Category: Alternative Football

Fifty years ago today, I was most likely doing one of three things: pretending I was Wendell Hudson while shooting at the basketball goal tacked onto an oak tree in the middle of my backyard; pretending I was Don Maynard running an improvised pass pattern while reeling in a Joe Namath aerial; or pretending I was a puppet master while playing with my Adventure Team G.I. Joe (with life-like air and beard).

All three were noble pursuits for a 10-year old, especially on a Saturday in the early summer. But the day was also quite significant in my journey as a sports fan. Why? Because on May 29, 1971, American newspapers announced that the Canadian Football League would begin televising some of its games on U.S. stations.

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

According to Associated Press:

The Canadian Football League, which has lured some big-name college players north, may take away some of college football’s television audience this fall.

The International Broadcasting Company, an independent network with headquarters (in Hayward, California), announced last week that CFL games will be telecast next season, mostly on Saturday afternoons, to at least 15 major markets.

Robert M. Green, president of the network, said the U.S. television rights were purchased for about $500,000.

The CFL’s commissioner, Jake Gaurdaur, (sic) was here for Thursday’s announcement and called the television money “minimal at present.”

But, he said, the U.S. television exposure will help CFL teams sign more good American players.

“If an American player is seen on television here, he’ll establish his name for the time when he finishes his playing days,” Gaurdaur (sic) said.

Despite misspelling Gaudaur’s name, the story brought good tidings. At the time I thought the only “TV football” that existed was the kind offered by the NFL and NCAA, but here was a whole new league (to me) that started play in the summer.

And while I’d love to tell you specifics of the first CFL game I ever watched, I can’t – I only know that whenever a game was on, I made every effort to watch.

Recalling memories from half a century ago can be tough – and sometimes you later learn that a few of them are false. I never remember a CFL game being broadcast on a Saturday afternoon, and I’m quite certain they never went head-to-head with college football on ABC – at least not in the Birmingham TV market. But I want to say the games I saw as a kid were on the CBS affiliate, always on a taped delayed basis, always at night, and edited to fit into maybe a two-hour window.

I watched the Hamilton Tiger-Cats play and became a fan of the team based on their hyphenated nickname and black and gold color scheme.

There was a game involving the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in which the announcers talked about how big and pesky the mosquitoes were. Weird that bit of info stuck with me, but it has.

And I recall Alex Karras doing color commentary and thinking, “Hey … he used to play for the Detroit Lions.”

All random stuff, I know, and mere snapshots to the bigger picture, which was that of a gridiron style that I fell in love with. Three downs to make 10 yards was downright exotic in my book, and those end zones (25 yards deep at the time) meant a QB could throw long on first-and-goal situation.

Further research shows that the 1972 American TV slate was aborted in August of that year because the syndicated network didn’t think the CFL games could compete with the NFL, which was already well into its exhibition season.

But in 1973 another American syndicate – this one led by baseball Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner – reached a 21-week deal with the CFL that resulted in midweek TV games.

By 1974, however, the league’s appearance on U.S. stations was reduced to 30-minute highlight packages that were lost in the shuffle of “traditional” football. I might’ve whined more were it not for the fact the World Football League began play that year, so my summer football passion had shifted to the Birmingham Americans.

But Jack Gotta – who led the Ottawa Rough Riders to the Grey Cup in 1973 – was the head coach of the Ams, and starting quarterback Georgia Mira had spent his previous two seasons with the Montreal Alouettes. So, in a way, the CFL lived on in my new favorite ballclub.

All these years later I’m still passionate about the Canadian Football League, hoping it comes back healthy and looking forward to watching as many games as I can on ESPN+. And when news breaks about the TV schedule this time, I won’t be outside pretending to be Wendell Hudson or Don Maynard or playing with G.I. Joes.

At least not as far as you know …

Last August the third reboot of the XFL was announced with a 2022 restart date, but ongoing collaboration talks with the Canadian Football League have put that launch on hold.

