Category: Alternative Football

As a former kicker (yeah, yeah … it was YMCA ball in 8^th grade, but still), field goals always pique my interest. And you might be interested to know it’s been almost 19 years since a pro football kicker has connected on a 4-point field goal.

If you’re an alt-football junkie, you already know by now that the United Football League released a new rules package for the 2026 season – one that includes a 4-point field goal. Yet, as creative as it is, it’s not unprecedented in tackle football.

The World League of American Football introduced the 4-pointer in 1995 as part of its all-European reboot.

The WLAF played two spring-summer seasons, 1991 and 1992, with 10 franchises, including seven in North America. The circuit – owned and operated by the National Football League – featured standard NFL rules for the most part. But after the WLAF flopped in U.S. markets, it went on hiatus for two years.

When it returned, the NFL decided to use it as a proving ground for rule innovations and the 4-point field goal was arguably it’s boldest experiment.

“We think the four-point play is an exciting rules change which is in keeping with the innovative style of the World League,” WLAF vice president of football operations Jerry Vanisi said.

Of course, while the UFL rule mandates that a field goal is worth four points from 60 yards or more, WLAF kickers needed only to split the pipes and clear the crossbar from 50 or better. (There weren’t nearly as many Cam Littles and Brandon Aubreys 30-plus years ago).

London’s Don Silvestri connected on the first successful 4-point field goal in WLAF history on May 7, 1995. He nailed a 52-yarder against the Scottish Claymores to open scoring in an 11-10 victory for the Monarchs.

The rule remained in place over the years as the WLAF morphed into NFL Europe and, finally, NFL Europa.

The last 4-pointer came in week 10 of the fifteenth and final season of the NFL-sponsored spring league. Rhys Lloyd of the Frankfurt Galaxy closed out scoring with a 50-yard field goal in a 31-14 victory over the Cologne Centurions on June 16, 2007.

Certainly, 4-point field goals will be divisive to old-schoolers, but what if you made kicks worth one, two or three points based on distance?

The World Football League did just that during the preseason of its ill-fated 1975 campaign.

Billy DeCarlis, chairman of the WFL rules committee, proposed that field goals inside the 10-yard line would count one point, tally two points from the 10 to the 30, and three points from 31 yards out or further.

The league was keen on deemphasizing scoring via the kick; touchdowns counted seven points and the PAT was eliminated in favor of an “action point” that required a run or pass for a single-point conversion.

“If a team were trailing by two points, it would have to use strategy, maybe even take a loss, to get the ball in position for a three point try,” DeCarlis told The Birmingham News in a May, 1975, article. “It would be a multiple choice type decision. Try to take it into the end zone, stay outside the zone, or kick immediately. It could eliminate running the clock down to get a chip shot field goal at the end.”

I had an in-person brush with this bit of history on July 12, 1975, when I watched the Birmingham Vulcans defeat the Portland Thunder, 25-9, in an exhibition contest at Legion Field.

Birmingham’s Ron Slovensky booted a 35-yard field goal late in the fourth quarter – good for two points.

However, if a rules committee ever wants to really mess with field goals (and the minds of football fans), they could try the WFL experiment in reverse. The job of the offense is to gain yards against the defense and move the ball toward the goal line, right?

So, to reward progressing down the field, a field goal inside the 10 would be worth three points, between the 11 and 30, two points, and anything beyond that, a single point.

I’ll show myself out …

By February, 1976, the World Football League was more or less a distant memory.

It had folded on October 22, 1975 – a rebooted second season shunned by fans and TV networks. (The ill-fated, lower budget attempt followed an inaugural 1974 campaign that drowned in red ink).

But while the likes of the Southern California Sun, Philadelphia Bell and The Hawaiians were no more, one team existed, at least in a technical sense.

Four months after the WFL’s demise, the Memphis Southmen were hoping to play on. Owner John Bassett still had former Miami Dolphins stars Larry Csonka, Paul Warfield and Jim Kiick under contract, as well as head coach John McVay. He even held a stadium lease for the Liberty Bowl.

While both Memphis and the Birmingham Vulcans, a fellow member of the defunct WFL, had applied to membership in the National Football League, only the Southmen had an existing infrastructure in place.

