Scott Adamson, Author at Adamsonmedia.com

Now it’s Holtz in charge of the home team

**Skip Holtz leads the Stallions into action on Saturday. (Scott Adamson photo)**

BIRMINGHAM – The last time Skip Holtz and his team came to Protective Stadium, most of the fans took great pleasure in watching them lose.

Next time when they trot onto the turf at the Uptown Birmingham venue, the majority of spectators will be on their side.

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

Such is the fickle nature of sports – and sports supporters.

Holtz was coach of the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs in 2021, and a November visit here resulted in a 52-38 loss to the homestanding UAB Blazers. Since the Blazers and Bulldogs are natural enemies – if not in the wild at least in the field of competition – that partisan reaction was the natural order of things.

But Holtz is now in charge of the Birmingham Stallions of the new United States Football League, and he’ll have Magic City faithful in his corner on Saturday when the Stallions meet the New Jersey Generals at 6:30 p.m.

“This is an adventure and every day we’re learning,” Holtz said. “It’s been awesome … I’m like a kid in a candy store.”

Not a lot was awesome for Holtz last season, as a 3-9 record at Tech resulted in his dismissal. But while one door closed, another opened when the USFL gave him his first shot at coaching in the pros.

“It took me more than 30 years to get a chance to be a pro coach,” he said. “And I’m sincere when I say I’m having more fun than I’ve ever had before.”

Any time an alternative football league crops up, the focus is usually on the players. Will this new opportunity give them their next chance or last chance to make a living playing the game? But it’s also a fresh start for coaches.

Michigan Panthers boss Jeff Fisher had a long NFL coaching career that ended in 2016, but found the itch again after six years off the sidelines.

When it comes to resumes, it’s hard to find a more diverse one than Mike Riley of the New Jersey Generals. Before coming to the USFL, he had been a head coach in the NFL, Canadian Football League, World League of American Football, Alliance of American Football and two different colleges.

Todd Haley was head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs from 2009-11, and most recently served as offensive coordinator with the Cleveland Browns. The Tampa Bay Bandits give him the chance to guide the fortunes of a whole team once again.

Pittsburgh Maulers coach Kirby Wilson has spent more than two decades as a fine NFL assistant coach, but now – finally – he gets to call all the shots.

Bart Andrus now heads up the Philadelphia Stars, but his background includes head coaching gigs in the CFL, NFL Europe, United Football League, The Spring League and the XFL’s “Team 9” (from the shortened 2020 season).

Houston Gamblers coach Kevin Sumlin and New Orleans Breakers skipper Larry Fedora – like Holtz – are getting their first taste of pro coaching after long college careers. For all eight it’s a new challenge.

“I’ve been taught that life and success is all about your attitude,” Holtz said. “That’s one of the greatest lessons my parents taught me and every day when you wake up and put your feet on the floor you have a decision to make on what you want to accomplish. I’m passionate about this and excited about what we’re doing.”

Watching Holtz at practice, and even during last week’s scrimmage, is evidence that he’s fully invested in his new job. His enthusiasm seems to pick up as the day goes along, and it appears to be rubbing off on his players.

His attitude suggests that he doesn’t want them to run through a brick wall for him – he just hopes they’ll run through the door in the wall he’s holding open.

“Nothing great was ever accomplished without passion,” Holtz said. “You have to have passion and energy. We’ve got some great young men on this team and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know them. I’m still learning faces, names and numbers and sometimes when they put on their helmets I go, ‘Oh no, I can’t recognize them.’ But it’s been great.

“When the fans come out Saturday night, they’ll see that we’re gonna play hard, play emotional and play passionate.”

And for the first time at Protective Stadium, he and his charges will hear the fans cheering for them instead of against them.

A wild world of baseball

There must have been something in the water in the early 1970s – or at least something in international waters.

The World Hockey Association hit the ice in 1972, the World Football League took the field in July, 1974, and in April, 1974, the World Baseball Association announced its intention to make the National Pastime the Global Pastime.

President and co-founder Sean Morton Downey Jr. (who would later become better known simply as Morton Downey Jr., a confrontational talk show host who helped pioneer trash TV) held a news conference in Washington, D.C., proclaiming the WBA was ready to challenge Major League Baseball. The WBA would feature 32 franchises with 16 in the United States and the other 16 scattered across Mexico, South America, Cuba, Japan, Taiwan and Canada. A 72 to 84-game regular season would begin in January, 1975.

“We’ll better the American and National League salaries, yet our players will have to play less than half the number of games the current major league teams expect of their players,” Downey said in an article published by Associated Press. “We anticipate longer player life, more offense In the game, less lengthy games and player participation in operation of the association.”

Downey stressed that this would be big league all the way, with the WBA going after 160 “front line” players.

It was revealed at the news conference that franchises had already been awarded to Columbus, Ohio; Jersey City, N. J.; Birmingham; Memphis; Tampa -St. Petersburg; and Mexico City. Each franchise cost $150,000 and two and a half percent of all gross revenues annually would go to the WBA, a “profit-making corporation that will direct all activities of the league, including hiring of ballplayers, coaches and managers and umpires.”

A manager/player draft was to be held in June.

“We have some substantial people, people with money, already involved,” WBA co-founder Wayne Nelson told the Miami News. “I can’t tell you who they are, but a couple of our people make (American Football League founder) Lamar Hunt look like a pauper.”

But it wouldn’t be a 1970s sports venture without some groovy rule innovations, and the WBA was gonna shake things up dramatically.

Some of the ideas included:

* Orange baseballs used for night games.

* Five designated hitters to replace five defensive players who remain in the game.

* One designated runner per game.

* Pitchers required to release a pitch within 20 seconds.

* Three balls instead of four for a walk.

