Scott Adamson, Author at Adamsonmedia.com

Devouring the details

I’ve enjoyed spending the morning learning more about XFL 3.0 now that the league is taking shape. Even though the names of the eight cities that will begin play next winter had already been leaked, it was still good to get the official word. With that done, I’m curious about things like nicknames and logos and all the stuff that has caused me to goob out over alternative football for decades.

So, will I be watching when the league kicks off on February 18, 2023?

**Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl**

It depends.

If UAB or Birmingham’s G League team don’t have basketball games that day, I might. If the Blazers or Squadron are playing, however, then I’ll probably settle for watching the highlights on SportsCenter.

See, I learned a hard new truth about myself during the recently completed United States Football League season; when it comes to alt-leagues, I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m more interested in hearing about the labor pains than actually seeing the baby.

I know … I’m as surprised by that plot twist as you are.

I love discussing the structure of the organization, stadium agreements, coaching hires, pay scale, draft pools, roster size, and cool rule innovations. Seeing a league go from an idea to a product is fascinating, and right now I’m having fun tracking all the USFL guys who are being signed by NFL teams (I was especially happy to see one of my favorites, QB Luis Perez, ink a pact with the Los Angeles Rams on Saturday). These are topics I never grow tired of.

Yet, while there was once a time when football was my top sports viewing choice any time of year, I realized this spring my most fervent interest starts with the first week of the Canadian Football League regular season and ends with the Super Bowl. The non-traditional leagues that occupy the other months have become entities I want to analyze more than watch. They often lose out to everything from hockey to rugby when I flip on my sports fan switch.

That’s a “me problem,” though, and not a knock against their quality at all. There are some truly outstanding players outside of the NFL and CFL, and it’s great they have multiple showcases to display their talent. I’m all for more athletes getting more opportunities.

It’s just that as I’ve gotten older, I don’t mind taking a break from the gridiron game.

Fortunately, these new ventures don’t need me. The 2022 USFL didn’t cater to the tired eyes of retired guys, but rather the demographic who likes their games with a truly modern touch. With its inaugural campaign in the books – capped off by a fantastic championship clash in a mostly packed Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton – the FOX-owned USFL showed there’s a place for spring pro football. And with plenty of close and exciting games augmented by everything from drones to helmet cams to post-play interviews, it gave fans a solid product. It was a success story during a time of year when football has failed and often failed spectacularly.

That said, I didn’t care for the hub format – even if it was in my hometown – and seeing games not involving the Birmingham Stallions played in front of just a handful of fans made for bad optics.

I wish the league had done some sort of local promotion along the lines of, “Hey, we know the Stallions are your favorite team, but who is your second favorite?” Have team reps and mascots from the other seven USFL clubs give away pennants and T-shirts, and that might’ve made a big impression on a little kid.

Dave the Wave could’ve quite possibly convinced a youngster (and his ticket-buying elders) to cheer for the New Orleans Breakers when Birmingham wasn’t playing at Protective Stadium or Legion Field.

Better yet, if you’re going to attach a city/region name to a team, let it play its home games in that city/region. I mean, the Philadelphia Stars never got closer than 900 miles to their “home” during the regular season.

But the idea was to keep costs down, and the circuit did that with its bubble. Job One was to figure out a way to be viable during its maiden voyage in order to keep sailing, and that mission was accomplished. According to an article in the Sports Business Journal, the USFL will expand from two to four hubs in 2023 (including Birmingham), which is better that this year’s format and shows forward progress. And considering the best business practice is to stay in business, it’s hard to argue with their approach.

Yet that circuit is as much a TV series as it is a sports league. The third version of the XFL, on the other hand, is apparently just as concerned about its in-house appeal. All you have to do is take a look at its 2023 teams.

In selecting the eight clubs for its latest reboot, it’s fairly obvious sites were chosen because they have a history of putting butts in the seats. Here’s per game attendance figures from the cities’ last spring football stints: Arlington/Dallas (17,163, XFL 2.0), DC (16,179, XFL 2.0), Houston (18,230, XFL 2.0), Las Vegas (22,618, original XFL), Orlando (19,648, Alliance of American Football), Seattle (25,616, XFL 2.0), San Antonio (27,721, Alliance of American Football) and St. Louis (28,541, XFL 2.0).

It’s Texas-heavy and has no presence in the top four Designated Market Areas (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia), and that seems risky. But people with far more money than me put the league together and they didn’t ask for my opinion, so I’m not going to worry about it.

I do find the league’s hybrid hub model interesting; the eight teams are kept together in one city (Arlington) for practice and on-site support, but will then travel to “home” locales for games.

