United Football League executive vice president of football operations Daryl Johnston has worked with the Alliance of American Football, XFL 2.0, and the modern United States Football League. That means he’s seen the good, the bad and the ugly of alternative football leagues.
Those experiences and his wealth of gridiron knowledge position him well in helping the UFL embark on its maiden voyage. But now the hard work begins – attempting to make professional spring football sustainable for the long haul.
“The biggest thing is who is supporting us on the financial side,” explained the UFL executive, who – along with Birmingham Stallions head coach Skip Holtz – talked to the media earlier on Thursday before taking part in a meet-and-greet with fans at Protective Stadium. “We all know what Fox brought to the table with the USFL … football built Fox Sports. We knew they were committed to professional football and they were also able to help in areas where we could reduce our costs.
“On the (XFL) side, they had great support from RedBird Capital, and when you talk about the ability to market and promote, I don’t think you can have anyone better than Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia. They’re the face and the voice of your league.”
After seeing the USFL through two seasons, Johnston explained how the merger with that league and the XFL came about.
“I was alerted to it in late summer, about six weeks into the process,” Johnston said. “Everybody up top had to figure out this was something that could happen before bringing everybody else in. The hardest part for us was staying on two parallel tracks in case it didn’t go through.
“So, while we were making arrangements for the potential merger, we were also focused on season three (of the USFL) in case this falls apart in the 24th hour. And the leagues did things differently, so we had to try to find common ground and blend best practices.”
Holtz said he started hearing rumors not long after his Stallions wrapped up their second consecutive USFL championship.
“After we won the championship everybody kind of dispersed, and I got a phone call and was told (a merger was a possibility),” Holtz said. “And of course, I had a chance to work for Northwestern starting in August, but even then, I was still trying to follow the calendar and see what was going on.”
The two leagues conducted business quite differently. The USFL was TV first, and its hub model (all eight teams in Birmingham in 2022 and teams housed in Birmingham, Memphis, Detroit and Canton in 2023) often resulted in extremely low attendance when fans didn’t have a “home team” rooting interest.
The XFL’s hybrid hub had players on all eight of its teams live and train in Arlington, Texas, during the week, and travel to host cities for games.
The hybrid hub will be used in year one of the UFL.
“It was hard,” Johnston said about the change. “You get close to people, and we had to let a lot of good people go. But the good news is there’s a merger, we retained some very good people, and it gives us the best opportunity for success long-term. The bad news is we found out there’d be attrition across the board, going from what was two leagues of eight teams each to one league with eight teams, and those were difficult decisions to make.”
The original USFL didn’t reach the level of the National Football League, but it was close enough during its three-year run from 1983-85. It featured multiple Heisman Trophy winners and several future Hall of Famers – and wasn’t afraid of raiding the NFL for talent. In fact, by the time it played its final season, a handful of its teams could’ve likely been competitive in the senior circuit.
But since then, springs have been devoted to developmental circuits, from the World League of American Football to three incarnations of the XFL, the AAF, and the 2022-23 USFL that was designed to send players to the big league, not take them away.
Birmingham, the Houston Roughnecks, Memphis Showboats and Michigan Panthers make up the USFL Conference of the UFL, with the Arlington Renegades, D.C. Defenders, San Antonio Brahmas and St. Louis Battlehawks representing the XFL Conference.
The Stallions and Renegades – defending champions of their “old” leagues, will lift the lid on the UFL on March 30 at Choctaw Stadium (noon CDT, Fox).
St. Louis and Michigan wrap up the Saturday doubleheader at Ford Field at 3 p.m. on Fox.
On Sunday, March 31, D.C. and San Antonio square off at the Alamodome (11 a.m., ESPN) and Memphis meets Houston at Rice Stadium (2 p.m., ESPN).
“I really like how we kind of get to preserve the history of both leagues because we have the USFL and XFL conferences,” Holtz said. “We’ll play everybody in our division twice and we’ll play everybody from the XFL Conference once. So that’s gonna be exciting.”
Johnston said the USFL and XFL competition will live on in the joint venture.
“We’re proud of what we did in the USFL, and they should be proud of what they did in season one of the XFL,” Johnston said. “But these coaches and players are competitive, and at the end of the season whichever team from the old league wins the championship, they’re gonna brag about it.”
Each club plays a 10-game schedule, meaning there’ll be 40 regular season contests, two conference title games and the UFL Championship, which will be played Sunday, June 16.
All games will be televised on either Fox, ABC, ESPN, ESPN 2 or FS1.
“The competition is going to be much better,” Holtz said. “We’re going from 800 players playing spring football to 400 playing spring football, so every team is going to be better. For so long when it came to spring football, people had one foot in and one foot out, not knowing if it would survive.
“I think when you look at everybody involved in the UFL, this has a chance to grow and get really strong.”
