How an NFL developmental league might look (and work)

A new National Football League season begins tonight with Atlanta visiting defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia, and by Sunday the 2018 campaign will be in full swing.

Out of Left Field is written by Scott Adamson. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl

Starting in February, fans who subscribe to the notion that there’s no such thing as too much gridiron action will get to watch the Alliance of American Football, which is set to start up as soon as this NFL season is finished.

Then in 2020, wrestling mogul Vince McMahon is investing $500 million to relaunch the XFL, which will also have a late winter/spring schedule.

We’ve covered both the AAF and XFL in detail on this site, so I’m not going into “greatest hits mode” other than to say they have a chance to be kinda/sorta feeder organizations for the NFL.

(Since I’m a Birmingham boy and the Magic City has an AAF team, I certainly hope that league makes it. As for the XFL revival, I couldn’t care less).

And while there will be no formal agreements between the big league and the new leagues – at least none that I know of – AAF and XFL officials will be more than happy to see someone use their circuits as steppingstones to the highest level of professional football because it provides an air of legitimacy.

But …

While you can claim any minor league is a de facto farm system for the NFL, an official one has never truly existed.

College football fills the void relatively well, especially now that so many more elite players are physically and mentally ready to make a quick transition to the pro ranks.

Still, it’s not like the Atlanta Falcons can call up a lineman from the Georgia Bulldogs during the season.

That’s why I’m a little surprised that the NFL doesn’t have a legitimate minor league system.

As close as it came was the World League of American Football, which morphed into NFL Europe and finally NFL Europa.

Again, though, it was played in the spring, so it didn’t follow the model of a traditional minor league.

If I was tasked with putting together an NFL developmental league (and I’m available, by the way), all 32 franchises would have a “B Team” that would also incorporate the scout teams.

These squads would not only be a good proving ground for rookies, but give playing time to backups and paying jobs to a lot of guys who otherwise would be out of football work after training camp. I’d think it would be relatively easy to put together, say, a 40-man per club developmental league roster.

Every year there are roughly 3,000 draft-eligible players from the college ranks, and NFL teams each have 90 players when training camp starts. There are currently five pro indoor leagues and myriad semi-pro circuits, so there would be no shortage of men wanting another – and better – opportunity.*

*I deliberately left out the Canadian Football League because I love the CFL and don’t want it screwed with. But, obviously, an NFL developmental league would raid it for players.

In order to control expenses, my NFLDL would be divided into four, eight-team quadrants (North, South, East and West) that played regional slates.

For example, the South Quadrant might feature franchises in Birmingham, Charleston, Jackson (Miss.), Louisville, Memphis, Orlando, Raleigh and Shreveport. Teams would play each other twice over the course of a 14-game regular season, and then the four quadrant champions could meet in a four-team playoff.

And to be a real, working farm system, the season would need to run (mostly) concurrent with the NFL schedule, not in the spring or summer. It could start, say, two weeks after the NFL season begins.

If games were played on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, any given player would be ready to compete on any given Sunday after getting a “call-up.”

On the other hand, if a skill player is trying to work his way back from an injury (or a rookie QB needs some real game reps), the NFLDL would be the place to get them.

The farm system would also be a laboratory for rule changes and innovations.

Each year the NFL competition committee considers several tweaks, but only a handful make it to the field.

Why not give them a test drive in the NFLDL?

I think such a league would certainly be a benefit to the NFL in terms of player development. A key question, though, is how to fund it.

Would the farm teams be owned by the same person or groups who own the parent clubs?

Would the NFL teams pay the salaries of all of the NFLDL players, or just the ones on loan?

Would fans even support what amounts to a Triple A football league when they’re already being overloaded with NFL and college games?

There’s a good chance we’ll never know.

Still, it’s something to think about – even if I’m just thinking out loud.

‘New’ football season doesn’t mean I have to forget about CFL

With a new college football season having a soft launch this weekend and the NFL just around the corner, there are some people who will abandon the second half of the Canadian Football league season.