Regardless, beer snakes should be magnificent when the XFL takes the field the weekend following Super Bowl LVII.

With its season starting in February and Disney (i.e., ABC and ESPN) handling TV coverage, it’ll get a head start on the USFL in 2023 since the FOX league once again plans to start up in April. Will folks in couch potato land who don’t have a team in either league be burned out by the time the XFL season is done, or get excited for season two of the USFL? We shall see.

And don’t forget the dark horse entry among spring leagues, Major League Football. Training camp is underway (a jamboree-style scrimmage was held on Sunday) and its inaugural mini-season is scheduled to start on August 9 with the championship game set for September 6. Despite the late summer/fall slate, the plan is to become a full-fledged spring league by 2023. And you can even invest in the league; details are available on its website.

This year all games (except for one) will be played on Tuesdays, with the idea to make it the only tackle football game available to watch on that day of the week.

This format is not unprecedented in alt-football history; the 1974 World Football League played most of its games on Wednesday nights with the TV game of the week staged on Thursdays. I’m looking forward to learning more about how Major League Football plans to conduct its business following next month’s soft launch.

So, if you happen to be one of those year-round football fanatics as I once was, I’m thrilled that you’ll (theoretically) never go wanting again. The XFL will lead into the USFL and MLFB, which will lead into the CFL, which will lead into the NFL, and then the cycle of professional football starts anew.

And who knows? Perhaps all these options will spark a rebirth in my desire to again make “offseason” pro football priority viewing. Until then, well, please tell me more about those labor pains …

Kyle Rote Jr.

During my preteen and early teen years, my bedroom displayed plenty of “art.”

There was a Batman figurine, a jointed Spider-Man cutout that hung on the door, a red and white plush football doll I’d won at the Alabama State Fair, and a New York Jets pennant that was the centerpiece of the wall above my bed.

I never was much for posters, but after falling in love with soccer in the early 1970s, I decided to break that rule and give Pelé and Kyle Rote Jr. the big picture treatment in my room.

Pelé was an obvious choice; his tour de force in the 1970 World Cup ignited my passion for the Beautiful Game, and led to my devotion to the North American Soccer League and longtime support of the New York Cosmos.

Pelé represented the exotic side of the sport. It was played by athletes from distant places like Brazil, Germany and England – athletes who were born in a world where the world’s most popular brand of football was everything.

But Rote? Well, he made me think that I could not only watch soccer, but maybe even play it, too. He didn’t even pick up the game until he was 16, became a star forward at a southern college (Sewanee in Tennessee) and went on to be the No. 1 draft pick of the NASL Dallas Tornado in 1972.

I first “discovered” him in a 1973 edition of Sports Illustrated, which came out just before he was named Rookie of the Year in the league. After that I read everything on him I could, from the yearly editions of The Complete Handbook of Soccer to any issue of Soccer America I got my hands on.

Fifty years later it’s fun to look back on his origin story, which was chronicled by an Associated Press article in 1972. A Dallas native whose first love was tackle football (he is the son of 13-year NFL veteran Kyle Rote), he was a late-comer to soccer.

“A bunch of us on the (Highland Park High School football team) were looking for a way to stay in shape during the summer, so we formed a soccer team and challenged church teams and private schools,” Rote told the news service.

The second-generation football player was highly decorated as a prep quarterback/defensive back, and hoped to parlay that into more gridiron success at Oklahoma State. But a broken leg ended that brand of football for Rote, so he headed to Sewanee to give association football another shot. During his senior year at his new school (now called the University of the South) he had 17 goals and seven assists in a 12-game season.

By the time he graduated, the NASL was still in its early stages. When it held its first college draft, the circuit jumped at the chance to give a homegrown player an opportunity to put his stamp on the league.

“When it was first tried on the professional level, it was handled very poorly,” Rote said of soccer’s earlier attempt at attracting supporters in the United States and Canada. “They tried to sell it like a product on television, without regard to the future. In order to get support for soccer you’ve got to start in the junior high schools and get the parents as well as the kids involved.”

Rote didn’t join Dallas until later in the summer of 1972 and didn’t play that year. But once he suited up in 1973, he made an immediate impact.

When the season was done, he had 10 goals and 10 assists, earning Rookie of the Year accolades while helping the Tornado reach the NASL finals (where they lost to Philadelphia).

“I think my success has lent some credibility to the sport,” Rote told the New York Daily News. “Here’s a kid from an old traditional American football family forsaking football for soccer. People must think one of two things; either I’m crazy, or maybe there’s something to this foreign game, soccer.

