Author: Scott Adamson

PSFL was late to the party

Any time a new professional football league is formed in the United States, officials backing the venture will explain that they are trying to “fill a void.” Rarely, however, do they come along when that void has already been filled.

The Professional Spring Football League did just that, though, announcing its entrance into the sports scene just four months after the World League of American Football had completed its inaugural season.

Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl and Instagram @scottscribe60

Unveiled on October 1, 1991, at Gallaghers Steak House in New York, PSFL commissioner Rex Lardner (former programming director for Turner Broadcasting) billed it as a can’t miss venture.

“Two things will make this league successful while others failed,” Lardner told the Herald-News of Passaic, New Jersey. “Keeping control of expenses through the league office, that is, coordinating all the funds to the teams through the league office so that we protect the owners from each other.

“And also a really strong regionalization concept due to our territorial draft.”

This was the single entity concept before the single entity concept was cool. Not only did the two versions of the XFL operate under that business model, Major League Soccer still does, along with Major League Rugby. So, Lardner and league founder Vincent Sette were visionaries in that regard.

But why try to compete with another spring league that was funded by the NFL and had national television contracts with both ABC and the USA Network?

“We will make it a shorter game and affordable to everybody,” Lardner said. “We don’t have the global concept of the WLAF. We are looking to draw only about 20,000, maybe 25,000 per game that first year.”

But no new sports league had ever survived without major TV contracts, and the PSFL had none.

“We think we have television,” Lardner insisted. “I’ll work with every franchise in getting local television and radio. Then maybe go after regional cable, maybe semi-national cable. Realistically, we’ve got to walk before we sprint.

“Television is just not the end-all of this league.”

In something of an upset for a spring upstart, this league didn’t just disappear after its introductory news conference. By the time the calendar flipped to 1992 all systems were go, with a 16-game regular season set to start on February 29 (three weeks before the WLAF embarked on year two).

The team lineup consisted of the Arkansas Miners, Carolina Cougars, Miami Tribe, Nevada Aces, New England Blitz, New Mexico Rattlesnakes, Oregon Lightning Bolts, Tampa Bay Blitz, Utah Pioneers, and Washington Marauders, each with 45-man rosters.

The average salary per player was projected to be in the $30,000 per season range, and they were all hoping to lead their team to the championship game on July 5 – the Red, White and Blue Bowl at RFK Stadium in Washington.

The PSFL also had some coaching star power with Craig Morton leading Oregon and Steve Grogan guiding the fortunes of New England.

What it didn’t have, however, was TV. Nor did it have enough teams in major markets to interest any network.

I assume you know how this story ends.

On February 13, 1992, the Professional Spring Football League suspended operations with Lardner saying it needed $1 million to stay afloat. On March 2 it officially folded – with 700 players who had participated in training camps still unpaid.

“We made our decision to suspend this season because we lost so much time getting everything together,” Sette told the Tampa Tribune. “There was a problem with the economy and we moved at too fast a pace.”

Sette said he hoped the league would be able to reform and launch in 1993 but, of course, that didn’t happen. And that’s too bad because the WLAF went on hiatus from 1993-94, once again leaving that spring void that demands to be filled. Instead, the PSFL was null and void before ever playing a game.

What if …

For now at least, that European Super League nonsense is off the table. Ultimately it was halted by thousands of angry supporters who believe world football competitions should be based on sporting merit, not cherry-picked by billionaires with enough expendable income to form their own private club. It didn’t hurt that the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) threatened to boot teams from their domestic leagues and bar players from World Cup and other tournaments.

The owners of the clubs have been properly shamed, and the Super League is back to being a bad idea instead of a bad reality.

Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl and Instagram @scottscribe60

Still, all this got me thinking …

How would American fans react if the game they’re most passionate about went rogue? Just for fun – knowing it could never happen – let’s say 12 NFL owners decided to break away and form a new American football Super League in the spring.

According to Forbes the most valuable franchises in 2020 were the Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots, New York Giants, Los Angeles Rams (those four are worth at least $4 billion), San Francisco 49ers, New York Jets, Chicago Bears, Washington Football Team, Philadelphia Eagles, Houston Texans, Denver Broncos, and Las Vegas Raiders. For our purposes, we’ll make them Super League members (although as a Jets fan I realize the word “Super” hasn’t been associated with Gang Green for more than half a century).

The NFL Super League would be divided into three, four team pools: The Giants, Jets, Patriots and Eagles in Pool A, Cowboys, Bears, Football Team and Texans in Pool B, and Rams, 49ers, Broncos and Raiders in Pool C.

Pool play would be round robin (six games per team) with the playoffs contested single-elimination style among the three pool winners and wildcard team.

Using my format, the NFL Super League would span eight weeks in April and May.

Is it ridiculous?

Oh, yeah.

It’d be difficult for a cyborg to make it through a year-round football season, much less a human. And of course the NFL would never allow anything that didn’t involve all 32 of its cash cows.

But that’s not really my point – I’m thinking more about the perception of it all.

The 12 soccer renegades in the Super League (AC Milan, Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur) weren’t leaving their domestic leagues either – they were just creating a closed, big-money extravaganza outside of their regular season fixtures and other annual events. That’s what enraged supporters.

