Category: Alternative Football

Had things gone as planned, I’d currently be mourning the end of Major League Football’s fourth season and – since MLFB is a publicly traded company – be cashing those sweet dividend checks.

Hopefully I’d also be celebrating the Alabama Airborne’s championship, (although I’d still wonder why my team was named after a dietary supplement designed to ward off the common cold and improve immune function).

However, things rarely go as planned when it comes to Brand X football, and this particular league might go down in history as one that lasted the longest without ever having really existed.

An explanation, I assume, is in order.

In January, 2015, the Orlando Sentinel ran a piece about Major League Football, which would debut in the spring of 2016 and fill the unquenchable thirst of football fans who go into withdrawal following the Super Bowl. (At least that’s what every founder of any spring football league always says. If we don’t have a football game immediately following the NFL finale in February, our lives are empty).

Former Florida and NFL standout Wes Chandler was named league president while former Chicago Bears general manager Jerry Vainisi served as CEO.

“We all, after (Super Bowl) Sunday, will be looking for football,” Chandler told the paper. “TV will be looking for content, and there won’t be any. We’ll sit and wait on Alabama or Texas or Florida or Florida State to put on their spring game.”

In its original incarnation, the league was to start with 10 teams as part of a single entity ownership model. There would be a 12-week regular season schedule, a 43-player active roster, and players could participate in the league for no more than four years. Older athletes would “age out” at 32.

Pay would average $2,500 per game except for the franchise player, who would be a year-round employee of MLFB and serve as something of a brand ambassador. Players would also receive “community service and life-skills” training.

It would be a developmental circuit but not a minor league because, hey – it has “Major League” in its title.

“The very first thing we wanted to be was not adversarial to the National Football League,” Chandler said.

A year later, in January, 2016, MLFB signed a two-year TV deal with American Sports Network and held a territorial draft that lasted 70 rounds. Galen Hall, tapped as the head coach of the Florida entry, selected Sunshine State native and South Carolina QB Stephen Garcia as his “franchise” player, and all the picks were set to gather at a Florida-based training camp on February 15.

At the time no teams had been officially named, but MLFB did register trademarks for the Alabama Airborne, Arkansas Attack, Florida Fusion, Ohio Union, Oklahoma Nation, Oregon Crash, Texas Independence and Virginia Armada, so Major League Football was on its way.

Except, of course, it wasn’t.

Four days before training camp was set to start, it was reported that a $20 million investment had been pulled. Four months after that, the league was served eviction papers at its Lakewood Ranch, Florida, offices.

Chandler resigned in the summer of 2017 and the coaches had no teams to coach, so they scattered as well. Aside from Hall, well-known guys such as Dave Campo and Ted Cottrell were set to take MLFB on its maiden voyage.

But no worries … it would work through this hiccup and be back better than ever.

California-based businessman Jerry Craig took over the league in September, 2017, and while it was too late to get a season going for that year, it would debut in 2018. This time the team sites were undecided, but smaller cities such as Montgomery, Alabama, and Round Rock, Texas, had been added to the mix.

Unfortunately (spoilers ahead!), MLFB did not start in 2018 and Craig left after having a cup of coffee.

As late as April of that year officials claimed an abbreviated exhibition-type season would start in the summer, serving as a soft opening for a real, honest-to-goodness campaign that would commence in the spring of 2019.

Spring 2019 sprung, and there was nary an MLFB team in sight.

But bless ‘em, the people involved with the league – and it’s been a revolving door – still insist they’re going to get this thing off the ground. And take heart – late last month MLFB dropped a bombshell via this Facebook post (presented in its pristine state):

Today Major League Football, Inc filed its Annual Report with the SEC as of 4/30/19 (10 K) which disclosed, among other things our plans to commence play in 6 cities beginning with a Florida training camp in April 2020.

Leases have been signed and deposits made for 3 of the cities and our outside broadcasting and marketing firm has complete its initial work. Of even greater significance, we announced that we have acquired approximately 90% of the Alliance of American Football League’s equipment through the bankruptcy court and an indoor football League valued in excess of 3 million dollars.

