Category: History and More

Had things gone as planned, I would currently be pontificating about the future of the Pacific Pro Football League, which was set to play its inaugural summer season with an eight game schedule contested from early July through late August.

I might’ve made room to look back at the Major League Football campaign, too, which in 2016 announced a two-year television deal with American Sports Network.

Alas, there’s nothing to report – at least not from the playing field.

Pac Pro pushed its start date back to the summer of 2019, and last month started looking for a new CEO – which perhaps means there is no definitive timeline for when it plans to get started.

I subscribe to the Pac Pro email updates, and the last one I received came in February when the league announced a “founding partner” relationship with Adidas.

You can also ask questions via the website although, to date, none of mine have been answered.

Then again, they never promised to answer, so …

MLFB, on the other hand, has become something of a joke, defined by a series of missteps. It seems less like a sports league and more like a wrecked car in a locked garage; it’s never going anywhere.

It was supposed to be up and running in the spring of 2016, and then 2017, and then this past spring.

Go to its website today, and you see five players dressed in colorful uniforms under the announcement: Coming Soon, New MLFB Website.

Visit its Facebook page, and you’ll see a lot of people making fun of it.

Of course those of us who grasp at any shiny object (and by “shiny object” we mean upstart pro football leagues) don’t have to wallow in disappointment.

The Alliance of American Football – now with all its cities, coaches, nicknames and colors lined up – begins play in February.

A year later, the XFL is supposed to rise from the gridiron grave, giving fans of spring football another option.

Personally, I’m putting all my chips in the AAF basket since my hometown of Birmingham has a team and the city closest in driving distance to me – Atlanta – has one as well.

Still, before I ever heard of the AAF or XFL: The Sequel, I was enamored with Pac Pro.

Of all the leagues that have come along – spring, summer, whatever – this one appeared to have a business plan that could actually turn the league onto a viable entity.

I wrote about the league back in 2017, and am still intrigued by the concept.

“Pacific Pro is the first professional football league ever created to provide developing football players with a choice to play professionally directly from high school – a league where emerging players can hone their craft, play football, and be compensated for it,” reads the release on the league website. “Pacific Pro will be the first league to professionalize players who are less than four years removed from their high school graduation. Players will receive a salary, benefits, and even paid tuition and books for one year at community college. Players also will be able to market themselves for compensation, and begin creating a financial retirement plan if they so choose.”

Salaries are approximately $50,000 per player, which is pretty sweet money coming right out of high school.

It makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

Certainly, there are many “student-athletes” who are interested in getting a quality education while playing college football, but there are some who aren’t.

Whether they can’t make the grade or simply don’t want to go to college, Pac Pro would work like a trade school in the football trade.

The original plan was to start with four teams, all in Southern California, and then then expand from there.

Now, who knows if it’ll ever get off the ground?

When fledgling sports leagues delay their start, that delay often becomes permanent.

I’d still like to see Pac Pro become a reality, if for no other reason than to find out how many hot shot prep players are willing to go straight to the professional ranks.

If it doesn’t, though, that’s OK, too.

The AAF will garner my attention in the spring and come June, the Canadian Football League will be my primary football concern.

Everything else is just gravy.

One of the things I vowed to do when I retired from the newspaper business was write books.

Or at least a book.

Right now, I’m about halfway through a work of fiction, three chapters into a non-fiction sports book, and have a decent start on a fiction novel geared toward young adults.

Problem is, I’m so accustomed to short form pieces that I’ve concentrated more on this website than I have the books. And, in all honesty, I’ve used adamsonmedia.com as an excuse to put them on the backburner.

Truth is, for the first time in my writing career, I’m out of my comfort zone.

Put me in a stadium or gym, and I was always confident I could recreate what happened there in a way that informed readers in an entertaining way.

When I wrote columns, I was sure that even if you disagreed with the opinion, you’d have no quarrel with the craft.

But I’ve never been much of a swimmer, and right now I’m in the deep end of the pool – fully clothed and lacking a water noodle.

While the non-fiction sports book feels more natural, I still have a whole lot of work to do. And I’m straight-up struggling with the other two.

It’s frustrating.

I know where I want them to go but I can’t figure out how to get there; I want to take shortcuts but I know that only winds up in dead ends.

So ….

I’m taking a break from this website in order to spend all my writing time on my long form projects.

If I had more talent I could juggle all of it, but I don’t and, therefore, I can’t.

Newspapers have deadlines, and deadlines always gave me a mark to hit.

Without them, I’ve discovered that I have all the time in the world to write and all of the time in the world to waste – and I’ve opted for the latter.

I mean, those cat videos on YouTube aren’t gonna watch themselves.

That being the case, I’m going to impose my own deadlines and set an actual work schedule. Once I do that, hopefully the words will come more easily and find their way onto pages that will eventually (hopefully) become books.

If and when that happens – when I see some real progress – I’ll return to this site.

It could be a week, a couple of weeks or a couple of months … I really don’t know.

But one way or another, I’m going to find out something important about myself.

Namely, am I a writer capable of writing books?

I’m about to find out.

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.

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.