Tag Archives: XFL

Dueling Leagues About to Test Appetite for Spring Football

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This weekend, for the first time since early 2020, two spring football leagues will be competing at the same time as the USFL joins the XFL in a battle for viewers and fans in the great quest to fill those football free months between the end of the Super Bowl and the beginning of NFL training camps.

The experiment in 2020 regarding whether two spring leagues can survive between the XFL and the Alliance of American Football was cut short due to financial troubles with the AAF and a cancelled XFL season due to COVID-19.

The XFL returned to the gridiron this year under new ownership and his entering the final stretch of their season. The United States Football League, aka the USFL, is set to return for season two since arising like a phoenix from the ashes in 2021.

For the first time since early 2020, two spring football leagues will be competing at the same time as the USFL joins the XFL in a battle for viewers and fans in the great quest to fill those football free months between the end of the Super Bowl and the beginning of NFL training camps.
Graphic R. Anderson

While there will be two leagues for the next couple of weeks, the approach between them could not be more different.

The XFL returned for its third iteration following a sale of the league from Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment owning fame, to an ownership consortium that includes Dwayne “can you smell what the Rock is cooking” Johnson fame.

The third version of the XFL has already lasted longer than version two in 2020 and seems to be on strong footing despite lackluster attendance and television ratings.

For someone used to watching football on television, it can be a bit of a shock to see near empty football stadiums during a time without the COVID-19 limitations that forced games to be played fan free for two years.

Nearly empty stadiums were something that also plagued the USFL during their reboot season last year.

For those unfamiliar with the USFL, it was a spring football league that played for three seasons from 1983 through 1985. Some notable USFL players who later joined the NFL include Jim Kelly, Doug Flutie, Steve Young and Hershel Walker.

Ultimately, like the myriad spring football leagues that followed, the USFL went the way of the dinosaurs and became extinct. With the number of failed leagues trying to come back to life lately perhaps one should say the USFL is trying to atone for its Icarus style hubris of flying too close to the sun during its initial three season run.

I will not get into the inner workings of why the USFL failed during their initial late 20th Century incarnation. Numerous books and documentaries cover that subject in grave detail. However, for those wanting to get down in the weeds on why the league failed, I do recommend the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary “Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?”

Spoiler alert, the answer to the question of who killed the USFL may surprise some, and seem completely on brand to others.

While the original USFL included individual owners for each of their franchises, the current version of the USFL is owned in part by Fox Sports, which will share broadcasting rights with NBC. The XFL games are televised on ABC, ESPN and FX.

As I noted in a column last year when the return of the USFL was first announced, the rising symbiosis between leagues and broadcast partners is a troubling trend that is certainly column subject for another day.

Suffice to say, as a classically trained sports journalist, as well as someone with a Masters degree in Sport Management, I am deeply troubled by the trend of mergers and blending of networks and leagues.

I am equally troubled by the way that sports leagues have gone from acknowledging sports betting with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, to fully embracing it by including live betting lines on their broadcasts.

I have nothing against someone wanting to bet on sports. I just trhink it sets a bad example when players can be banned for life if they bet on their games, but fans are free to bet until their hearts content.

Turning professional sports leagues into glorified Jai Lai and dog racing is bad optics from my point of view. Then again, that is another column for another day.

It goes back to the age-old journalism school question of whether sports events are news or entertainment. Based on the number of leagues jumping into bed with gambling interests, I would say sports are sliding into the easy to manipulate realm of entertainment programming which could very well soil the sanctity of the game.

Further proof of the football as mere television commodity model is the fact that despite recycling the cities and team nicknames from the USFL of old, for the second straight year, the USFL will not play games in the host cities. Instead, all USFL games will be played in the hub cities of Detroit, Canton, Memphis and Birmingham.

Currently, Houston, TX is the only city with a team in both the XFL and USFL. However, someone wanting to catch a Houston Gamblers game would need to travel to one of the USFL’s four hub cities to see their “home” team play a home game. Fans of the XFL’s Houston Roughnecks can actually see the team play in Houston.
Graphic R. Anderson

Currently, Houston, TX is the only city with a team in both the XFL and USFL.

Someone wanting to catch a Houston Gamblers game would need to travel to one of the USFL’s four hub cities to see their “home” team play a home game.

Fans of the XFL’s Houston Roughnecks can actually see the team play in Houston.

The XFL realized that home field advantage and leaning into a fan base is a smart business model.