This constitutes over 32,000 items ranging from 1000 sets of helmets and pads, sophisticated electronic gear (computers, TV’s, XOS systems), basically everything they used to run their 8 team League. on and off the field. Also included were scores practice items, uniforms and medical supplies.

Further information will be made shortly via SEC filings and Press Releases.

 Their Facebook page is also full of angry hopefuls who apparently paid a tryout fee for a league that – after four years – still hasn’t hired any players.

At any rate, here’s hoping the Alabama Airborne is one of the six flagship clubs, because I really believe 2020 is the year they valiantly fight off cough due to cold and win it all. And you best believe all systems are go because according to the MLFB website, the league is “Kicking Off Spring 2020.”

Of course that statement is the only thing currently on the website, so …

Does August 8, 1961, mean anything special to you?

It should … I mean, it was a pretty big day.

The Atlas-F missile was launched from Cape Canaveral.

The Fantastic Four were introduced by Marvel Comics, available to comic book fans for the first time.

“The Edge” – U2 guitarist – was born.

All three have varying degrees of significance, depending on what you think is important.

For me, though, the biggest story of that fateful day took place in Hamilton, Ontario.

Why?

Because for the first time – and only time – a Canadian Football League team defeated a team from the “modern” American Football League.

It was also the only time a CFL and AFL team played, but still … pretty, pretty cool.

Playing by CFL rules (three downs to make a first down, 12 players to a side, etc.), the Hamilton Tiger-Cats beat the Buffalo Bills, 38-21.

According to the game report in United Press International:

Hamilton quarterbacks Bernie Faloney and Tom Dublinski, both Americans and former NFLers, riddled the Buffalo defense with a consistent passing attack. Faloney connected for three of Hamilton’s five touchdowns, while Dublinski kept the Ti-Cats rolling along when he was sent in to spell Faloney. Just to add icing to the cake, Frank Cosentino, the Ti-Cats’ No. 3 quarterback, flipped a 50-yard TD pass to Ralph Goldston in the final minute of play to put the game completely out of reach.

While just an exhibition played in front of 12,000 fans, it still was a point of pride for the Canadians.

Buffalo was one of the founding franchises of the AFL in 1960, and for a CFL side to beat a major American pro team was significant; the league was winless against NFL competition.

Its only other conquest of a United States-based pro team was in 1941 when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers beat the Columbus Bullies, 19-12. (Columbus played in an earlier iteration of the AFL that lasted from 1940-41).

Looking back years later, the Tiger-Cats should’ve won considering the talent on their team.

Faloney was an All-ACC performer at Maryland who went on to help three different CFL teams win the Grey Cup. He’s enshrined in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, Ontario Sports Hall of Fame, the University of Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame, the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, and the Western Pennsylvania Hall of Fame.

His jersey was retired by the Tiger-Cats in 1999.

Cosentino was also elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and was a two-time Grey Cup champion, while Goldston was on a pair of Grey Cup teams himself and named to the CFL All-Star team four times.

Dublinski was the first Utah player to sign a pro football contract, and threw for 30 TD passes and 3,561 yards while playing for the Toronto Argonauts in 1955.

The Ti-Cats finished their 1961 season 10-4, losing to Winnipeg in the Grey Cup, while the Bills struggled to a 6-8 mark.

There was talk after Hamilton’s exhibition triumph that the CFL – which was 0-8 against the NFL over the years – would concentrate solely on playing exhibitions against the AFL going forward.

Turns out, this game was the last interleague matchup ever played.

Bud Adams, owner of the AFL Houston Oilers, proposed a game between CFL and AFL All-Stars in which Canadian rules would be used when the CFL team had the ball and American rules would apply when the AFL All-Stars were on offense. (That would’ve been a logistical nightmare considering how much longer and wider the CFL playing field is).

There was even some discussion about the possibility of the CFL and AFL champions meeting in a two-game set at the end of each year, with the rules of the home team in effect for each game.

Ultimately, nothing came of either plan.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle was timing; the CFL season ended roughly a month before the AFL played its championship game.

