Football across the stars

The modern incarnation of the United States Football League pulled off that rarest of feats; not only did the made-for-TV spring/summer circuit survive its inaugural season, it was renewed for a second.

In 2022 all eight teams were based in a Birmingham hub, so the Birmingham Stallions were the only squad that actually played in the city bearing its name.

Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl

The New Jersey Generals, Tampa Bay Bandits, Houston Gamblers, Michigan Panthers, New Orleans Breakers, Philadelphia Stars and Pittsburgh Maulers never once suited up in New Jersey, Tampa Bay, Houston, Michigan, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

This coming season there will be four hubs; Birmingham will host the Stallions and Breakers at Protective Stadium; Detroit’s Ford Field will be base camp for the Panthers and Stars; the Memphis Showboats (replacing the Bandits) will share Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium with the Gamblers; and home for the Generals and Maulers will be Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio.

Yep, fans in Ohio will be asked to cheer for a New Jersey and/or Pittsburgh-branded team.

While league officials plan to eventually get all teams in the actual markets they represent, I think that’s secondary in the grand scheme of things. The USFL is a television series as much as it is a sports organization, so its owner – FOX – is more concerned about eyeballs watching the TV production than fans watching from the stands.

Good Triple A football presented in a major league way resulted in solid ratings from first week to last, meaning this USFL might’ve cracked the code when it comes to building a sustainable alternative football league.

Thus, they gave future football league founders a blueprint for success. And the way I see it, if it’s possible to identify teams with a city, state or region without actually having them play in that city, state, or region, why not go galactic?

Therefore, I respectfully request that the next person/group/business/corporation/network that decides to jump into the sports startup game forms the Interplanetary League of American Football (ILAF), which will compete in a single Earth-based hub for its first few thousand years of operation.

Each of the eight planets in our solar system will have a team to call their own, and to save you all time and effort I’ve taken the liberty to select nicknames for them. Please give a warm, alt-football welcome to the Earth Wind & Fire, Jupiter Auroras, Mars Rovers, Mercury Messengers, Neptune Voyagers, Saturn Rings, Uranus Probes, and Venus Flytraps. (Ideally, inhabitants of each planet would participate in a name-the-team contest, but that’s at least a millennium or two away).

Keeping with the interplanetary theme, the hub should be placed in an area known for space travel. To that end I suggest Brevard County, Florida, home of Cape Canaveral. A quick Google search shows that Rick Stottler Field is located on the Florida Tech campus in Melbourne, so that should do.

It’s primarily used for soccer and lacrosse and seats only 750, but that’s not a problem. The key is getting people from around the globe (and eventually, beyond) to watch on their TVs or mobile devices.

Who should be the ILAF’s broadcast partner?

The USFL has the FOX and NBC family of networks, and XFL 3.0 will be beamed via Disney’s ESPN, ABC and FX. If you’re looking at traditional, “major” networks, then CBS would be the logical choice.

But I’m not logical, and I choose to stick with a theme.

Therefore, Pluto TV should televise all the ILAF games.

I mean, it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Pluto is a dwarf planet and the ninth-largest known object to directly orbit the Sun (and of course I’m referring to the trans-Neptunian object and not the network … the network is located on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, which is roughly 91.525 million miles from the Sun. I’m not sure about its square footage).

It’ll be fun to see Drew Barrymore do commercials for the ILAF, although Pluto advertisements tend to haphazardly break into programming. That could prove to be irritating, especially in the middle of a play.

The more I think about it, though, the more I think it could work.

Put together some good logos, uniforms and color schemes, and I guarantee people would snatch up T-shirts, hoodies and hats repping ILAF teams.

In addition, a league of planets lends itself to catchy slogans.

“Mars Attacks!” could tie in to both the 1996 Tim Burton movie and the high-octane offense of the Rovers.

Saturn could go with, “Saturn: We run rings around the competition.” A secondary theme might be, “Saturn: We stopped building cars so we could build champions.”

And T-shirts that proclaim, “Jupiter … it’s a gas, gas, gas,” and “They’re not Uranus, they’re OURanus” would fly off the shelves.

Probably.

However, one big difference between the ILAF and USFL involves the timeline of franchise placement. I’m confident that if the USFL takes root, it’ll migrate to local markets. When it comes to moving ILAF clubs to their home planets, though, league officials will have no choice but to play the long game.

The desire to have the Rovers ply their trade in a domed stadium near scenic Olympus Mons must wait for colonization of the Red Planet as well as a combination of public and private funding for the venue. The holdup might be whether to use New Republic Credit (Star Wars) or Energy Credits (Star Trek) to pay for it.

And the temperature on Venus is anywhere between 820 and 900 degrees. Thus, just about all the Flytraps’ home games would have to be played at night.

Plus, Venus is more than 141 million miles from Earth, so that’ll make road trips exhausting for the Wind & Fire. It’ll be even worse if they try to cut costs and travel by bus.

Oh, and one hour on Mercury is equal to roughly 58 hours on Earth. You’ll want to stock up on plenty of beer and snacks for Messengers home games (and hope they never, ever go into overtime).