“If people ever asked me if I believe in miracles I’d say yes and point to this year. At the beginning of the season the only goal I had in mind was to make the team. Now, here I am being called soccer’s ‘Great American Hope.’”

I was never an accomplished American football athlete (my career ended in eighth grade) and I was, at best, a serviceable soccer player (I can still remember the three goals I scored as a high school junior, though … I’ll be glad to tell you all about them). But knowing Rote could excel at a sport that was still largely alien to many Americans did inspire me – and many others – to suit up.

“There are 35,000 kids playing soccer in Dallas, and now they have someone to identify with,” he said. “They can look at me and say, ‘If he made it, there’s a chance for me.’ That’s what it’s all about.”

He inspired me further with his showing in the old ABC Superstars competition where he competed against other athletes in various events. Any time one of my peers would roll their eyes at soccer and belittle it, I’d point to the fact that Rote’s success in everything from swimming to biking to tennis allowed him to win the event three times (1974, 1976 and 1977).

As for his soccer playing career, he finished with 43 goals and 38 assists, playing with Dallas through 1978 and spending the 1979 campaign with the Houston Hurricane.

Rote was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2010.

I have no idea what happened to my old soccer posters; like many things from my youth, they now exist only in my memories.

But sometimes when I look at my high school letter – or pick up one of the soccer balls displayed in my fan cave – I’ll remember Kyle Rote Jr.’s influence.

I’ll just let this column serve as a thank you note.

Creature in the woods

Due to the sweltering heat, I’ve gotten in the habit of doing my morning walks in the early, early part of the a.m. We’re talking pre-dawn, no other walkers or joggers out, only delivery trucks on the road early.

I kinda like it because my brain is basically a bag of silverware and steel pots, and the solitude allows me to quell the clanking and arrange my thoughts for the day. For the most part it’s quite peaceful, and I’ve grown so accustomed to my route I hardly even think about it anymore.

Well, I think about it more now.

There’s one leg of my walk that takes me past some woods and it happens to be the most poorly lit part of the trek. It never bothered me until a couple of weeks ago when I was traipsing past the trees and heard a thrashing sound just a couple of feet away.

It was startling.

I can’t remember if I shrieked an obscenity or let out a Hank Hill-style “Bwaaaaaaah!” but it scared me – enough that I feared I was about to be mauled by a bloodthirsty Chupacabra.

And now, practically every day, I hear the same sound in the same place at the same time. Even though I know it’s coming I’m still taken aback, and part of me is waiting for it to finally reveal itself.

But what, exactly, is it?

These are Alabama woods, so part of me fears it could be a deranged Civil War reenactor who is just waiting for the perfect opportunity to capture a Yankee (I’m a Birmingham native but I often wear blue and vote blue, making me a target).

If not a feral human, perhaps it’s a feral hog. These beasts – which are legendary in the Deep South – can reach enormous size and have been known to attack people without provocation.

I tend to doubt they roam the woods I frequent, though.

I live in the city and am nowhere near a farm. If it is a hog, I doubt it’s feral. It might not be fully domesticated, but I’m guessing it at least has a GED.

And really – now that I’ve heard the noise for several days and had a chance to analyze it – whatever it is probably isn’t very large. This decreases my fear of a Civil War guy or wild, angry hog.

I confess, though, that while I was walking under a full moon earlier this month, I hoped it was a werewolf. That would’ve been so cool even though it would’ve had to have been a small werewolf – perhaps a youngster. Better yet, maybe it was a runt werewolf that had been cast aside by his family.

I imagined the runt and I becoming friends, much like Wilbur and Fern in “Charlotte’s Web,” and I’d take him home to live with us and name him Mozart.

But that’s a story for another time.

Realistically, I figure this noisy critter is either a beaver, raccoon or opossum.

There’s a stream near the woods, so that would make a beaver a likely candidate. They like to eat tree bark and grass, and there is plenty available in this particular area.

And with all the tree hollows and snacklets available, it’d be a good place for a raccoon to hang. Plus, it isn’t terribly far from garbage cans, and since their nickname is “trash pandas” they might find the location perfect for their needs.

If I was an opossum, I’d probably love this particular patch of the woods. It’s quiet, secluded, and conveniently located near schools. (I don’t know if possums care about schools but they might … I truly have no idea).

Whatever it is, I’m slowly getting used to the sound and I’m not quite as freaked out about it anymore. I like to think if it was going to attack me, it would’ve done so by now and the thrashing is simply a greeting.

Hopefully one day I’ll find out what this creature is and once we see each other, we’ll have a big laugh.

Unless it’s a Chupacabra.

From what I understand, they have no sense of humor.