Alternative Football Archives - Page 93 of 106

Meet the new XFL

Three days before the 2019 college football season’s soft launch and two weeks ahead of the NFL regular season, the XFL got a chance to grab a piece of the spotlight.

**Scott Adamson writes about alternative pro football leagues because it makes him happy, Follow him on Twitter @adamsons**l

The rebooted league – set to kick off in February, 2020 – released its team nicknames and logos today in an effort to generate some buzz while fans are in a gridiron state of mind.

Taking the field for the inaugural campaign will be the Dallas Renegades, DC Defenders, Houston Roughnecks, Los Angeles Wildcats, New York Guardians, Seattle Dragons, St. Louis BattleHawks and Tampa Bay Vipers.

“The team names and logos were chosen exclusively to represent the spirit of football fans in their respective cities and signify fun and football – nothing more,” XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck said during the reveal.

In terms of creativity I’d have to give the nod to the BattleHawks, which is not a nickname you hear every day. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Wildcats is an extremely “meh” selection.

The Dragons logo is similar to that of the UAB Blazers (those of us who cheer for UAB notice such things), while the Renegades’ masked man is quite reminiscent of the Gotham Rogues logo from the fictional team in “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Design-wise I think my favorite is the Guardians, although it has a bit of a “Masters of the Universe” vibe.

That being said, packaging doesn’t mean a lot unless there’s a quality product inside, and that remains to be seen.

Unlike the ill-fated Alliance of American Football, which we now know banked on the hope of getting money instead of having actual money in the bank, the new XFL has a solid financial foundation.

League owner Vince McMahon has sunk $500 million into it (he cashed out a big chunk of his World Wrestling Entertainment holdings), which is reportedly enough to fund the league for its first three years.

So unless he gets a case of billionaire buyer’s remorse, he can prevent the XFL (a single entity business) from going the way of the AAF and folding before the first season is completed.

More importantly, the people associated with the league – coaches, players, team employees, etc. – can expect to get paid on time.

Bob Stoops was the first coach announced – he’ll guide the Renegades – and the rest of the sideline lineup features known commodities like June Jones and Marc Trestman.

And while rosters are obviously still in the works, the XFL is currently sending out “Commissioner’s Invitations” to top free agents.

Already the league has signed Landry Jones and is expected to add Ryan Mallett, both former college quarterback stars with several years of NFL experience. Getting guys like these is important because it shows the XFL is going after players talented enough to play in the NFL but who haven’t yet been able to crack the starting lineup.

And unlike the over the top, WWE-influenced XFL of 2001, this time the emphasis appears to be strictly on football. There will be some rule changes (reportedly one, two and three-point conversion options will follow touchdowns, for example) and that’s both expected and welcome. But the lowbrow gimmicks surrounding the game will be gone.

Of course while in nature spring is a time of renewal, the nature of spring football is to die and, in many cases, die quickly.

The USFL lasted three seasons, the original XFL was one-and-done, and the AAF closed up shop with still two weeks to go in its lone campaign.

Regardless of how first-rate this league looks – and so far, it does – surviving and thriving will defy all odds.

But for now, it’s mostly sunshine and rainbows for the new and improved XFL. Luck and company enter the traditional football season on a positive note, and get six months before they have to worry about hitting the right note with fans.

Happy birthday, AFL

If you glance at the history of American professional football, you’ll find as many tombstones as you will milestones.

**Scott Adamson’s sports column appears pretty much whenever he feels like writing it.**

While the National Football League has grown into the most lucrative sports league on the planet (it takes in roughly $13 billion per year), upstarts such as the World Football League and United States Football League drown in red ink.

But 60 years ago today, a competitor decided to challenge the status quo.

And although it now exists as part of the NFL, the American Football League rattled the establishment by establishing itself as gridiron equals.

On August 14, 1959, Dallas millionaire Lamar Hunt led a meeting in Chicago that created a second major pro football league in the United States, one that would begin play in the fall of 1960 as the AFL.

Hunt announced that Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver and New York would have franchises, and there was a possibility two more cities could join for the inaugural campaign.

“We have definite commitments,” Hunt told the United Press International news service. “A kitty (pool of money) is being set up to assure the financial success of the league.”

The other owners – including Barron Hilton, who bought the L.A. franchise, and Bud Adams, head of the Houston entry – dubbed themselves the “Foolish Club” because of their audacious plan to take on the established NFL.

“We’ll try to beat the National Football League on their draft,” Hunt said, adding that the AFL would also bid against the NFL and the Canadian Football League for the best available talent.

The NFL had 12 teams in 1959 and was still playing second fiddle to Major League Baseball among sports fans. But the senior circuit got a huge popularity boost due to the 1958 championship game, one that saw the Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants, 23-17, in the league’s first-ever sudden death overtime game.

Featuring 17 players who went on to be inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, that contest turned the NFL into a television hit. It’s widely considered the single event that ultimately propelled the NFL to its spot atop the American sports food chain.

That being the case, trying to go head-to-head with it seemed like a losing proposition.

What’s interesting, though, is there was little opposition among NFL officials when the formation of the AFL was first announced.

Hunt discussed the idea with NFL commissioner Bert Bell, who “gave the league his blessing” and said the franchises of each league would respect each other’s player contracts.

Even Vince Lombardi – about to embark on his first year as coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers – was in favor of the AFL.

“There is plenty of talent around to support two leagues,” Lombardi told UPI.

While the movers and shakers of the AFL had only a year to get it up and running, they pulled it off, although the lineup was a bit different from the one proposed at the Chicago meeting.

The 1960 season featured the Boston Patriots, Buffalo Bills, Dallas Texans, Denver Broncos, Houston Oilers, Los Angeles Chargers, Oakland Raiders and Titans of New York.

The cordial relationship between the NFL and AFL ended quickly after the older organization announced that it would expand to both Dallas and Minneapolis. It also moved into Miami when the AFL was targeting a team for South Florida.

But the new league managed to add Boston, Buffalo and Oakland to the lineup, and started with eight teams instead of six.

AFL Commissioner Joe Foss negotiated a package TV deal for the league that guaranteed each team $225,000 for broadcast rights, and 70 percent of the players drafted out of college were signed by the fledgling organization.

“Even competition is the most important thing for our success,” Foss told the Associated Press on September 7, 1960. “One-sided games would be the worst thing that could happen and it is hoped that our plan has made that unlikely. We do not expect to be up to the standards of the National Football League, but inside the league the competition should be good.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

The relationship between America’s two major leagues got more acrimonious over the years (the Texans couldn’t compete with the Cowboys in Dallas and moved to Kansas City, where they were rebranded the Chiefs), but the AFL was proving to be on par with the NFL on the field.

On June 8, 1966 – three months before the start of the AFL’s seventh season – the two leagues announced a merger in an effort to end the bidding war for top talent. They would play four more seasons as separate leagues before joining forces as a unified National Football League in 1970.

It made perfect business sense, of course, but I hated to see the AFL loses its identity.

It was the league that made me passionate about football, and I found it far more entertaining than the NFL. Its games were high-scoring, its players free-spirited – it was everything I wanted as fan.

The AFL was the last real threat to the NFL, and proved that members of the “Foolish Club” were anything but.

It’s a league worthy of a monument, not a tombstone.

Will Major League Football ever get off the ground?

This Twitter banner for Major League Football was created for the 2017 season.

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 …