So call it an experiment, a gimmick, or whatever you like, August 8, 1961, was the end of a professional football era.

It’s just a footnote to the game’s history, but an interesting one.

I love doing research, so one of the most rewarding things about writing my first book (the working title is Cheers Through The Years: My Hot (And Sometimes Cold) Bromance With Birmingham Pro Football) is digging into history.

As someone who is obsessed with the Magic City’s frequent brushes with the play-for-pay gridiron game, I pride myself on having a good bit of walking around knowledge when it comes to the World Football League, United States Football League, World League of American Football, etc.

But sometimes you forget a detail here and there, and that’s when it’s time to take a deep-dive into newspaper archives.

And while doing a second draft of Cheers Through The Years and cross-referencing the section devoted to the USFL’s Birmingham Stallions recently, I came across some pretty cool stuff.

And I was reminded that when it comes to alternative football leagues, there’s really nothing new under the sun.

I knew, for example, that the United States Football League (1983-85) was the brainchild of Louisiana sports executive Dave Dixon, who had the idea for it nearly two decades earlier.

What I didn’t realize, however, was that he not only planned the league back in the mid-1960s, but was on the verge of actually getting it up and running.

On April 11, 1965, the Dallas Times-Herald ran a story announcing the formation of the United States Football League, which would begin play in 1966 with franchises in Anaheim, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, New Orleans and either San Francisco or Seattle.

But instead of going head to head with the National Football League and the American Football League, the USFL would – you guessed it – play in the spring.

The season would begin in January and end in May, with the championship game staged on Memorial Day.

Aside from the gimmick of offseason football, the league was to feature a central scouting system that would draft players and assign them to teams, and encourage “non-standardized professional offenses” by including the I-formation, double-wing and single-wing.

And the players would need to be in top physical shape; there would be no halftime intermission. The idea was to fit a contest into a two-hour window and make the USFL a made-for-TV football production.

Dixon was also courting both the NFL and AFL in hopes of landing an expansion team in New Orleans, so a cynic might wonder whether or not his formation of the USFL was more about leverage than creating a legitimate third major league.

“I do think pro football is just in its infancy,” Dixon told the Associated Press. “There are a number of other deserving cities – at least a dozen besides New Orleans – who want and can support pro football.”

But wait – as the obnoxious TV announcer might say – there’s more!

Remember the World League of American Football, which had North American-based teams in 1991 and 1992 before being reformed as NFL Europe?

It had roots in 1965, too.

Almost immediately after Dixon announced the formation of the USFL, Dallas Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm said the NFL was also considering its own January to May league.

The difference between the NFL’s circuit and the USFL was that it would be something of a farm system, which would feature some NFL players but mostly hopefuls working to earn a place on a big league roster.

Teams would be placed in cities that didn’t have NFL or AFL franchises.

“We have thought of going into this as an adjunct to our own league,” Schramm told the Los Angeles Times. “Television is very anxious to have us get involved in it.”

Obviously, the earliest iterations of Dixon’s and Schramm’s leagues never made it from the drawing board to the field. Yet the seeds were planted.

The USFL we know and love started 18 years after Dixon proposed it, and played three glorious spring seasons.

It featured some of the best football players in the game (eight USFL alumni are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame). In fact, four Hall of Famers began their careers in the modern USFL – Jim Kelly, Reggie White, Steve Young and Gary Zimmerman.

Aside from introducing concepts such as the coach’s challenges and two-point conversion, it also forced the NFL to dramatically increase player salaries.

As for an NFL spring farm system, Schramm finally got his World League up and running 26 years after he thought it up – with the NFL underwriting it. Ironically, the closer the league came to fruition the more Schramm wanted to make it less a feeder league and more of an “aggressive, broad world league.”

That difference in philosophy ended up getting him fired before the WLAF ever played a down.

So, what’s the moral of this story?

Well, as much as goobs like me love the idea of “new” football leagues, the ideas behind them aren’t really new at all.

Creating one built to last, though … now that would be a first.