Given the chance to actually see a game in your own town, versus watching them from afar is definitely likely to earn more fans for the Roughnecks than the Gamblers.

The USFL is gambling that enough people will attend the games in the hub cities to make it look good on TV without actually caring if the people in the stands have any connection to the towns the teams claim to represent.

I am no stranger to spring football leagues. One of the first sports articles I ever wrote was about the arrival of the World League of American Football (WLAF).

My article focused on the Orlando Thunder and the excitement that the City Beautiful was getting another chance to be a professional football town.

I have gone down this road many times and it never ends well. One of the first sports articles I ever wrote for my high school newspaper was about the arrival of the World League of American Football (WLAF). My article focused on the Orlando Thunder and the excitement that the City Beautiful was getting another chance to be a professional football town. The excitement lasted all of two seasons as the WLAF became NFL Europe and the Thunder and the other domestic teams ceased operations.
Photo R. Anderson

The excitement lasted all of two seasons as the WLAF became NFL Europe and the Thunder and the other domestic teams ceased operations.

A fun fact tying the WLAF to the USFL was that Lee Corso was the Orlando Thunder’s general manager after coaching the Orlando Renegades of the USFL.

Leagues will always say that they learned from the mistakes of others as they climb over the smoldering remains of all of the spring leagues that came before them. In this way, they really are like the classic tale of Icarus who flew too close to the sun and fell down to earth after his wax wings melted.

It really would be fitting for a spring football league to use Icarus for one of their teams if one could decide if the plural should be the Flying Icaruses or the Flying Icuri.

Over the course of the USFL three seasons only five teams played all three years without relocating or changing team names. Those lucky teams with the most stability were the Denver Gold, Los Angeles Express, Birmingham Stallions, New Jersey Generals, and Tampa Bay Bandits.

Already in year two of the USFL, the Tampa Bay Bandits are a casualty of teams that were around last year and failed to take the field for year two.

The official word is that the Bandits, who were once partly owned by the Bandit himself, Burt Reynolds, and coached by the Old Ball Coach himself, Steve Spurrier during “classic” USFL, have gone “on hiatus.”

Although the USFL issued a statement that the move to replace the bandits with the Memphis Showboats is based on a restriction of only eight teams in the made for television league, one has to wonder whether anyone will really notice if the Bandits return based on the whole not playing in the home markets approach.

Time will tell whether the latest iteration of the USFL can match, or best the three-year high-water mark of spring league viability it set nearly 40 years ago. Perhaps Icarus will use some stronger wax this time.

Since spring football leagues seem to be all about gambling these days, my money is on the XFL making more of an impact on football fans than the USFL based on the ability of fans to actually go to a stadium in their home town and root for their team.

To see how much fun spring football can be for hometown fans, one need only look at the XFL’s Washington Defenders, where fans have the opportunity to make an awesome beer snake in the stands, and the St. Louis Battlehawks, where football hungry fans have brought life back to a long abandoned domed stadium.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a trip to a football stadium to plan.

Copyright 2023 R. Anderson

COVID-19 puts the Sports World in an Extended Timeout

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The world of professional baseball has been dark since March. Discussions are underway to return players to the ballparks in a shortened, fan-free season. Photo R. Anderson

Thanks to the arrival of the COVID-19 virus, for many people right now it feels like up is down, and down is up. The virus has also introduced new terms like, social distancing and contact tracing into our vocabularies. As part of its destructive path into everyday life COVID-19 has caused the world of sports to grind to a halt as player and fan safety was given the proper level of respect.

The COVID-19 outbreak tested leagues in a way that many sports had never experienced. Social distancing requirements, as well as limits on crowd size, led to the cancellations of the XFL, NBA, NHL and almost all other sports leagues. On April 10, 2020 the XFL announced it had suspended operations indefinitely and laid off all league employees due in part to financial losses as a result of COVID-19.

The Olympic Summer Games in Tokyo were delayed by at least a year. All NCAA spring sports tournaments, including the Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments were cancelled. Major League Baseball ended Spring Training early, and delayed the start of the season. The leagues that continued to hold competitions did so without fans in attendance as they tried to balance social responsibility with the public’s appetite for live sports.

With most major sports leagues shutdown due to COVID-19, sports fans looked for any port in the storm to quench their thirst for live competition. The American Cornhole League provided many fans with just such an outlet.
Photo R. Anderson

Before going any further, it is important to note that shutting down mass gatherings, like sporting events, was the right call.