* Two runs for stealing home after the sixth inning.

Shortly after the announcement Dick Williams, who managed the Oakland A’s to a pair of World Series titles, said he had been approached about becoming the new league’s commissioner.

“I’ve had three short conversations with those people,” Williams told AP. “I have no idea what the job would entail. I know of 70 players who have been contacted already. It’s got every chance to go. I think the WBA will put a lot of pressure on the rest of baseball.”

It certainly would’ve been entertaining to see this wildly reimagined version of baseball actually come to life. But for that to happen the WBA needed teams, and as the spring turned to summer and the summer turned to fall, it became apparent teams were hard to come by.

In June it was announced that Washington had joined the league, and Downey Jr. expected to name six flagship franchises by September 10 and two more by December 10. He said the WBA would likely start with 10 to 14 American clubs for the first year.

January, 1975, came and went without the WBA, and little was heard from the fledgling league until late November when new president Marvin Adelson told AP it would have a “sneak preview” with a six-game winter exhibition series in Cuba. The tournament would feature a “team representative of the World Baseball Association against clubs representing various provinces of Cuba and the national championship team, Santiago de Cuba.”

Adelson said the delay in launching a full season was simply a case of smart business.

“We’re really being tough on people who want franchises,” he said. “We can’t afford the bad publicity the World Football League got. That’s the reason it’s taken so long. You’ve got to be prepared to lose money – big money. We want to go slow and easy and be on solid ground.”

Adelson said five franchises had been sold in North America, but he declined to give names or locations. He added that five more franchises had been awarded to cities in Japan, two in the Dominican Republic, two in Puerto Rico and one in Manila.

As for the international tournament, well, it was never played.

In September, 1975, the WBA released a statement saying that a United States team would face a Japanese team in Honolulu and Tokyo, which would be the first actual game associated with the league.

That was never played, either.

And by December of 1976, Adelson had abandoned his role as WBA president in order to buy the Triple A Pawtucket Red Sox. He also hoped to own an MLB club within five years.

Thus, the World Baseball Association joined the increasingly long list of professional sports ventures that never made it past the idea stage. And as for the other 1970s leagues with “World” in their names, their worlds ceased to exist before the decade came to a close.

A ‘soft launch’ for USFL

**Stallions QB Alex McGough prepares to run a goal line play during a scrimmage against the Maulers at Protective Stadium. (Scott Adamson photo)**

Protective Stadium will officially become home of the new United States Football League on Easter weekend, with one game on April 16 and a triple-header scheduled for April 17.

Six of the teams, however, decided today was as good a time as any to move on in.

The Tampa Bay Bandits and New Jersey Generals met in the morning; the New Orleans Breakers and Houston Gamblers scrimmaged in the afternoon; and the Birmingham Stallions and Pittsburgh Maulers wrapped things up in the early evening at the Uptown Birmingham venue. The squads not only got a sneak peek at what USFL competition will look like this spring, but they also got to make trial runs in their primary gridiron digs.

The Michigan Panthers and Philadelphia Stars will play a test game on Friday.

“We had a team meeting this morning and I think everyone is ready to get started,” Birmingham coach Skip Holtz said. “This is a fun step going forward. We’ve got head sets, coaches in the box, communication with the players via the headset … I’ve never experienced that. I’m excited about today, but it’s just one more step educating everybody and preparing everybody for what this is gonna look like on game day in about a week.

“It’s been a great couple of weeks, the attitude of the players has been great and they’ve been working extremely hard across the board.”

The scrimmage featured frequent shuffling in and out of personnel and a good deal of situational work, including plays involving some of the 2022 rules such as 3-point conversions and the fourth-and-12 onside kick option.

And although plays ended with wrap-arounds instead of takedown tackles, there were still some excitement.

The Maulers blocked a punt and took it the other way, while the Stallions turned a fumble recovery into a touchdown.

The Maulers are coached by Kirby Wilson, who was on Mike Tomlin’s first Pittsburgh Steelers staff and spent 23 years as a running backs coach with eight NFL teams. Thursday gave him a taste of what’s to come in his first year as head man.

“It’s extremely exciting to let the guys out of the gate and let them hunt a little and have some fun,” Wilson said. “It’s been very rewarding. I feel like we picked the right guys, we did extensive background checks on everyone … we wanted to make sure we had the people who were the right fit for the Maulers and the brand of football we’re gonna play. We think we’ve been successful.”

Holtz said one of the best things about camp has been finding out what motivates his players to play on in the USFL.

“Every meeting, we have a player stand up and talk about his ‘Why,’” he said. “Why are they playing the game, what’s their passion, what’s their motivation, what drives them to do what they’re doing right now – and the whys are incredible. When you listen to why these young men are here and what they’ve had to overcome to be here and what they want to accomplish being in this league, it’s been really rewarding.

“Every player under that helmet has a story. Everybody’s overcome adversity to get here and everybody has dreams and visions of where they want to go. This is another opportunity to keep those hopes and dreams alive.”

Wilson agrees.

“We’re all about development and building relationships with players, and we look forward to seeing our players perform at a high level,” Wilson said. “This is an opportunity … an opportunity to show that they still have a passion for the game of football and they want to go out there and show the country what they’re all about.”

The games that count begin on April 16 when the Stallions and Generals meet at 6:30 p.m. CDT in a contest that will be televised by Fox, NBC and Peacock.

On April 17 the Gamblers and Panthers meet at 11 a.m. (NBC/Peacock) followed by the Stars vs. the Breakers at 3 p.m. (USA Network) and Bandits vs. Maulers at 7 p.m. (FS1).

“Come out and support these guys,” Holtz said. “They’re humble and they’re hungry. They want to do well. I’d love to see people in the stands.”