to do before we get to that point.”

After Birmingham served as the hub for all eight teams in 2022, the league will have four sites this spring. Birmingham will be home to the Stallions and New Orleans Breakers; Memphis hosts the Showboats and Houston Gamblers; the Michigan Panthers will play in Detroit, along with the Philadelphia Stars; and the New Jersey Generals and Pittsburgh Maulers will call Canton home for 2023.

“We’ve actually moved out into four hubs throughout our league, and that was in response to a lot of the feedback we had from our fan base,” Johnston explained. “You know, one of the things they wanted to do was to see those full stadiums when the home teams were playing, and it was really hard for us to accomplish that with Birmingham basically having a home game every weekend. And our other teams, when they played, really didn’t have that same support.

“So, one of the things we wanted to do was start to get our teams into their home markets – or as close to their home markets as we can – and give them that opportunity that Birmingham had last season.”

The Memphis Showboats replace the Tampa Bay Bandits for the 2023 campaign, and have the honor of hosting the first USFL regular season game outside Birmingham.

The Showboats kick off the new season at 3:30 p.m. CDT on Saturday when they welcome the Philadelphia Stars to Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.

Todd Haley, who guided the Bandits to a 4-6 record in 2022, is helming the Showboats.

“Daryl called me this summer and he said, ‘How would you feel about coaching the Memphis Showboats?” and I said it sounds great. And then he added, ‘You’re going to be in Memphis,” and that got me really excited,” Haley said. “I came down here for the opening press conference, got to see a little bit of Memphis. I’ve been in and out a few times, but really excited about everything that I’ve seen here.

“I mean, our facility here at Simmons Bank Liberty stadium is phenomenal. The locker room that we’re able to utilize is phenomenal. That gets the players excited. You know, just a first-class setup, and I think it’s only gonna get better.”

USFL head of officiating Mike Pereira was also on hand for the presser and gave updates on a few rule changes and tweaks in store for this spring and summer.

“We are always concerned about the pace of play, and the overall length of the game,” Pereira said. “And about Week Three last year, we had games that were lasting longer than three hours. So, we put in a rule that said that we would wind the clock after incomplete passes in the first and third quarters. It still really didn’t get the overall time of the game down to where we wanted it to, or where we wanted it to be. Therefore, this year, we’re expanding that winding after incomplete passes into the second and fourth quarters also, up until the five-minute mark of each one of those quarters, then the clock will remain stopped after the incomplete passes.

“We’re shooting for a game that falls into a window of around two hours and 45 minutes, maybe two hours and 55 minutes.”

Perhaps the biggest change – and best news for league offenses – is an alteration of the forward fumble rule.

“We did change a rule that got discussed every year when I was at the competition committee, and I was against changing it, but I got beat down a little bit,” Pereira said. “The rule has always been that when you fumble the ball forward and out of bounds in the field of play, the ball goes back to the spot of the fumble and the fumbling team keeps the ball. But the rule has been if you fumbled it forward into the end zone or into the pylon and out of bounds of the end zone, then it turned into a touchback and everybody – I mean I think every fan – felt that the rule was unfair. And so, we changed it. We’re treating all forward fumbles that go out of bounds the same even if it’s in the end zone. The ball goes back to the fumbling team at the spot of the fumble.”

Teams will also carry three quarterbacks this year. The third will remain inactive unless the first two quarterbacks are knocked out of the game. And kickoffs have been moved back to the 20-yard line to ensure even more runbacks.

Rules notwithstanding, the goal of the league is to provide quality entertainment for fans while giving players another chance to make the leap to the NFL. “Guys in this league have seen some guys extend their dream and make it into the NFL, and we embrace that as coaches and as the USFL,” Haley said. “So, we’re rooting for those kinds of things to happen. And when they see guys make it and stick on an NFL team and have success, that just builds the excitement even more because there’s just not enough spots in the NFL for all the talented players we have out there that love this game of football.”