Category: Alternative Football

Alternative football in Birmingham has been my kink since 1974, which is why I wrote The Home Team: My Bromance With Off-Brand Football.

But that book was about professional football teams in the Magic City. I never expected I might have to add a chapter about an entire league that set up shop in my hometown.

Sparkling new 47,100-seat Protective Stadium officially opened for business on October 2, 2021, and a new business calling itself the United States Football League has reportedly decided to rent it out for the spring of 2022 (official news is coming – maybe today, this week, next week … at some point). The USFL will go with a bubble model next April, with all 43 games taking place in the ‘Ham – kinda like a startup business fair. Theoretically, this could be terrific for the local hospitality industry, with players, coaches, league personnel and broadcast partners (FOX Sports owns the league under the umbrella of the National Spring Football League) filling hotels and restaurants and shining a national spotlight on Birmingham.

Even venerable Legion Field would get a piece of the pie, since it would also host some of the overflow USFL games. With eight teams playing each week of a 10-week regular season – plus playoffs – “The Old Gray Lady” would be called into service to supplement the new kid on the Uptown block.

All that’s great, but getting my hopes up about viable professional football here has always led to heartbreak. It’s like having a field mouse as a pet – you love it, but it’s best not to get too attached because it’ll probably only be around for a year or so. Plus, Birmingham and Jefferson County have each agreed to pony up $500,000 toward the reported three and a half million bucks it’ll cost to host in 2022, and that’s a lot of money to commit to something with such a poor track record. Noted sports fan Bill Shakespeare once wrote, “What’s past is prologue,” and Birmingham’s pro gridiron past has resulted in a lot of tombstones.

“But Scott,” you say, “FOX is putting millions of dollars behind the effort so it’s a no-lose situation,” to which I answer, “FOX also put millions of dollars behind the excellent science fiction series Almost Human but canceled it after one season because it cost too much money to make.”

All that aside, what do we really know about the 2022 USFL?

Will the pay scale be similar to that of the Alliance of American Football or the most recent XFL ($50,000-$75,000 annually)? Will athletes earn much more? Much less?

What will be the format of the draft?

Will USFL coaches be older “big names” looking for a last hurrah, up-and-comers, or a mixed bag?

Are franchises ultimately to be purchased by ownership groups, or will the league work as a single entity corporation?

And how about rules? Will the league go for outside the box innovations or copy the NFL?

I have many, many questions.

Also, the league coming to my city is calling itself the USFL, but I know deep down that it’s not the USFL. Silly? Yeah, I suppose. Whoever buys the trademarks, logos and naming rights can call it whatever they like. And I’m sure a lot of people will initially pay attention to the league because of the throwback angle, and that’s smart marketing.

However – and speaking only for myself – I’m extremely protective of the original USFL. It gave me and millions of other fans major professional football from 1983-85. It signed top National Football League and college players, started a good, old-fashioned bidding war, and ultimately produced a handful of franchises (the Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars chief among them) that could’ve been competitive in the NFL.

The new USFL will do none of those things. That’s not a criticism, it’s just a fact.

Since it’s owned by FOX and FOX is a major broadcast partner of the NFL, the network would never do anything to anger the big league. In fact, I imagine many broadcasts will feature commentators saying things like, “He really wants back in the NFL and a good showing against the Stallions could put him on the league’s radar,” and “He was just a step away from earning an NFL roster spot last September and a strong performance with the Stars might get him another shot.”

All that is absolutely fine. I have no expectation that this league will or should be in competition with the NFL, and if it can ultimately work out some sort of working agreement with it, that would be fantastic.

However, saying the USFL is “back” implies this new venture is a continuation of the old one, and it’s nothing of the sort – it’s just not. That’s why teams called the Stallions or Stars or Breakers are off-putting to me. I mean, there were bands I loved in the 1980s, but if I saw them tour now – with none of their original members – it just wouldn’t be the same (I’m looking at you, Quiet Riot).

Now before I go any further, I have a confession to make; I’m a hypocrite when it comes to sports reboots and restarts.

It didn’t bother me in the least that the second iteration of Birmingham’s baseball Barons had nothing to do with the original Barons.

And I followed the New York Cosmos of the original North American Soccer League, then followed the New York Cosmos in the Division II North American Soccer League, and continued to follow the New York Cosmos in the National Premier Soccer League and National Independent Soccer Association. I still follow them now, even though they may or may not even exist. None of that rebranding, remaking or retreading concerned me at all so if you want to call out my sanctimony, I offer no defense.

The USFL is different to me, though. Its particular place in my sports fandom is unique and I want to remember it as it was, not for what someone else is pretending it is.

