Category: Alternative Football

Remember the United Football League?

No?

Don’t worry … I doubt there are many people who do beyond those who put their time, money and effort into a league that played in obscurity for four truncated seasons.

Its commissioner was Michael Huyghue, who was general manager of the World League of American Football’s Birmingham Fire before moving on to NFL jobs with the Detroit Lions and Jacksonville Jaguars.

And, when the UFL was in its formative stages in 2007, Birmingham was mentioned as a possible franchise location.

Granted, Birmingham is always mentioned as a possible franchise location when a new football league pops up, but this league caught my attention because – at the outset – it had designs on becoming a second major tackle football league.

And also, because I was homesick.

I started a newspaper job in South Carolina on Dec. 26, 2006, marking the first time I had lived and worked outside of Alabama. I found myself longing for touches of home, and having a pro football team in Birmingham might help reconnect me a bit.

In December, 2007, Huyghue visited the city to tout the fledgling league, which was set to start play in October, 2008.

Of course he knew it well from his time in the WLAF, and talked of Birmingham’s rich football tradition. (What he didn’t talk about was the Fire’s attendance during its final season of 1992, which was last in the 10-team league).

Incidentally, 2008 was also supposed to be the inaugural season of the All-American Football League, which had already announced “Team Alabama” as a charter member.

The gimmick of that spring minor league was that the players had to be college graduates.

That’s admirable, but when people watch football they don’t particularly care if a guy who rushes for 180 yards and three touchdowns has an engineering degree or got a DNF from University Tech.

Ultimately the AAFL signed coaches and players, but never made it to the field.

The UFL, on the other hand, seemed to have its ducks in a row. And what piqued my interest in it originally was its audacious plans.

Instead of playing in the spring or serving as a developmental league, officials wanted to actually compete with the NFL.

By starting in October, UFL teams could sign late cuts from NFL rosters. Even better, the eight inaugural franchises would have $90 million payrolls.

That kind of money could land some star power. No, they probably weren’t going to lure Tom Brady and Brett Favre away, but they might have a shot at some “B-list” NFL starters that first season.

Billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was expected to be involved, and the league already had multimillion dollar investors on board.

This venture seemed quite serious, especially with all the serious money at its disposal.

Once the UFL got established, it could then go hard after All-Pro-level players and top draft picks, and the real battle with the NFL would commence.

It would probably be a losing proposition, but stepping into the arena took guts and that made me an early supporter.

The arrival of the UFL would mark the first time since the days of the USFL that a new league with major league aspirations had been formed in the United States.

I thought for sure Birmingham would be part of it, especially since Huyghue said the league was targeting “underserved” markets. When the Football Capital of the South doesn’t have a pro team, that counts as underserved in my book.

Sadly, no such luck.

Delayed until 2009, the UFL jettisoned most of its big ideas before it was ever fully organized. It had only four teams in its first year – the California (San Francisco) Redwoods, Florida (Orlando) Tuskers, Las Vegas Locomotives and New York Sentinels.

As for rule innovations, there were none of any significance.

Its games were shown on the Versus cable network, and I can’t imagine any league in the history of athletic competition doing a worse job promoting itself.

I don’t have access to Neilson records from the time, but I might’ve been the only person to have actually watched the games on TV.

Year One was billed as a “soft launch,” with a six-game regular season that kicked off on October 8. With no Birmingham team to cheer for I threw my support behind the Sentinels, who finished 0-6 and thus continued my hard luck (since January, 1969) with New York-based gridiron teams.

The games were fairly entertaining, but they certainly weren’t NFL caliber. And soon Huyghue and everyone associated with the league walked back their major league challenge.

Still, after the opening season more than 30 UFL players were snatched up by NFL teams and Jim Haslett, who led the Tuskers to an unbeaten regular season, was hired away as defensive coordinator of Washington’s NFL team.

Yet the October start, which I thought would be an advantage, was actually a big disadvantage. Since the NFL and college ball were well under way, fans had already settled into a viewing routine and the UFL generated zero buzz.

Crowds were pathetic, especially in the big TV markets of New York and San Francisco.

