SITE NEWS: We are moving all of our site and company news into a single blog for Sports-Reference.com. We'll tag all PFR content, so you can quickly and easily find the content you want.
Also, our existing PFR blog rss feed will be redirected to the new site's feed.
Pro-Football-Reference.com » Sports Reference
For more from Chase and Jason, check out their work at Football Perspective and The Big Lead.
ShareThisAnother new professional football league
Last summer I bunged down some thoughts (here and here) on the All-American Football League, an exciting new league which will begin play in April of 2007.
Hey, wait a minute.
I guess that didn't quite happen, but their website is still alive and well, and is now advertising an April 2008 start.
Well now it's got some potential competition. These two articles indicate that a group of investors, including "well-known investment banker Bill Hambrecht and Google Inc. executive Tim Armstrong" as well as Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban, is planning on starting up a new league --- the United Football League --- which will begin play in August of 2008. They'll move into non-NFL markets like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, etc. and start with an eight-team league.
So that wraps up the factual part of the post. Now I'll start spouting off about things that I have no real idea about...
While the AAFL appears content to be a minor league with a niche, as arena football has been for a couple of decades now, it doesn't take much imagination to envision google and Cuban aiming higher. Given the relative popularity of the three major US sports and the salaries of the people who play them, it just seems obvious that NFL football players are generating more revenue than they are being paid. And that doesn't even count all the guys who are generating revenue for nothing in college. I can only assume that the investors are thinking, all we have to do is pay them what they're worth and they'll come play for us because it'll be a huge pay raise. It will obviously take patience, and they'll have to absorb some heavy losses for at least a few years (as the linked article indicates), but I'm sure they're prepared to do that. I think this has a chance.
I don't know what they're planning, but here's how I'd do it:
1. The obvious first move is to start poaching college players before they are eligible for the NFL draft. Rather than opening the floodgates, I'd institute a 2-years-out-of-high-school rule. In this way, they can get their hands on players who are already known to the public. Darren McFadden, Brian Brohm, and Steve Slaton would get you some attention. Yes, in the beginning you'd be used as a one-year minor league stopover by the top college sophomores. That's OK. Eventually, as the league gets stronger, some of them will decide to stick around.
2. Try to sign every player who is ticked off about having been tagged with the franchise designation.
3. Pay high-profile non-first-round NFL draft picks more money than the NFL will. This is apparently part of the UFL's strategy.
4. Run your season from October through February. Play on Friday nights (which the league apparently is planning on doing) during the main part of the season, but open it up during the holidays, sneak into Saturdays after college football ends, and even sneak into Sundays once the NFL playoffs go into no-games-before-4:00 mode (one of my personal pet peeves).
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 4:50 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
To the smaller point, I agree. I used to love when playoff games were at 12:30 and 4:00. I hate 8:30 playoff games. (Actually, as a Bills fan, I hate playoff games in general. What's the point??
)
For those who don't, this league would offer a good alternative to watching college games with their condescending commentators.
--
I like your strategies, Doug (possibly except the minor league part). All of them seem like simple but effective ways to get some real talent, as opposed to NFL rejects. Friday night would be a good night for some football. I'd like to see it happen, as the NFL isn't the only possible football league.
I'm not sure I'm fully sold on league ownership of all teams. Has parity and favoritism written all over it. Either way, I'd love to see it, especially if it's mission statement isn't to be an also-ran league.
--
My one scheduling idea is to be predominately on Friday night, but have one game each week on Saturday and one on Sunday. I know you'll never buy into this idea, but NOT EVERYBODY LIKES COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Also, if you're truly going to position yourself as a serious competitor with the NFL, you should have some game presence directly at the same time. The Sunday game (which should start at either noon or 2PM on Sunday) would offer an alternative to the disgruntled fan who is tired of their locality's NFL TV offering in a given week. If the new league made a point of focusing on stuff that the NFL doesn't do well (such as officiating, and other things that fans find irritating), playing on Sunday will be necessary to gain converts. Conversely, not playing on Sunday is tantamount to waiving a white flag to the NFL.
If this new football wants to succeed and grow a loyal following fast, they should follow the blueprint that has worked well for "sports" like golf, auto racing, and boxing, all of which have enjoyed recent swells in popularity. Here is what they did:
1. Strive to make your "sport" as repetitive as possible.
2. Strive to make your "sport" as boring as possible.
3. Strive to make your "sport" somewhat mysterious.
4. Target the portions of the general public that are SIGNIFICANTLY BELOW AVERAGE in terms of INTELLECT to be your fans.
I'm not sure exactly why, but these 4 steps really helped golf, auto racing, and boxing reach their potential in recent times.
