Category: History and More

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking, talking and writing about alternative football leagues. I’ve written about them in book form, short form – I’ve even gone so far as to suggest what kind of alt grid league I’d form myself, down to the team nicknames (I still think Birmingham Battalion is a winner, whether competing in the Summer Football League Would you support the SFL? or a U.S.-based group playing by CFL rules The American League of Canadian Football).

What I haven’t done, however, is jump on the alternative basketball bandwagon.

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

Maybe it’s because between the NBA, WNBA, NBA G League and EuroLeague (when I’m feeling continental) I’m pretty well satisfied when it comes to pro hoops. And if I have an itch for roundball during the offseason, there’s the NBA Summer league to provide a scratch.

But just for my own amusement (and yours, if you’re easily amused), I’ve decided to conjure the XBL – an extreme, innovative brand of basketball modeled after its football counterpart, the XFL. It’s not that I need another professional basketball organization to exist, it’s just that I feel the need to write about the possible existence of another professional basketball organization.

Like the XFL, the XBL will target major league near-misses and will not pretend to be a rival of the NBA. But since the big league already has a farm system in the G League, it needs to strive to be more than just developmental in nature. This means attempting to pluck athletes currently playing overseas, including former NBA guys who might no longer have the skills required to make an Association roster, but who have some name recognition. Truthfully, between the NBA, G League and EuroLeague, (as well as the fledgling Professional Collegiate League and Overtime Elite), the top players are already taken. Instead of up-and-comers, the XBL will include a lot of down-and-wenters. The pay should be decent, though. The average XFL salary ($55,000 per season) was three percent of the average annual NFL salary, so using that math XBL players will pull down $246,000.

So, when will the league’s season begin?

The two previous incarnations of the XFL started the week after the Super Bowl, filling a late winter/spring gridiron void. Finding down time in basketball is more problematic.

The NBA season, including the playoffs, runs from mid-October to early June. The WNBA starts in May and ends around the time the NBA starts back. Translation: there ain’t no offseason in North American pro hoops.

But since the XBL is a men’s league, we’ll go ahead and start it in mid-June. The regular season will consist of 34 games, so it’ll wrap up in mid-September.

As for franchises, you want the major media markets (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago) to lure TV networks, but you might want to throw in some non-NBA towns as well. So for our inaugural XBL season we’ll go with eight flagship cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Louisville, New York, San Diego and San Francisco.

Baltimore, Cincinnati, Louisville and New York will play in the Eastern Division while Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco make up the Western Division.

The scheduling format is structured so that a team faces each foe in its division six times and teams in the other division four times apiece.

The playoffs are quite simple: East winner meets West winner in a best-of-3 championship series.

And now for my favorite part … rule innovations.

As far as timing, we’ll stick with four, 12-minute quarters. After that, though, things get weird:

* The 3-point line is 21 feet from the basket.

If you’ve visited this site more than a few times you know I have a thing for sports history, sports milestones, and personal history vis-à-vis sports milestones.

#OTD is my favorite hashtag, and I’m always looking for a cool sports nugget.

Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl

So when I glanced at the calendar and eyed April 14, today’s column was an easy choice. On this date in 1981 the new Birmingham Barons made their Rickwood Field debut a successful one, edging the Jacksonville Suns, 6-5, thanks to a pair of Mike Laga home runs.

The franchise formally known as the Montgomery Rebels moved to Birmingham after 16 seasons in Alabama’s state capital (the original Barons played from 1892-1901 and there was another incarnation before the latest), and the rechristening was a banner day for me.

It was the first minor league baseball game I’d ever attended, and as one of 9,185 fans taking in the Southern League clash, I was part of Rickwood’s largest crowd since 1950.

Built in 1910, the facility was already ancient by then but it still seemed perfect to me. The design, the colors … everything about it felt like the way I thought baseball should feel. It was actually my third trip to Rickwood (I had played a youth football game there in 1971, and in 1975 went to an exhibition game between the Oakland A’s and old Birmingham A’s that was canceled when lightning knocked out a bank of lights) but the first time I’d spent an entire evening as a spectator.

And while my previous relationship with baseball had been mostly casual, being part of a near-capacity crowd and seeing great young players up close was a game-changer for me.

With Birmingham’s two World Football League teams now long gone and the Birmingham Bulls hockey franchise folding in February of 1981, this was my new pro sports focus in the Magic City.

That season I got to meet the team owner – the late, great Art Clarkson – who used to call me up years later during my stint at the Birmingham Post-Herald just to talk about the WFL (he had worked for the Southern California Sun and Memphis Southmen). I also literally ran into Ted Giannoulas (aka The San Diego Chicken, The Famous Chicken and The Chicken) while making a beer run. I shook his hand after the collision and he made it back to the field with his feathers barely ruffled.

During the 1983 season – a year the Barons won 91 contests and claimed the Southern League championship – I attended at least one game during every home stand. Looking back, I think it’s safe to say I’d never been a bigger baseball fan that I was that year, and it was all because of my town’s minor league club.

I have no idea how many Barons games I’ve been to since their return, but I’m guessing I’ve probably watched them play more times than any other Birmingham-based pro sports franchise combined.