Out of Left Field is written by Scott Adamson. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl

I will not be one of those people.

As I’ve said many times, I love the CFL, and it’s not a part-time relationship.

Just because traditional American football is cranking up doesn’t mean I have to abandon the brand played north of the border.

In fact, one of the reasons I subscribe to ESPN + is so I can watch any CFL game I want. Now it’ll just be a matter of prioritizing.

And since this is the first year since 1986 that I’ve been able to be a legitimate fan instead of someone who writes about games on deadline, I plan to make the most of it.

But how do you juggle it all?

In the interest of full disclosure, there are four football teams who are the primary objects of my affection. They are – listed in rooting order – UAB, the New York Jets, the Los Angeles Rams, and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

I’m a UAB alumni and contributed seed money so their gridiron program could restart for the 2017 season. Aside from having a diploma, I also have financial skin in the game, so that makes the Blazers my top priority.

I started rooting for the Jets when they were in the American Football League (I’m showing my age here), and they’ve remained my favorite pro football team since I was a kid.

Roman Gabriel helped make the Rams my favorite NFL team, but when the franchise moved to St. Louis, I lost interest (and they were replaced by the Atlanta Falcons). But now that they’re back in L.A., they’re back in my favor as I’ve started pining for childhood memories, so I’ll root for them against any team not named the Jets.

As for Hamilton, I just liked their black and gold unis, and picked them as my favorite CFL team back in the 1970s. And except for that brain fart involving the Art Briles hire (and the brief tenure of the Birmingham Barracudas in 1995), they’ve been my No. 1 CFL club for 40-plus years.

The odd thing, though, is that I like CFL rules better than American football rules, and I like pro football much better than college football.

That makes my rooting preferences out of whack, but that’s just the way it is and I’m not going to overthink it.

Anyway, there will be some programming decisions I’ll have to make between now and December, but fortunately things break pretty favorably for me.

Tonight when Hamilton takes on Edmonton, it’ll be the only game in town. Cleveland does play Philadelphia in an NFL preseason game, but I’d never watch an exhibition over a CFL regular season game.

The Tiger-Cats’ next game is Monday, Sept. 3, against the Toronto Argonauts. That’s the same night of the Virginia Tech vs. Florida State and Alcorn State vs. Georgia Tech games take place.

I’ll be watching Hamilton.

And a quick glance at the schedule reveals that the Ti-Cats have no regular season Sunday games going forward, meaning there will be no conflicts with the Jets or Rams.

Thing is, though, I like the CFL in general. So there will be times when I might have a choice between a Football Bowl Subdivision game and a CFL matchup on Saturday, and I can tell you right now the Canadians will win more than they lose in that competition.

So to make a short story long, no, I don’t give up on the CFL just because the field gets crowded. It’s a great league with great players, and I’m glad there’s still plenty more games to watch.

Once a foe, Hancock is now CFP’s biggest cheerleader

By all indications, Bill Hancock is a really nice man.

Out of Left Field is written by Scott Adamson. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl

Every interaction I ever had with him was pleasant, and I’ve never heard anyone say a bad thing about him. He seems like a good dude in a world that has far too many bad dudes.

But, holy schnikes, it’s hard to believe the executive director of the College Football Playoff actually believes what he says when he talks about the CFP and bowl system.

With football media days kicking off last week, Hancock was in Atlanta to lift the lid on the SEC portion of the annual press fest. As expected, he raved about the Football Bowl Subdivision’s playoff system, which will crown its fifth champion Jan. 7, 2019, in Santa Clara, California.

“By every measure, the College Football Playoff has been highly successful,” Hancock said. “Fans love the CFP. It has provided a memorable experience for students, for players, for spirit squads, band members and all of their families in addition to millions of football fans, and we are bringing new fans into the game of college football into our sphere, showing them the wonders of this game that we all do love so much because of the College Football Playoff.”