One need only look at the amount of cases that spread out from a convention in Boston to know how quickly the virus can spread to know that mass gatherings are simply not prudent at this juncture. Even with social distancing, the number of cases, and the number of fatalities continue to rise. Were sports allowed to continue in full stadiums and arenas, there is little doubt that the case and death count would be much higher.

It should also be said that the inconvenience of not having live sports to watch is trivial compared to the real effects of COVID-19 that many people are facing across the world through losses of jobs and in extreme cases losses of loved ones.

Although the major sporting leagues have been shutdown for nearly two months, there are rumblings building to resume sports, albeit in empty stadiums without fans. NASCAR, which kept fans entertained through simulated races, is set to resume racing in empty tracks on May 17, 2020. Five years after the first game in Major League Baseball history was played in Baltimore without fans, MLB is negotiating with the player’s union to try to gain approval to host a truncated 82 game season in empty ballparks starting in July.

NASCAR is set to resume racing without fans in attendance on May 17, 2020. Time will tell whether the fans return for the Daytona 500 in February at Daytona International Speedway.
Photo R. Anderson

All of these efforts to resume sports without fans show a desire for the governing bodies of the respected sports to explore any and all means for the show to go on. This effort to resume is driven in large part so the leagues can recoup some sort of financial payday.

While a return to live sports on television, even sports without fans, would be welcomed by many, one has to ask whether leagues risk diminishing the product by forcing reduced schedules on fans and trying to call it a full season. Should a World Series Champion that only played an 82-game regular season be considered as talented as teams of the past who prevailed over the course of a season that was twice as long?

Additionally, as part of any discussion on the resumption of live sports one must also ask whether players are being put at undue risk by being asked to travel from city to city, and potential virus hot spot to hot spot, just so the show can go on in some form or fashion.

To be clear, like most sports fans, I miss being able to unwind at the end of the day by watching a game on television. However, I am not sure that I miss live sports enough that I am willing to support putting my favorite athletes potentially at risk of catching, or spreading, a virus that currently has no cure just so they can bring me a few hours of entertainment.

As professional sports look at ways to resume during the era of COVID-19 one has to wonder how exactly a football huddle with social distancing would look.
Photo R. Anderson

Aside from needing to address player safety as part of any path to resumed competition, leagues must also consider that airing games without fans leagues may hasten the trend of people choosing to watch games from the comfort of home versus battling thousands of people to get to a seat so far from the field that they are basically watching the game on the big screen anyway. Sure, the made for TV sports are better with screaming fans, but there is something to be said for watching at home where the snacks and the bathrooms are both a lot easier to get to.

With NASCAR and MLB looking to get their seasons going, the eyes of the world of sports turn their focus to football. Even if one accepts the prospect of empty football stadiums, it is hard to fathom how players could be in the trenches on the gridiron and not risk exposure to COVID-19.

Exactly how does one huddle with six-feet of separation? Even a scenario where players are wearing masks does not seem feasible. It is hard to think that a wide receiver can run full speed down the sideline wearing a N-95 mask under his face mask. The only possible solution would be to equip all player helmets with a clear shield that covers their mouth and nose, but even that is a stretch.

College Football is one of the sports on the bubble for a return based on a NCAA position on the need for students to be on campus before sports can resume.
Photo R. Anderson

College sports face their own hurdles for resuming in the fall. The NCAA has said that sports will not resume unless on campus classes have also resumed. The implication being that if the college is not deemed safe enough for students to be on, then the athletes should not be expected to have to play there.

There is too much money involved in college football to think that a work around of some sort will not be found to play games if the COVID-19 virus is still running rampant across the country come August. The topic of College Bowl Games and the College Football Playoffs is another issue that is bound to get a lot of attention in the coming months based on the millions of dollars at stake.

It is entirely possible that the sports landscape will never return to the levels that it was at before the world of sports was shut down by COVID-19. By adopting an attitude that everyone is in this together, those most impacted by the global timeout in sport can better weather the storm. It is crucial to keep in mind that the current situation is also only temporary.

Perhaps James Earl Jones’ character Terence Mann in the movie Field of Dreams said it best when he said “People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again. Oh…people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”

Yes, baseball and other sports will resume at some point, and people will indeed come. How many people are allowed to come over the next few years based on social distancing remains to be seen.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some masked competitive cornhole to watch on the Ocho followed by some lawnmower racing.

Copyright 2020 R. Anderson