In December, 2018, Ricky Williams formed the Freedom Football League, but more than two and a half years later the FFL has yet to play a game.

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

And Major League Football? Hoo boy … founded in 2014, the MLF is entering its seventh consecutive season to not take the field.

So today I want to salute the European League of Football, born on November 4, 2020. While there are countless sports organizations that don’t make it past the announcement stage, the ELF looks as though it’ll go from introduction to market in just over seven months.

Multiple player signings are taking place each day and all eight flagship ELF teams are already on practice fields ahead of next month’s regular season kickoff.

The eight franchises are divided into the North and South divisions. The Berlin Thunder, Hamburg Sea Devils, Leipzig Kings and Panthers Wroclaw compete in the North, while the Barcelona Dragons, Cologne Centurions Frankfurt Galaxy and Stuttgart Surge comprise the South.

The regular season is 10 games over 12 weeks (June 19 through September 5), with each team playing its division foes twice in a home-and-home setup as well as two opponents from the other division using the same format.

Playoffs will take place September 11-12 and the championship game is set for September 26.

“When I was on the line with the Sea Devils, we had some thrilling duels,” ELF Commissioner Patrick Esume, who has NFL as well as NFL Europe coaching experience, said. “Berlin and Cologne are cities with a long-lasting football history and, of course, with target groups of fans who have waited 14 years for this moment. And additionally I also see a great potential with Leipzig as a new franchise location.”

The league is trying to form an historical bridge to its predecessor, which started as the World League of American Football before becoming NFL Europe and finally NFL Europa. Aside from reviving old franchise locales and nicknames (Sea Devils, Thunder, Dragons, Centurions and Galaxy), it hopes to serve as a developmental league for the NFL. However, unlike the original circuit – which stocked rosters mostly with NFL cuts – ELF will go primarily with homegrown players.

Based on information posted in March, two United States imports per team may be on the field at the same time, four are allowed on game day rosters, and 10 additional foreign athletes can be signed.

This week Leipzig inked a pact with wideout Yoshihito Omi, captain of the Japanese National Team, while Hamburg secured a deal with Danish kicker Phillip Friis Andersen, who spent time with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2019.

“We do not claim to copy NFL Europe, where the teams consisted of fully professional Americans and a few Europeans,” Esume told the Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper. “Rarely have these Europeans been local heroes. We turn this construct around and put the local heroes in front … that’s important for us. And because our CEO (Zeljko Karajica) comes from this business as the CEO of Pro 7 Sat 1 (a German media company) and who once brought the NFL to Germany as a TV product, he is as convinced as I am that the fans have a different connection to the franchise when you have local heroes on the teams.”

Just as I like the ratio rule in the CFL that requires a majority number of “national” players on each roster, I think doing something similar in ELF is a great idea. I look forward to following European players and seeing how many become bona fide stars and move on to a higher level.

More importantly, fans in franchise cities should enjoy cheering for athletes they’re familiar with.  

But I’m also hopeful that – over time – this league becomes stable and provides fans of alternative football a football alternative worth following. In his interview with Stuttgarter Zeitung, Esume says expansion is already on his mind, with the ultimate goal to reach 24 teams.

“In Germany there are more than 65,000 people who play football – it’s the biggest European football country – so it’s obvious that we begin here,” he said. “London really wants to be a part of it. We want to gradually take the focus away from Germany and establish ourselves throughout Europe, like the Champions League in soccer.”

I have no clue how high the level of play in ELF will be this summer, and frankly am not that concerned about it – especially in Year One. Entertaining games are played at various skill levels, and if the fans enjoy what they see, they’ll keep coming back for more.

“The expectation is huge,” Esume said. “With Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart, Leipzig, Barcelona and Wroclaw, we have a very attractive field of participants. I expect all teams to play at a high level and expect exciting duels at eye level.”

I hope that’s the case. And unlike other leagues that exist in name only, it looks like we actually will get to see what the ELF has to offer in just over a month.

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.