Of course after Central Florida was the only unbeaten team in the FBS a year ago and locked out of the playoffs, there were (and are) those who think the tournament should be expanded to eight teams.

Not Hancock.

He suggests that the four-team CFP format is damn near perfect.

“The CFP works,” Hancock said. “It works well. Four teams keeps the focus on this wonderful regular season, the most meaningful and compelling in all of sports; four lets us keep the bowl experience for thousands of student-athletes; four keeps college football within the framework of higher education.”

Obviously, I wouldn’t expect him to say anything else. I mean, this is his job. If all 129 FBS teams were required to have green and magenta feathers sprouting from the top of their helmets, he’d be talking about how the green and magenta feathers add to the pageantry of Saturdays in the fall.

But remember, Hancock used to be head of the now defunct Bowl Championship Series – and fiercely opposed any kind of playoff system for what was once known as Division 1-A.

Here’s what he said during a radio interview with WDAE in Tampa back in 2011:

“The reason that the presidents and the coaches and ADs support what we have is two things. First of all, we have the best regular season in sports in large part because there’s no playoff at the end. We have three months of frenzy rather than three weeks of frenzy at the end of the season. Our folks feel strongly that’s in the best interest of the game. The second one is the bowl system, the bowl tradition, the bowl experience for the student athletes is so wonderful and worth keeping. No one has come up with any kind of a playoff that will keep that same bowl experience where the athletes get to go spend a week in a different culture and they’re the talk of the town.”

So there was a time not so long ago that Hancock thought a playoff would cheapen the regular season and bowls, and he believed that right up to the point when he decided a playoff would, in fact, be great for the regular season and bowls (which I’m sure coincided with being named ED of the CFP).

However, it’s a different gridiron world now, and I think this whole notion of “bowl tradition” is extremely overrated.

Yeah, it was cool back in the day – but back in the day there were only a handful of postseason “classics.”

I’m sure it was thrill for Michigan Wolverines tackle Johnny Plowboy from Hog Taint, Indiana, to board the train and head out to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to play Southern Cal’s Trojans in a battle of unbeatens. It was his first time to go clear across the country on a big ol’ iron horse, and he got to gawk at sights ma and pa never dreamed of while they toiled away raising boll weevils in their backyard.

Today, players on teams with .500 records fly to Mobile, Alabama, and get swag bags from Dollar General.

And that’s fine, but let’s not pretend the modern bowl system is designed with tradition in mind.

And let’s not pretend the CFP is open to all, although Hancock tells you otherwise.

He’s trying to sell the CFP as something that’s good for the FBS as a whole, when in reality it’s good only for select members of the Power 5 conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 10, and SEC).

“For the College Football Playoff, things are simple: Play a good schedule, win your games, and you’re going to be in the hunt,” Hancock said. “That holds true for UCF and Houston and Northern Illinois, as well as Alabama and Ohio State and Texas and Washington.”

I call B.S. on that.

There’s no way UCF, Houston or Northern Illinois is going to earn one of four playoff spots; there’s not even enough room for all the Power 5 schools.

The CFP website perpetuates the myth in its overview section where it states, “The College Football Playoff preserves the excitement and significance of college football’s unique regular season where every game counts.”

Really?

Because Auburn beat Alabama in the final week of the 2017 regular season, denying the Crimson Tide the SEC West title and a spot in the SEC Championship Game.

Still, Bama was invited to the CFP and went on to beat Georgia to claim the crown.

You’ll have a hard time convincing me the Iron Bowl counted to the CFP committee members. In terms of postseason pairings, one of the most meaningful rivalries in all of sports was meaningless.

And as long as only four teams are invited, schools from Group of 5 conferences (American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, and Sun Belt) have zero chance of making the field.

Perhaps that’ll change one day, because with the money the CFP generates you have to figure the field will expand to eight teams in the foreseeable future.

Some will think that’s terrific, while others will lament the expansion.

But if Hancock is still the executive director then, I’ll bet he’ll say it’s the greatest thing to ever happen to the game.