This NFL Super League would be (theoretically) doing the same thing. So when news broke about a norm-busting soccer series involving iconic clubs, I wondered how such an earth-shattering decision would be received by pro football fans. I assume that – unlike sports enthusiasts in Europe – Americans would be wildly excited about a gridiron super league, with TV ratings rivaling those of traditional playoffs. Sure, fans of the franchises left out would bitch and moan, but they’d be bitching and moaning while watching. And the reason they’d be watching (me included) is because those of us in the United States are conditioned to accept the franchise model.

According to Market Watch, the NFL is the most profitable sports league on the planet, raking in $13 billion annually. And teams don’t belong to a city or the citizens of a city (Green Bay being the notable exception). You might live in Atlanta and identify with the Falcons, but make no mistake – they belong to Arthur Blank, not you.

NFL owners will do what they want with little regard to the fan base, whether that’s threatening to move to another city unless they get a palatial new stadium or actually using moving vans and doing so in the middle of the night. That’s why, for example, the Baltimore Colts are now the Indianapolis Colts and Oakland Raiders are the Las Vegas Raiders. A team might have a rabid, loyal fan base, but if an owner sees a better deal elsewhere he or she will pursue it. That’s how the world of the NFL turns and it has long since been accepted by those of us who follow tackle football.

It’s not, however, how European association football fans view their clubs because for them there is a real sense of ownership – sometimes literally. The leaders of the potential Super League clubs tried to tear a page from their peers across the pond, but underestimated how deeply ingrained these teams are to the culture and fabric of their cities and citizens. Roots run deep, and traditions span generations.

The beauty of global soccer is that any club – regardless of how far down the pyramid – has a path to reach the summit of the sport. Because results are the most important criteria, the smallest club can win its way to the top tier of soccer, raising the hopes and spirits of its community along the way. It’s a massive party, and everyone’s invited.

In the NFL, however, that’s not the case. We pay money to watch the franchises play, but those franchises are playing for the NFL, not us. It controls the dance and the dancers – and we’re perfectly happy to be wallflowers.

No-frills soccer

When it comes to sports I’m a gimmick guy, so usually when a rule innovation comes along, I’ll be the first to embrace it.

The American Football League introduced the two-point conversion to the pro game, which is one of the reasons (there were many) I liked it better than the NFL.

Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl

The American Basketball Association had the three-point shot and red, white and blue basketballs, so to me it was superior to the NBA.

The World Hockey Association instituted sudden death overtime and (briefly) used blue pucks, thus it got more of my attention than the NHL.

So if I could work my will on soccer, I’d offer up some radical changes, right?

Nope. If anything, I’d make it even less modern because when it comes to the Beautiful Game, I’ve become an old fuddy-duddy. (Only someone old would even use the term “fuddy-duddy,” so you know I’m serious about this).

The subject came up when a friend of mine and I were discussing different ways sports have tweaked their rules over the years. We praised the seven-point touchdowns of the World Football League, spoke glowingly of the pandemic-inspired runner-on-second rule in Major League Baseball extra-inning games, and pledged our complete support for the four-point shot in the BIG3 league.

Knowing that association football is my passion, my buddy asked me how I’d reshape it if I could be its puppet master. Frankly, even I was surprised at how I’ve embraced soccer minimalism over the years.

For starters, I’d do away with penalty kicks to settle draws. To me, PKs should be reserved for fouls that occur during the course of a game and not used to determine the winner of that game. Having a match end in penalty kicks is akin to a field goal contest deciding a football game or a home run derby taking the place of free baseball after nine innings.

So does this mean overtime play should be used to break ties?

No.

And yes.

No if it’s a regular game on the season schedule. Remember what I said about settling draws? In my humble opinion, not all draws should be settled. If clubs play 90 minutes plus injury time and share the same score, then a tie seems to be a fair outcome for both.

The answer, however, is yes if the game is part of a tournament. If draws aren’t an option – say, in a knockout competition that requires advancement following each round – then extra time should be played until one side scores a goal. In 1975 the New York Apollos and Worcester Astros were declared co-champions of the American Soccer League when they played 67 and half minutes of overtime in their title game showdown but couldn’t change a 1-1 scoreline. That, however, is a worst-case scenario. And besides, that wouldn’t be a scenario at all if I ran things because there would be no title game showdown. In most soccer systems outside the United States, a league title is determined by which club has the most points at the end of a season. I think champions should be judged by their entire body of work, and a team that secures the best record through the course of a 30-plus match round-robin grind has earned the hardware.

Plus, there are plenty of cup competitions outside of a league season for those who enjoy win or go home tournaments.

The only playoffs I care to see in soccer are to decide promotion and relegation in an open pyramid, but I doubt I’ll live long enough to ever experience that in America.

So while I’m all for innovation when it comes to virtually every other sport on the planet, the older I get the more I prefer soccer that’s devoid of novelties. It’s a disconnect I can’t explain, especially since I grew up with the original North American Soccer League and once embraced its 35-yard shootout and fringe jerseys rocked by the Caribous of Colorado.

It’s not that I yearn for a return to cleated boots or an eight-panel ball with laces – I’m not that much of a fuddy-duddy. It’s just that for me, the simplicity of soccer is simply perfect.