I followed them when they moved out of Rickwood and into the fancy new Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in 1988, even though driving to games was much less enjoyable because of the traffic snarls heading into and out of the Birmingham suburb.

The venue had healthy crowds in 1994 when Michael Jordan temporarily traded in his status as a basketball legend for that of a baseball rookie, but the team had a losing record and Jordan batted .202, so it was an unsatisfying year from a results standpoint.

The Barons’ new home at Regions Field opened in 2013, seven years after I’d moved away from Birmingham. I finally got to see the Barons again in 2019 on a trip back home, immediately falling in love with the gorgeous digs and realizing how much I missed rooting for the home team in person.

When I started cheering for the Barons they were affiliates of the Detroit Tigers, and that lasted from 1981 to 1985. Since then, they’ve served as an AA pipeline to the Chicago White Sox.

Those are two clubs I’ve never cheered for (I favor the New York Yankees in the American League and Chicago Cubs in the National), but still have an interest in former Barons.

I guess I always will.

And once I get back to Birmingham – something I hope happens sooner than later – a springtime trip to Regions Field will be a priority. After 40 years, I have a lot invested in the club.

Baseball fans were caught in the middle of a Major League crisis in the summer of 1994.

Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl

A strike that began on Aug. 12 wiped out the remainder of the regular season and playoffs, and caused the World Series to be canceled for the first time since 1904. But what if a new league came along – one with incentives that would lessen the possibility of work stoppages? Would that tempt followers of the National Pastime to move past the traditional big leagues and give a different circuit a try?

The founders of the United Baseball League certainly hoped so, and on November 1, 1994, they announced that the National and American leagues were about to have company.

“We’re not here to prod the establishment and we’re not here to replace it,” co-founder Dick Moss told the Associated Press. “We’re here to coexist with it. We will compete, just as Ford competes with General Motors.”

When I first heard about the UBL it piqued my interest. I was already a fan of alternative sports leagues and MLB had gone seemingly forever without any real competition. Maybe this would rock the boat a bit.

“Every sports league in this country had been controlled by a bunch of rich, white guys,” UBL co-founder Bob Mrazek said to AP. “We will offer a level of play which is comparable to major league baseball. We will build our success on a philosophy of true partnership. Our plans call for sharing and equity sharing arrangements with our players and our host cities.”

During the league’s inaugural news conference, it was announced that the goal was to sell 10 franchises for $5 million each, with eight in the United States, one in Canada, and one in Mexico. Play would begin in 1996 and by 1999 six expansion teams – including four from Asia – would be added.

Curt Flood, part of the UBL management group and a legendary figure in the sport’s labor movement, said there would be franchises in Puerto Rico, Taiwan and the Dominican Republic.

“We’re not limited to just the United States,” Flood said. “It’ll be a very high caliber, high class of competition. In some ways, this is a rare opportunity. If you were going to construct a league designed to avoid the problems of the past, how would you do it?”

Players were to receive 35 percent of pretax profits of the UBL, while host cities would get 15 percent plus 50 percent of luxury suite income and one-third of parking revenue.

In 1996 the projected average attendance would be 17,500 with ticket prices around $8 and an average player salary of $520,000. Players would be eligible for free agency after three seasons in the UBL.

In addition, the league agreed to a 20-year TV deal with Liberty Sports Network.

All of it sounded good to me – except for the 1996 part. While I understood the pitfalls of rushing to market, the strike was still fresh on everyone’s mind and a new league debuting in the spring of 1995 might still have some anti-MLB momentum.

Instead, the founders opted to take their time and, supposedly, do things right.

After the November unveiling UBL officials spent the next few months putting their plan into action, and in 1995 it was revealed that the inaugural season would begin on March 28, 1996. Instead of 162 games, the regular season would consist of 154 games, returning to MLB’s “old” format.

The Eastern Division would include Central Florida (Kissimmee), Long Island, Puerto Rico (Bayamon), and Washington, D.C.

Los Angeles, New Orleans, Portland, and Vancouver would comprise the Western Division. There was even talk of bringing in Pete Rose – famously banned from baseball – as skipper of the New Orleans entry.

As for talent, the idea was to initially go after free agents and international stars.

But, as is the case with most upstarts, starting up is often the biggest problem. In December, 1995, Moss announced that the league would postpone its first season until 1997 due to stadium issues and snags in the TV contract.

Then, after four months of silence, the UBL released a statement on April 11, 1996, that it was suspending operations “until further notice.”

And as you’ve probably noticed, 25 years later the UBL remains suspended.

Apparently there were several factors involved in the failure to launch. For one thing, Liberty merged with Fox Sports, and that included Major League Baseball broadcast rights.

But by 1996 the strike of 1994 was ancient history to sports fans, and any window of opportunity for the UBL to make a splash was closed.

Still, it was an interesting idea, and I often wonder how far it would’ve gotten if it had been able to take the field in 1995.

And who knows? Perhaps some entrepreneurs with more money than business sense might want to give the United Baseball League another go. After all, Rose still needs a club to manage.