“I am optimistic about getting into the NFL this season because I have no reason not to be optimistic,” Bassett, a Canadian businessman, told the Toronto Star for a February 3, 1976, article. “They want to meet with us again. The NFL had to be impressed with the Memphis application. We have money from 46,000 applicants for season tickets, along with written requests for 8,000 more. That’s at $10 per ticket. There are 1,200 box seats at $15 each. They are sold.”

No question Bassett had all his ducks in a row. Only problem was, the NFL had already granted expansion franchises to Seattle and Tampa Bay. The Seahawks and Buccaneers were set to debut during the 1976 season, increasing the league to 28 teams.

Memphis squeezing in at 29 would be quite a feat.

But Bassett believed there was a chance, and so did McVay.

The coach who led the Southmen to a 24-8 record was busy, well, being a coach while Bassett continued to court the NFL.

“The things we’re doing are the same things we would do if the NFL accepts us,” McVay said in an interview with United Press International that appeared on February 29, 1976. “We’re getting ready for the draft, trying to evaluate personnel, rate them and see how they’d fit into our needs. Everything we’re doing is geared to going into the NFL in 1976.”

McVay scouted the Senior Bowl in January, and also sent scouts to the Hula Bowl. He told UPI he was researching the college draft as well as a potential expansion draft involving his team as well as Seattle and Tampa Bay.

McVay’s contract was valid until 1977, and he said 30 Southmen in all were still signed up to the team that last played on October 19, 1975. Aside from the “Big Three,” quarterback Danny White, receiver Ed Marshall and running back Willie Spencer continued to be paid by Bassett.

“In my heart I believe Memphis will get a franchise in 1976, ‘77 or ‘78,” McVay said. “All we can do is make a solid proposal and wait.”

The wait ended on March 16, 1976, when NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle announced that with Seattle and Tampa Bay coming into the league, owners decided there would be no NFL expansion for “the foreseeable future.”

“After a lengthy and thorough discussion, the clubs concluded that under the present conditions – that is our legal and labor problems – they could not firmly commit to expansion at this time. However, it is clear that these two cities (Memphis and Birmingham) were the most active in recent months and will be among those most strongly considered when the league eventually feels it can expand.”

Needless to say, Bassett was not happy.

“It’s a tremendous disservice to the people of Memphis who worked so hard and demonstrated the ability to form and support the team,” Bassett said. “I think their (NFL owners) reasons are totally unacceptable and transparent.”

Once the Southmen dissolved, Csonka, Warfield and Kiick returned to the NFL.

Csonka spent three years with the New York Giants before returning to Miami for one last season in 1979. Warfield, who began his pro career with the Cleveland Browns, ended there as well, playing in 1976 and 1977. Both men are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Kiick signed with the Denver Broncos in 1976 and played with the Broncos and Washington Redskins in 1977. He died in 2020, and was diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

McVay (grandfather of Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay) was assistant coach with the Giants in 1976 and head coach from 1977-79. He went on to have a 20-year executive career with the San Francisco Giants.

He was 91 when he passed away in 2022.

As for Bassett, he moved his World Hockey Association franchise, the Toronto Toros, to Birmingham in 1976, and owned the United States Football League’s Tampa Bay Bandits from 1983-85. Bassett succumbed to cancer in 1987. He was only 47.

Fifty years after the Southmen’s failed bid, Memphis is still without an NFL team – and that status will likely not change. Instead, it’s Nashville that represents Tennessee in pro football’s biggest league – with the Houston Oilers leaving Texas and ultimately morphing into the Tennessee Titans.

In 1997 the Titans (still carrying the Oilers brand) played their inaugural season in Memphis while a stadium was being built in the Music City. Local fans who wanted a team of their own mostly steered clear of the Liberty Bowl; the squad averaged just 28,027 fans per home game.

The Carolina Panthers pulled off the rare feat of winning their division with a losing record, earning a spot in the NFL playoffs with an 8-9 worksheet. It’s the second time Carolina has been to the postseason with a sub-.500 mark (they were 7-8-1 in 2014), and the third instance of an NFC South club doing it (Tampa Bay was tournament-bound in 2022 at 8-9).

So, will the Panthers shock the world and win Super Bowl LX?