But we can worry about the minor details later.

For now, let’s concentrate on spreading alt-football hub love throughout our solar system.

And if the TV ratings are good enough, ILAF expansion in the Milky Way Galaxy might happen sooner than you think – possibly within the next 10,000 years.

Earth and Kepler-186f would be one heck of a gridiron rivalry.

A Christmas wish

Some stories start off sad and end up happy.

Some stories start off happy and end up sad.

Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl

Then there are those stories that blend tears with smiles, and you find yourself trying to write the ending.

That leads me to another Christmas Day, and another decision to make about how I choose to feel about it.

Do I pick Christmas Day, 1994, or Christmas Day, 1970?

Is it really even my choice to make?

See, on December 25, 1994, my dad died. Just weeks earlier he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, and by December 20 he was already in hospice care.

I was with him when he passed away, cringing as I watched him struggle to breathe and staring at a clock that showed 3:12 p.m. when the breathing stopped.

It was the worst day of my life.

Like many people I grapple with severe depression and man, oh man, did that event start a freefall. Pop was my best friend and my hero, and suddenly he was gone.

And it happened on Christmas Day.

So, are you sufficiently bummed out yet? Can’t blame you. That tale is quite the buzz-harsher.

Please try to bear with me, though, because things get better – even though I thought they never would.

I spent a long time “celebrating” every Christmas Day by reliving the one from 1994 – the one that saw part of my world end.

But as Christmas Day, 2022, is at hand, my mind no longer goes back to 1994, but to 1970.

I was a kid, one who had been mesmerized by the New York Jets’ win over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. While Joe Namath and company wouldn’t recapture the magic again, they were cemented as my favorite team. And all I wanted for Christmas was a department store New York Jets football uniform (complete with plastic helmet, jersey, pants and shoulder pads).

I made this request quite clear.

“Pop, I sure would like a New York Jets football uniform for Christmas,” I said.

If you’ve ever read me before you know my father was a Green Bay Packers fan, so his response was colored by green and yellow instead of green and white.

“You mean you don’t want a number 15 Packers uniform?” he said with a grin. “You’d look good dressed up like Bart Starr.”

I guess I knew he was kidding, although I couldn’t be sure. And had I torn open a package containing a yellow helmet with a big “G” on the side, I would’ve still been happy. I loved the man dearly, so he could’ve gifted me with a rock and it would’ve been just the rock I had always hoped for.

But of course, it was a Jets kit, courtesy of our friends at J.C. Penny. As far as presents go, it was the best one, from the best dad (who was also my best friend).

And it happened on Christmas Day.

So, I suppose now you’re wondering how I’m able to make my memory default from that awful Christmas to my happiest one.

That’s a good question, and a fair one.

Depression – or at least the way it affects me – is akin to being attacked by a gang of demons that vary in size and strength from day to day (and sometimes moment to moment). When you’re lucky, you can brush them back with a broom.

When you’re not, they will absolutely beat you senseless.

I guess one Christmas Day I just got tired of getting my butt kicked.

So, instead of waking up preparing to be overwhelmed with a profound feeling of loss, I concentrated really, really hard and tried to remember the healthy, happy Pop – the one who lived, not the one who died.

And the more I dug deep into my memory, the more I realized as happy as I was forcing a green jersey over shoulder pads and squeezing into that Jets lid, he was even happier. It was a great day for me, but a great day for him, too. That shared moment now seems more like a treasure, because it is a treasure.

And this season, that brings me comfort and joy.

Look, much of what I’m rambling on about sounds trite; I’m acutely aware we can’t always take our mind where we want it to go. Some days, the sadness is so overwhelming we can barely move. I mean, if we knew how to rid ourselves of depression we’d all do it, right?

Knowing that, I can’t promise you that next Christmas my ruminations won’t revert back to December 25, 1994, at 3:12 p.m.

What I can tell you, though, is that time – and the knowledge that there are caring people everywhere – has helped me give far more weight to my best Christmas than my worst one.

And that nasty gang of demons? Well, sometimes they’ll win.

But other times, they won’t.

And what I hope you take from this is that I know how you feel, regardless of what you feel today and what you might feel tomorrow. There is help available, and sometimes we all need it.

So, this holiday season, I wish you strength and send you love and light. If you look hard enough, maybe you’ll find your own version of a Jets uniform under the tree.

Because things can get better, even though you might think they never will.

If you’re struggling and need help, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org/chat.

Canadian Football Day

Saturday was American Football Day, and millions of gridiron enthusiasts across the globe celebrated by watching college teams compete in the four-down game.

Of course, those of us in Birmingham who remember the Barracudas understand that November 5 is also a solemn occasion; it was that day in 1995 our Canadian Football League team played its final game, which resulted in a 52-9 spanking at the hands of the San Antonio Texans.

Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl

Speaking of which (and I’m speaking of the CFL, not spanking … how you spend your leisure time is none of my business) today is opening day of the 2022 Grey Cup playoffs. At noon my favorite team, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, tangle with my second favorite team, the Montreal Alouettes, in the Eastern Semi-Final, followed by the BC Lions versus the Calgary Stampeders at 3:30 p.m. in the Western Semi-Final.