But, my opinion carries no weight and FOX owns the league, so that pretty much ends my desire that this USFL be an acronym for Unrelated Spring Football League.

I’m acutely aware I sound like Dougie Downer or Negative Ned or Antagonistic Andy or Gloomy Gus or Pessimistic Pete or Despondent Dudley, and that’s not my intent. If it can provide jobs and opportunities, I want it to be a rousing success. Any time an alternative football league comes along, I have a moral obligation to give it a chance. And anything that’s good for Birmingham has my full support.

So support it I will; the first weekend of games, you can count me in. And if the quality of football is good, Birmingham officially gets a franchise, and it keeps me entertained, I’ll keep coming back for more and cheerfully admit I misjudged it.

Just don’t expect me to buy Stallions T-shirts and caps.

I stocked up on those back in 1983.

On this 46^th anniversary of the World Football League’s demise, I could mark the occasion by regaling you with tales you’ve probably already heard or read before. That might be cathartic for me, but it wouldn’t provide you with any new information.

We’ve already been there, done that and got the Birmingham Vulcans T-shirt.

But while doing some research on the WFL’s October 22, 1975, expiration date I did stumble upon some information I always seem to forget; four franchises considered playing on in a new league in 1976.

Yep, turns out officials associated with the San Antonio Wings spearheaded informal talks with reps from the Charlotte Hornets, Jacksonville Express and Shreveport Steamer about keeping the franchises afloat in a WFL spinoff that would utilize a public ownership/non-profit franchise model.

“Right now it’s going to be very hard to get anybody interested in it,” Ralph Rich, one of the main investors in the Wings, told the Associated Press. “The shock’s still there. Right now we’ve got to regroup. But we’re talking Green Bay, Wisconsin, concept. If a guy’s got $100 in a team, he’s an owner and he’ll be out there at the games.”

Wings governor Norm Bevan said the league folded based on a 6-4 vote by the owners, putting 380 players out of work. San Antonio, Charlotte, Jacksonville and Memphis were in the minority, and Shreveport voted to fold after its proposal for a six-team playoff to start the following weekend was turned down.

Bevan said San Antonio had raised $350,000 to continue.

“I’m not sure you won’t see another major league football team in San Antonio next year,” Bevan told AP.

Shreveport coach Marshall Taylor told the Shreveport Journal that, in theory, he liked the concept of a “Southern League.”

“I think it would go over if it had football people running it,” he said. “Businessmen just don’t understand the problems.”

Once the WFL officially went out of business, Birmingham and Memphis immediately applied for NFL franchises while Southern California, Philadelphia, Portland and The Hawaiians grabbed their coats and headed for the exit.

So how close did the four “breakaway” franchises come to staying alive?

Not very. Remember, the 1975 WFL was actually a separate entity from the 1974 original (New League Inc. doing business as the World Football League) and both were unmitigated financial disasters. It’s hard to imagine anyone having an appetite for a third, fragmented incarnation.

And it’s not like any of the four were huge box office successes. Shreveport had the most fan support with an average of 15,070 paying customers per game, followed by San Antonio (13,376), Jacksonville (12,984) and Charlotte (10,924).

I reached out to Upton Bell, who owned the Hornets, and asked him if such an idea ever had any real legs.

“There were talks, but I was more interested in getting Charlotte into the NFL,” said Bell, also a former NFL executive and son of late NFL commissioner Bert Bell. “John Bassett of Memphis was also interested in getting into the NFL. I called Dan Rooney on behalf of Charlotte knowing I would not be the owner if they did take us in. They were looking for a rich guy like Jerry Richardson. I proved that Charlotte was a major league city, unfortunately it wasn’t me (leading the city into the NFL).”

The four cities ultimately resurfaced in the minor league American Football Association, with the San Antonio Charros joining in 1977, the Shreveport Steamer coming aboard in 1978, and the Carolina Chargers and Jacksonville Firebirds becoming AFA members in 1979.

Jacksonville and San Antonio were also part of the United States Football League; San Antonio’s most recent pro football experience was in the Alliance of American Football following a stint in the World League of American Football; and Shreveport’s last significant outdoor team was in the Canadian Football League during the CFL’s “American experiment” in the mid-1990s.

Charlotte and Jacksonville, of course, did make it to football’s biggest league, joining the NFL in 1995 as the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars.

But today, as we again mark the end of the World Football League, I salute those four intrepid franchises that refused to go quietly to the sports graveyard. They never had a chance, but their willingness to take another chance showed moxie.

I’ll always have special memories of Georgia Mira.

First and foremost, he was the starting quarterback of Birmingham’s only professional football champion, helping the World Football League’s Americans win the 1974 World Bowl.