Spoiler alert … no, they will not.

If they don’t lose to the Los Angeles Rams today in a wildcard clash in Charlotte, they’ll almost certainly fall to the Seattle Seahawks in next weekend’s divisional round.

While NFL teams with losing records have recorded victories in their playoff openers (Seattle in 2010 and Carolina in 2014), that’s as far as they’ve gotten.

But the Canadian Football League?

CFL teams on the negative side of the win-loss ledger have run the table twice.

Ten years ago – in that gridiron circuit north of the border – the Ottawa Redblacks limped into the 2016 postseason with an 8-9-1 record and came out on the other side as champions.

It was just the third year of existence for the Redblacks (Ottawa had previously been home to the Rough Riders and Renegades), and the season before the club went 12-6, won the East Division and made it all the way to the Grey Cup before losing to Edmonton, 26-20.

The 2016 campaign started off well, with Ottawa boasting a 3-0-1 record through its first four games. Things went a bit sideways from there, though, as the Redblacks stumbled to 5-9 the rest of the way.

Oddly enough, that record was still good enough to win the East – the first time a club that lost more than it won had finished atop the division.

“I think all that matters is who comes up two weeks from now and plays good football for 60 minutes,” Ottawa coach Rick Campbell stressed to the Ottawa Citizen following a regular season-ending loss to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. “If we win the next game, no one is going to care whether we were 9-8-1 or 8-9-1.”

He was right.

Ottawa made the most of its playoff opportunity, upsetting Edmonton, 35-23, in the East Final and then stunning the Calgary Stampeders, 39-33, in overtime to win the Grey Cup.

The Redblacks were given little chance against the mighty Stampeders, who entered the game 16-2-1.

“I don’t think we were ever a lost cause, where you said, ‘These guys are getting blown out – we have no chance,’” Campbell said to The Leader Post the Wednesday before the title clash. “That wasn’t the issue. All that matters is we are in no different situation as last year as far as having the opportunity to go to the Grey Cup and win it.”

Win it they did.

Forty-one year-old quarterback Henry Burris passed for more than 400 yards in an epic performance, and connected with Ernest Jackson on an 18-yard scoring toss in O.T. to shock the three-down world.

“If you don’t like ups and downs and that kind of stuff, then football’s not a good profession to be in,” Campbell said. “But I think that’s why everybody loves it.”

While the Redblacks put together one of football’s unlikeliest comebacks, the British Columbia Lions beat them to the punch 16 years earlier.

In 2000, BC opened the season with two victories, but slipped up with four consecutive losses. Head coach Greg Mohns resigned after seven games, and receivers coach Steve Buratto was put in charge on an interim basis.

Improving to 5-6, the Lions then suffered through a three-game skid.

At 5-9 with only four games to go, playoff hopes were dim.

However, the Vancouver side won three of their last four and snuck into the postseason as the third place team from the West with an 8-10 record.

BC won a wild opening round playoff game over Edmonton, 34-32, and claimed the West title and berth in the Grey Cup thanks to a 37-23 victory over Calgary.

The Lions completed their stunning turnaround by edging the Montreal Alouettes, 28-26, to seize the crown.

“After the season we had, this is a great feeling,” BC running back Robert Drummond, who was Grey Cup MVP with 122 rushing yards, told The Globe and Mail. “When things were going badly early in the season, we just believed.”

Added 46-year old kicker Lui Passaglia, playing the final game of his 25-year Hall of Fame CFL career, “The guys said two months ago if we could make the playoffs, we’d win the Grey Cup.”

Now, before my fellow alt-football nerds pelt me with rotten fruit for leaving this team out, I must acknowledge that the 2023 XFL also produced a club that went from also-rans to champs.

The Arlington Renegades finished second in the XFL South with a 4-6 regular season record, but that was good enough to make the spring league’s four team playoff.

Bob Stoops’ charges beat the Houston Roughnecks, 26-11, in the division finals, and surprised the DC Defenders, 35-26, in the XFL Championship Game.

While the CFL teams managed to have winning records after taking the Grey Cup, Renegades players got to wag their index fingers despite finishing at .500.

But in the NFL?

It’s hard to imagine it ever happening – although it’s fun to think it could.