For that reason – and because I was in the mood to write a CFL-centric column – I’m proclaiming today, November 6, 2022, as Canadian Football Day.

It’s a day to celebrate fields that are 110 yards long and 65 yards wide with end zones that are 20 yards deep.

It’s a time to revel in a league that doesn’t throw a flag if a team has 12 players on the field because that’s the correct number.

It’s an occasion to laud the sense of urgency required to make 10 yards in only three downs.

And it gives us the opportunity to praise the single point, or rouge, which is awarded when the receiving team doesn’t return (or kick) the ball out of its end zone following a punt or missed field goal, or if a kick goes out of bounds in the end zone without being touched.

Do I have the authority to do such a thing? I certainly think so. I mean, who can stop me? (It reminds me of an old George Carlin quote: “I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.”)

Admittedly, I’m having to wedge it in among several other recognized days. November 6 is “International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.” That’s certainly a noble cause, but not one conducive to a festive atmosphere.

Here in the States, it’s also “National Nachos Day” as well as “National Saxophone Day.” Nachos go great with football, so the occasions mesh. And if you eat enough of them, you won’t even need a saxophone to create your own melancholy sounds. (I was going to throw in a line about breaking woodwind, but that would’ve been pushing it).

Anyway, this is one of those rare late Fall Sundays when I shove the NFL in the backseat. Throughout most of the regular season the CFL avoids Sunday games so as not to clash with the Billionaire’s Club, but I’m always going to take a Canadian playoff game over an American regular season affair – every single time.

Plus, the Jets-Bills game at noon isn’t televised in my market, so the only decision I had to make was whether to watch the Ti-Cats-Alouettes over the Packers-Lions or Dolphins-Bears.

And honestly, it was an easy call.

Having said that (and then written it because I doubt you could hear me), I once thought by the time this weekend rolled around I’d be an innocent bystander when it came to the CFL playoffs. Hamilton appeared dead and buried at one point – standing at 3-9 through 12 games – but somehow managed to sneak into the playoffs with an 8-10 record.

How great is that?

Pretty great for me, because I get to keep all my Hamilton caps and T-shirts in the “season in progress” pile for at least one more day.

I know there are those who think it’s ridiculous that a team with a losing record gets a shot at a championship, but I don’t hang around with those people so I don’t particularly care what they think.

And besides, anybody remember the 2000 Lions, 2001 Stampeders and 2016 Ottawa Redblacks?

All had sub-.500 records during the regular season … all won Grey Cups.

That’s one of the beauties of postseason sports; championships aren’t necessarily won by the best overall team, but by the hottest team in the tournament.

And today’s matchups could translate into a couple of terrific games.

Hamilton (8-10) at Montreal (9-9) will be the fourth meeting between the two in 2022, with the Alouettes holding a 2-1 edge.

Montreal won 29-28 and 23-16 at Percival Molson Memorial Stadium, while Hamilton earned a 24-17 victory in the friendly confines of Tim Hortons Field.

As a former wide receiver myself (I don’t like to brag, but I caught both a TD pass and 2-point conversion toss while playing for the L.M. Smith Elementary School Cougars in 1974), I’m looking most forward to seeing Ti-Cat All-Stars Tim White and Steven Dunbar Jr. haul in Dane Evans aerials.

But Trevor Harris can be scary good behind center for the Als, and comes into the clash having passed for more than 4,000 yards this year (Eugene Lewis has 1,303 receiving yards). The only other Montreal QBs to reach that number in a season are Sam Etcheverry and Anthony Calvillo, and they’re both in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.

Obviously, I’m hoping the Tabbies prevail, but all is not lost if they come up short. When I’m not cheering for them, I’m pulling for the Larks, and since I have a pair of Montreal dad caps, I’m fully prepared for the East finals at BMO Field on November 13.

From a pure entertainment standpoint, the West semi between BC (12-6) and Calgary (12-6) should be a dandy.

The Vancouver hosts have taken two of the three meetings and the Lion victories were wild – 41-40 and 30-29 in overtime. And aide from two great teams squaring off, there are a couple of terrific sidebars.

BC’s Nathan Rourke makes his first playoff start after coming back from an injury that derailed what was shaping up as a phenomenal season. In just 10 games behind center the Victoria, British Columbia, native has thrown for 3,349 yards and 28 touchdowns in his second year in the league.

On the other side of the field is Jake Maier, another CFL sophomore hotshot who won the signal calling job from future Hall of Famer Bo Levi Mitchell. Maier replaced Mitchell as starter in Week 11 and has come on to toss 14 TD passes against seven picks and rack up 2,389 yards.

If the teams don’t combine for at least 60 points I’ll be a little disappointed.

At any rate, today I’m rocking my gold Ti-Cats shirt and black Ti-Cats cap and settling in for a full day of CFL-style entertainment.

Hell, I might even color my cheeks with some rouge to honor that single point.

It is, after all, Canadian Football Day.