Along with going after players annoyed with the franchise tag, you could go after free agents (particularly if you are going to pay more money). If a new league landed the top free agent in a given year, that would make huge headlines. I'd also say they could go after backups who seem ready for a starting role (I'm thinking of guys like Turner and Betts).
Here's my plan:
1. "Friday Night's A Great Night For Football".
2. Helmet Cam and Madden angle.
3. No announcers, just sounds from the field.
I always get excited about the prospect of new leagues. I don't know why, because I already love the NFL. But something about a new league excites me. I thought the XFL was fun, and think it may have succeeded if Vince McMahon's name wasn't tainted from wrestling.
In your blog, you wrote:
In the new CBA, isn't the salary cap something like 54% of revenues? If 54% is not a high enough number, what is?
I like the idea of an October to February league. But I might even take it one step further and run it from November through March. That's one thing the NFL has that no other leagues have is that they leave us wanting more. I think only the hardest core fans are sad to see the ends of the NBA, MLB and NHL seasons - but in the NFL, I think most people are nowhere near ready for it to end. I remember as a kid thinking "the NFL season is already 3/4 over!"
So, if a new league has its "pennant race" and playoffs right after the Super Bowl, I think it could get a lot of attention.
Bill, you make a good point about playing games on Sundays. Why not? If I'm at home and the only game at 1:00 is Raiders vs. Chiefs and the Raiders are getting killed (an extremely likely scenario for Los Angeles viewers), I want to have another game to watch. I could just as easily turn to a non-NFL game and be entertained.
I'm not saying they're "morally" underpaid. If the players and owners negotiated their way to 54%, then it's none of my business to tell either group it should be anything different.
I'm saying that they're economically underpaid. By that I mean that if that 54% were changed to 55% or 57%, the league as a whole would still be making hefty profits, short term and long term.
I think from a management/labor stand point this new league could be a complete disaster. The NFL seems to have a pretty good power balance right now which allows them to provide a product that is good and appeals to people. If however you unbalance that by throwing in 8 desperate new owners who are willing to take losses for 5 years or so then labor ends up with a huge increase in power. That could completely undermine what is fundamentally not a stable system. People are fickle and if their teams appear greedy or out of reach of the casual fan they will move on.
How about the new league offering guaranteed contracts?
mark my words, this will fail. maybe they will make it a year or two, or three - like the USFL - maybe not. the NFL will crush them. All they have to do is put one team in the anchor city and basically shut it down.
this is what they did with the AFL. The NFL nearly buried the AFL by creating the Cowboys. Luckily Hunt and his cronies had enough cash to hang on for dear life and chip away. I don't see this success repeating itself because 1. the NFL has learned from that and 2. the NFL has captured many more markets since then and therefore there is little of the pie left (as opposed to when the AFL debuted - there was a huge potential pie to be grabbed). People will support a vegas team like people support a phoenix team - with Cowboys apparral. This is doomed to fail.
If this actually happens, I suspect a NFL team will head to LA sooner than later as a counter measure.
and as for guaranteed contacts, I think poor-old Donald Trump is still sending checks to Steve Young.
I think a new league can't be successful unless it either:
a) Offers a significantly different product from the NFL; or
b) Offers a significantly better product than than the NFL
(Truthfully, these are good standards for launching any product against an existing product. If you're trying to launch an automobile to compete with existing SUVs, making essentially the same thing won't help much. You need a better SUV or something different enough to get noticed or attract people unhappy with current SUVs.)
a) is where the Arena Football League succeeds. The players are less talented than their NFL counterparts (thus not meeting b), but the game is wacky enough to catch on. The XFL, WLAF, WFL, and the like didn't have either better players or a different enough product. Older leagues (AFL, CFL, and even college football) established themselves when the NFL wasn't nearly as strong, and, for the most part, didn't have a major advantage in player quality.
Assuming the game won't be Arena-like or even XFL-like, they won't meet condition a), which means they'll essentially have the money to get better players. Good luck with that.
The AAFL is very much going forward. Players who feel they have what it takes to play at the highest level, and wish to try out can do so:
ALL AMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE:
REGISTER FOR NATIONAL TRYOUTS
Tryout Dates
July 1 - Citrus Bowl - Open tryouts - Noon - 9 PM. Registration required. 50 Players will be invited back on July 2.