During its four-year lifespan, it had name coaches such as Marty Schottenheimer, Dennis Green and Jay Gruden, and QB Daunte Culpepper was arguably its best-known player.

It lasted until 2012, but never had more than five teams in a single season, never managed to sign any real superstars, and never lived up to its original billing as a possible alternative to the NFL.

Obviously, Birmingham was not part of the circuit, denying it the chance to compete in another failed outdoor football league.

It also denied me the chance to show a little long distance love to my city.

The Freedom Football League vows to kick off its inaugural season next May with a lineup that includes the Austin Revolution, Birmingham Kings, Connecticut Underground, Florida Strong, Oakland Panthers, Ohio Players, Oklahoma City Power, Portland Progress, San Diego Warriors and St. Louis Independence.

It still has no coaches, players or stadiums, so whether that target date will be hit is anyone’s guess at this point.

Should it actually get off the ground, however, I’m interested to see if it sticks to its planned business model.

If so, tackle football fans will truly have a league to call their own.

According to its website:

The Freedom Football League was formed in 2017 by a legion of former NFL football players, entrepreneurs, football operations experts, health and wellness thought-leaders, innovative legal minds and financial visionaries committed to reimagining, rethinking, reinventing, and reforming professional American Football.

The current NFL ownership, with a market capitalization of over $100 billion is closely held and controlled by 32 wealthy billionaire families and generates, on average, over $100 million of annual profits per team per year. This ownership schism creates an exploitative dynamic between ownership and the players and coaches, neglects the long-term health and well-being of the players, and gouges the fans with outrageous ticket prices.

The Freedom Football League is rethinking all aspects of the game of football and it starts with the ownership and money. The FFL’s teams will be owned by a unique consortium that includes former NFL players, active players from each FFL team, the local franchise operators, and most uniquely, you the fan.

 You can sign up as a potential owner right there on the website and even pledge an investment amount (which must be less than $25,000). Founding stakeholders include Ricky Williams, Simeon Rice, Terrell Owens and Jeff Garcia, and management teams are already in place at a couple of clubs.

It’s intriguing, and would certainly change the dynamic of a sport that – professionally, at least – is locked into franchise mode.

Like most ideas, however, it’s not new.

The late, great Dave Dixon – the man who pioneered the United States Football League – had a similar organization in mind just a couple of years after the USFL played its final game.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to reintroduce you to the Fan Ownership Football League (which also flirted with the name American Football Federation).

“I think there is always room for a new league,” Dixon told the Associated Press in October, 1987. “It would combine the best of the two concepts – private ownership and public ownership. I want my team owners to invest $2.5 million and then agree to sell off 75 percent ownership of their team in the second year to individual season-ticket holders.”

Dixon said the league was looking to start in cities such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit, as well as towns that didn’t have pro football.

“Places like Sacramento finds itself in a position where it wants an NFL franchise, but probably won’t get one,” Dixon said. “The NFL has never expanded unless it did so to choke off competition or by the threat of an antitrust suit.”

The talk of a new league quickly died down, but Dixon revived the idea again in 1995 – just days after the Cleveland Browns announced they were moving to Baltimore and the Houston Oilers were in the process of relocating to Nashville.

This gave the entrepreneur some new talking points.

“Do you think a Cleveland team majority owned by 70,000 Clevelanders would have voted to move to Baltimore?” Dixon told AP. “That 100,000 Houstonians would move to Nashville?”

In the 1995 version of the Fan Ownership Football League, Dixon said eight founding owners had put up a one-time fee of $5 million, plus $2 million to offset first-year operating expenses.

I hope they got their money back because sadly (or at least sad for those of us who crave alternative football leagues), nothing ever came of the fan-owned venture.

And while it might seem radical to those who are used to franchises, this community model is quite common in international soccer. In fact, single entity ownership is forbidden in Germany’s association football system.

In pro tackle football, though, only the Green Bay Packers of the NFL and Edmonton, Saskatchewan and Winnipeg of the CFL follow any semblance of a supporter-based ownership plan.

I’d love to see the FFL make this happen; if you invested, you could honestly say it was “your” team.