A year later he was a thorn in Birmingham’s side, guiding the Jacksonville Express to a pair of victories over the Vulcans – handing Birmingham two of its three losses before the rebooted league folded.

I even had the chance to interview him on the 30^th anniversary of the WFL’s first season, a discussion that made it difficult to stifle the fan boy in me.

Yet while I knew Mira was a standout quarterback at the University of Miami, played in both the WFL and CFL, and had stints with four different NFL teams, what I didn’t know was that he was head coach of the South Florida Heat – a franchise in the International Football League that later aspired to be a United States Football League franchise but, in fact, never played a game at all.

I found all this out quite by accident when I was doing research for a recent story about a possible merger between the IFL and American Football Association. That never happened because the IFL never happened, although in 1983 it appeared to be taking shape when Fort Lauderdale was granted a franchise and in July of that year, tapped Mira as head coach.

The plan was to start with 12 franchises in 1984. Fort Lauderdale, New York, Los Angeles, San Jose, Chicago, Charlotte, Omaha and Houston were supposedly already on board for the first season, with cities such as Honolulu and Milwaukee also being considered for inclusion among the first 12.

In 1985 the IFL vowed to add four teams in Japan and four in Australia.

“I’ve thought about coaching for a few years,” Mira told United Press International. “I want to see if I can do it. The league has some real stable people behind it. They’re legitimate people, and they’re going out to get a successful franchise in Fort Lauderdale.”

Mira had been out of football for six years, and was doing some broadcasting and owned several pizza restaurants. But this was hardly going to be a side gig for the man called “The Matador.”

“This is an opportunity I’ve been waiting for for a long time,” he said in an interview with the Fort Lauderdale News. “Whatever it takes to create an exciting and winning team, George Mira will do it. The first player I’ll go after is a good quarterback. I’m an open-minded offensive individual. We want a player who can stay in the pocket and get out of the pocket and throw the ball around. I’d like a kid who’s maybe been around three or four years that has had experience but maybe has just sat on the bench.

“We also want to pick up as many Florida boys as we can. With all these individuals, we’ll have a good following with their families and friends of their families. This will create interest.”

The IFL in one form or another had attempted to launch since the dawn of the 1980s, but the late summer 1983 announcement seemed like especially poor timing.  Not only had the United States Football League – with ABC and ESPN TV contracts – established itself as a major spring league, it had been successful enough to expand by six teams for the 1984 season. Even though the IFL had yet to even fully form, Mira was already thinking about a potential merger.

“I think there’s room for two 30-team leagues, one in the fall and one in the spring,” Mira said. “But that’s probably down the road some.”

In the meantime, Mira hoped to build the Heat into an IFL contender.

“You’ve got to remember there’s a heck of a lot of good football players out there,” he said. “I used to be around … I played professional ball for 13 years, and you get to see how much talent there is out there. It just takes time to mature the talent. The only way that talent is going to mature, though, is for it to play every day.”

In September the Heat made a bit of a splash by signing former Minnesota Vikings great Chuck Foreman, and by October Mira had already brought in former Florida State quarterback Rick Stockstill and told the Miami Herald he was hoping to also sign Mark Richt, a product of the Miami Hurricanes.

By the end of the year, however, the IFL was stuck on the launching pad and team owner William Markham decided to abandon the circuit completely in hopes of landing a USFL franchise.

Mira agreed to stay on board and the push began when the Heat sponsored a USFL exhibition game between the Tampa Bay Bandits and Washington Federals on February 4, 1984, at tiny Lockhart Stadium in Fort Lauderdale.

“I’m sure the USFL people are looking at what kind of interest the game generates, whether we’re for real, check out our facilities,” Mira said. “We’d like to get a sellout to show them people here want to USFL.”

The game drew 17,225 fans to the 19,700-seat venue and both Markham and Mira thought the event was a good indicator that the area would support a USFL franchise.

“They were interested in us but we were a little too late,” Mira said. “They couldn’t take us in this year. Hopefully, they’ll take us next year. The USFL has been in existence a year and I thought they did a pretty good job. It can only get stronger and better.”

Unfortunately for Mira and everyone else associated with the franchise, the only Heat that ever came to South Florida was through the National Basketball Association.

Lockhart Stadium was deemed too small for the USFL and the league ultimately awarded Miami a franchise via relocation of the Washington Federals, even hiring Howard Schnellenberger as head coach. But when the spring league voted to move to a fall slate in 1986, team owner Woody Weiser nixed the deal and the team wound up in Orlando.

The IFL and the South Florida Heat were no more, and Mira was never able to find out just what kind of success he’d have had as a professional football coach. Regardless, he’ll always be a winner to me – and a champion, at that.