July 2 in Florida - 3 PM to 9 PM - Registration Required. Application required. 50 players will receive an invitation to participate on July 3
July 3 in the Citrus Bowl in Orlando - 4 PM to 9 PM. Public invited. Invitational*
Early September - TBD - various locations - Open
Late September - Texas and Michigan - Invitational**
* Players currently on NFL Europe rosters who will not be bound by contractual obligations on July 3, 2007 and players who previously played for an NFL team or for a BCS school will receive an automatic invitation.
** Players currently on NFL, Arena and CFL rosters who will not be bound by contractual obligations at the time of the tryouts in September will receive an automatic invitation.
I think another strategy that could potentially help this league financially (at least early on) would be if the UFL established a way of posting players for sale to the NFL similarly to what is done in some of the professional soccer leagues and in Japan for their baseball players. If you owned a UFL franchise you'd have an incentive to recruit undervalued talent (the article mentions people like Tom Brady being a 6th round draft choice), develop them into solid players and then be able to recoup some of your costs and investment by selling off these players to the NFL. As these teams and the fledgling league look to manage losses this could be a potential revenue generator to help keep the league afloat and give them time to get some traction.
Re 11 - besides Dallas, the NFL attacked the AFL in Minnesota. The planned AFL had a team in Minneapolis. The NFL wooed the ownership group by offering them an expansion franchise and they defected from the new league. A last minute replacement was found in Oakland (the ownership structure there has always been different, Davis is not technically the owner but the managing partner).
This was anther reason Hunt and the Chiefs front office wanted so badly to beat the Vikings in '69; the players were aware of the bad blood although probably not as motivated by it.
Yea, the "investors" basically have to accept that for 5-10 years they're gonna be losing money if they really plan on doing it. I do think that they can have a viable entity to the NFL, what I don't understand is. Why do it during the same time of year?
Why not do it in the spring and summer competing against the NBA, NHL playoffs and MLB at the start of the season, and against the late MLB season at the end of the season.
Then if the thing succeeds, the NFL might actually buy the damn thing and return the investment.
The other thing is, they NEED to find quarterbacks. They need steve youngs out there. Gotta find those tom bradys.
While I think this will fail, I do think it is wise - if they ever want to be taken seriously - to stick with the fall. Even the most serious Football fan will ever take a spring league seriously, and never mind the casual fans. If they do want to be a serious entity, the fall is the way to go. That being said, the fall is probably a bigger barrier to entry but if they want staying power, they must overcome. Did I say this was doomed yet?
Why is it that when elite quarterbacks are mentioned or listed, Jim Kelly's name is rarely mentioned near the top of the list, and is often not mentioned? He was the best.
"Try to sign every player who is ticked off about having been tagged with the franchise designation."
How would that help? Why would a player who is upset at only getting 5-10 million dollars leave the NFL for a league that's going to pay far less than that (unless you think the UFL is going to be able to pay any of its players more than 5 million a year)?
And even if this does work, this won't get you that many players. There were only 7 players tagged this year, and three of them have already re-signed with their teams. The other four are Lance Briggs (very ticked off), Asante Samuel (slightly ticked off, from what I've read), Dwight Freeney (happy camper), and Cory Redding (I have no idea how he feels about it). So even if you got all the franchise players that were ticked off about it, that's maybe a handful of players a year if you're lucky, and only some of them are stars that would bring fans to your league. I don't see how that would make much of a difference in building an 8 team league.
"The other thing is, they NEED to find quarterbacks."
True, this would be an issue. However, I think there's a relatively easy solution: change the rules of the league to emphasize different skills. There are lots of QBs with strong arms, or with very good accuracy, or with excellent running ability, etc. But there are very few with enough of these skills to succeed in the NFL. So all you have to do is decide on some skill that you want to highlight, and tailor the rules to make it more important. That would let you take QBs who were very successful in college, but who don't have all the necessary talents to succeed in the NFL, to come and play a game that showcases their talents, and hides their weaknesses. That way, you could get talented QBs from the NFL's leftovers.
For instance, say you want to get the QBs that have rocket arms, but no pocket presence, and bust out of the NFL. In that case, you just make a rule limiting the number of defenders who can rush the passer, so the offense has an easier time blocking, and the WRs can get downfield and catch lots of 50-yard bombs. That'd make for a pretty fun game to watch.
Or maybe you want to get the system QBs that had great college careers in Hawaii, Houston, and Texas Tech, where they ran Run-and-Shoot offenses successfully because of great decision making skills, but aren't physically talented enough to succeed in the NFL. Just make a rule that allows for 8 or 9 eligible receivers, and they'll be able to spread defenses out even more, and use an uber-Run-and-Shoot system to succeed against what will likely be less talented defenses than they would face in the NFL. Wouldn't an 8 wide receiver formation be fun? If nothing else, you could make a pretty entertaining reality show detailing the struggles of a QB who has 8 WRs constantly complaining about not getting enough passes.