But with its first game roughly eight months away and so many questions still unanswered, the latest idea for a “Fan Ownership Football League” doesn’t seem any closer to becoming a reality than the original.

 

One of the nice surprises of this summer’s sportscape has been the Premier Lacrosse League, which hit the field the first of June and will wrap up its inaugural season September 21.

If you like top-tier lacrosse the PLL has provided it, thanks to some of the best players in the world. I’ve enjoyed the handful of matches I’ve watched.

But, frankly, if you’re a legitimate fan of lacrosse you probably know more about the stats and stars than I do. Instead, I’m intrigued by the structural setup of the league and how its template might apply to football because – as you know – I’m almost always thinking about football-related gimmicks.

Founded by lacrosse superstar Paul Rabil and his brother, Mike, the PLL a touring, tournament-style circuit. However, the teams don’t represent cities and the players are free to market themselves however they choose.

This year the PLL features clubs named Archers, Atlas, Chaos, Chrome, Redwoods and Whipsnakes. There is no state or regional identity; basically, you either cheer for a team stocked with players you like or you root for a uniform.

I wound up getting behind Chrome because, well, I sent out a random tweet asking who I should follow, and Chrome was the only team to respond.

This touched me, so I now feel a sense of loyalty to them.

The schedule features 14 stops in major cities, and the events have been styled as weekend “festivals” with contests spread out over a couple of days.

There are clinics, activities and plenty of fan interaction to frame the actual games, making it about more than just the competition.

The crowds have been good and the games, which are telecast primarily on NBCSN, have given the league excellent exposure.

So here’s my idea; since people can’t seem to stop creating alternative pro football leagues, why not create one in the image of the PLL?

The obvious name would be the Premier Football League, but since there’s already the Premier League (which, cleverly enough, plays a brand of football in which feet play a significant role), we’ll go with another name.

Let’s call it the Premier Gridiron League.

My plan would feature eight teams, and for the purposes of this column we’ll call them the Chupacabras, Tasmanian Devils, Zombies, Sales Associates, Werewolves, Entrails, Telemarketers and Chiropractors.

(My favorite team would be the Werewolves because lycanthropy is of great interest to me.)

As is the case with the PLL, players in the PGL will be drafted and divvied up among the teams in an effort to create parity.

Of course asking fans to watch a doubleheader on Saturday and another on Sunday is a bit much, so we’ll break from the PLL in that we’ll have two separate sites during a tour weekend.

For example, Birmingham might host the Chupacabras vs. Tasmanian Devils on Saturday, March 7 and Zombies vs. Sales Associates on March 8, while Orlando would feature the Werewolves vs. Entrails on March 7 and follow with the Telemarketers vs. the Chiropractors on the following day.

The PGL regular season would run 14 weekends at a total of 28 different sites, with each team playing the other twice. The postseason would consist of two semi-finals and a championship game with the matchups taking place in the cities that drew the biggest crowds during the tour. It’s a way to reward the fans who showed the most interest in the product.

It all sounds cool, doesn’t it? (Why yes, Scott, it does).

I wonder, though, if perhaps it’s just a bit too innovative.

I think the touring model was a great idea for the first season of PLL, and having a team you can call your own no matter where you live is unique. But it seems like at some point fans in lacrosse hotbeds are going to want a club to put down roots – one they can see several times at home during the course of a season instead of just once a year.

Then again, maybe that’s what this season has been all about.

Identify which cities want the PLL the most, and then gradually migrate franchises there.

Pro lacrosse is largely working with a blank canvas. Yes, there are other leagues, but the PLL is the first to offer living wages, health insurance and ownership options for its players. Done right, it could be the gold standard for the sport going forward.

And while I like the thought of applying this model to my league, there are some major issues to work through.

First, football is already pretty well established. It needs no grand introduction.

And with the best professional players already making millions of dollars in the NFL, it would take many more millions to convince them to jump ship.

Anyway, it was just something I thought I’d throw out because I like throwing things. And if you’re an eccentric billionaire interested in funding my venture and luring away the NFL’s top stars with your endless fountain of cash, I’ll be happy to talk with you at your earliest convenience.

Thanks, and “Go Werewolves!”