Also, these rule changes could help by placing less importance on positions that require players that are really, really big (linemen), because finding a lot of 300 lb guys that are good at blocking, and aren't in the NFL, is a lot harder than finding a lot of relatively fast, 180-200 lb guys that know how to catch that aren't in the NFL.
"'The other thing is, they NEED to find quarterbacks. They need steve youngs out there. Gotta find those tom bradys.'
Why is it that when elite quarterbacks are mentioned or listed, Jim Kelly’s name is rarely mentioned near the top of the list, and is often not mentioned? He was the best."
He wasn't listing any old elite quarterbacks, he was listing quarterbacks that weren't taken by the NFL in the first round right out of college. Steve Young first played in the USFL, and Tom Brady was drafted in the sixth round, so the NFL wouldn't have kept the UFL from getting these quarterbacks, since they could afford to pay more than a sixth round pick would get. Jim Kelly went in the first round, so the UFL would not have been able to pay him more than he would've made in the NFL. That's why he wasn't mentioned.
"He wasn’t listing any old elite quarterbacks, he was listing quarterbacks that weren’t taken by the NFL in the first round right out of college. Steve Young first played in the USFL, and Tom Brady was drafted in the sixth round, so the NFL wouldn’t have kept the UFL from getting these quarterbacks, since they could afford to pay more than a sixth round pick would get. Jim Kelly went in the first round, so the UFL would not have been able to pay him more than he would’ve made in the NFL. That’s why he wasn’t mentioned."
I'm kind of surprised no one mentioned this, but Jim Kelly played two years for the Houston Gamblers before actually signing with the Bills. So his name belongs in a discussion of QB types they have to go after.
Not to mention they could take risks like attempting to put dibs on players not destine for the nfl and hope on a turn of career. Like Dallas drafting Roger Staubach late in the draft even though he was going to the war. A possible prospect they could try for if up next year could be Jeff Samardzija, esp since that baseball team has a history of burning out its pitchers
"Jim Kelly played two years for the Houston Gamblers before actually signing with the Bills. So his name belongs in a discussion of QB types they have to go after."
Fair enough, I stand corrected. So you need to get the Steve Youngs, the Tom Bradys, and the Jim Kellys, etc.
My only point is Jim Kelly rarely gets the respect he deserves. Not in these set of comments, but ever.
He is in the Hall of Fame. Doesn't that count as respect?
The key is the financial backing. Remember when Lamar Hunt's father heard how much money his son had lost in the first year of the AFL, he said, "At this rate we'll be broke in the year 2200 (or some year that was eons ahead of 1960)." The owners of the AFL (with the exception of Al Davis) franchises were far wealthier than the owners of the NFL franchises, and that is what gave them the ability to poach Joe Nameth, and players. It was paying them more that got the talent away from the NFL, and got the NFL to pay attention and not gimmicks like the XFL.
This league has a strong chance of succeeding . The first reason is the demand in non-NFL cities. The first 8 cities should be L.A. Las Vegas, Memphis, San Antonio, Birmingham, Orlando, Chicago, New York and Fort Worth. The AFL should pursue the NFL free agents, Arena Football players and college players. Also, as bad as it may sound, the AFL must pursue suspended NFL players. Is there a possiblity of adding Canadian cities in future? Yes, the AFL should play from October to March. It's going to take years to establish a fan base but in the end it will happen soon than later. I remember attending USFL games in Chicago and Memphis and they were great. They also had great names like the Chicago Blitz and the Memphis Showboats. If television was like it is now back then, the USFL might have merged with the NFL or still be in existence.
I'm very excited to see a new leage. I've never been an NFL fan. I live in Canada and am a die-hard CFL fan. I've always cheered for the underdogs. Although my beloved CFL would probably get it's rosters raided by the new UFL I feel that there is more than enough talent to go around.
I hope this works.
INTERESTD IN KNOWING WHEN AND WHERE OPEN TRYOUTS WILL BE FOR THIS LEAGUE
The AAFL is the more intriguing of the two to me because of the college degree requirement. Hopefully it motivates student athletes to fulfill all the requirements and get their degree. I'm looking forward to seeing some former college greats play in their respective stadiums.
im intrested in knowing when and where the texas try out are here
Where and when are tryouts held and what are the contracts like!