Sodboy13

1. Bought an Arena Football team 2. Posted that photo of himself 3. Posted that quote, a mishmash of grindset mindset and prosperity gospel, next to himself in that photo He is one hundred percent up to financial crimes and it is wholly a matter of whether the feds are interested in catching him. You get to know the type around here. Two have run for mayor over the last couple elections.

Dollar store logos for a dollar store league.

I think the more likely media rights arrangement for 2024 is a split between Fox and Disney. Based solely on what I saw during the ad breaks and NBC touting how happy they were with the arrangement, I'm fairly sure the airtime on NBC Universal properties was brokered.

Watching this develop with interest, as the boys and I have become big Northwoods League fans over the past couple seasons. Given the parameters they've laid out for the season and how the baseball circuit operates, my guess would be that we'll see three more teams, all from markets in the Great Plains Division. It's a 40-game season, so you'd play each opponent eight times. That's a four-game set at home and another away, and maybe you run every series Thursday-Sunday to maximize your weekend exposure. Hopefully this takes root and we'll see another set of six teams in the Great Lakes Division soon. Kenosha and Rockford would certainly be ideal for it.

Oh cool, the Rush have another owner who will be going to prison.

So we have two instances of the NHL attempting to enforce this mess of their own, then pissing down their own leg within hours and doing nothing because it would be monumentally stupid PR, even by NHL standards. If I'm a player, and especially if I'm a player agent, I'm definitely pushing the edges of any other of the league's softer rules/dumber traditions and daring them to do something about it. They've proven themselves idiots and cowards twice. In related news, taking a full swing with a windup at your opponent and cracking against his skull with your stick carries a maximum allowable punishment of $5,000, apparently. Todd Bertuzzi must be quite surprised.

Checking the league Twitter accounts over the past couple weeks, the USFL seems to only be active for Michigan, Memphis, and Birmingham, which would align with the speculation of keeping the hub home teams and ditching the rest. All the XFL teams seem to still be active, so who knows from that half. Either way, tick-tick-tick.

And here, on the opposite end of the spectrum from the Rome Emperors...

I dunno, sounds like an ideal partner for this iteration of the AFL to me. Maybe all their games can be streamed on Ozy Media.

An absolute delight with wonderful and thoroughly professional execution. They will probably get some money out of me. Studio Simon continues to lay down bangers only.

The over/under on seasons this thing lasts is officially set at 1.0. Ten-week season, one of your biggest announced markets is a travel team, zero home playoff games, and the 1980s USFL model of "We'll cover our losses by bringing in fresh suckers and expanding the league by 50% in season two." Oh, and your marquee events will be played at the venue where the commissioner's wife owns a franchise. Woof.

The jersey material looks like rec league-grade stuff with all the colors sublimated. Lightweight jerseys like that and sewn-on tackle twill do not play well together.

Welp! This league is allegedly starting play in January. It's mid-November and there is still no schedule, and no announced game venues. But the league website will let you put down $50 as a non-refundable deposit for season tickets to see your team play at an undisclosed place at an undisclosed time. The league has confirmed practice sites for all six teams. Maybe those also turn out to be the home arenas. If they do, then it's hilarious, because two of the sites (Tria in Minnesota and Chelsea Piers in Stamford, CT) are former home rinks of NWHL/PHF teams, which this league will not hesitate to let you know it is so much bigger and better and smarter than. Dilbert, I think you've followed enough minor/rival/startup leagues like I have to see red lights going off all over the place on this one, and it ain't because goals are being scored. I hope the people in charge here can pull their act together. But hope and five dollars will get you a puck.

This is like the point in cryptocurrency fever where someone would mint something called like "ScamCoin" and buyers would line up around the block for it. They are trying to tell you and seeing if you are willing to not listen.

Maybe the Philadelphia team is playing out of NYC. Geography is a state of mind in this operation.

May they remain untouched by the Curse of the Coyotes.

@Skycast

Hell, I love baseball as much, if not more, than when I was a kid, and I've only owned one Tori Amos album.

I was wondering where Madison, WI was in this, so I looked it up. Turns out they're in a different league, League One Volleyball, which is set to begin play in November 2024 and will have franchises in markets including... uh, Atlanta and Omaha. Ah jeez, this isn't gonna go well.

It's an offhand reference to "The Business of Emotion," an old song by Big Data I happen to like.

Shame they didn't have it in them to move once more and become the Roscoe Rush.

Always a good sign when the announcement of the team botches the name of the home venue. The decently-sized Sudduth Coliseum at the Lake Charles Civic Center holds 7,500, but from the pics on the site I'm guessing that's for events that take up less floor space than an arena football field. Metro area's just over 200,000. All the new logos based on old AFL identities have been downgrades.

This is a league with teams in Montana and five-figure cities in Kansas. Also any TV exposure is going to require cash up front from the league, which I will believe they have as soon as they show it.

Please look at Rockford on a map and its location relative to Chicago. Then look at Rosemont, IL, and understand that some people both local and out-of-market get twitchy about teams in that town labeling themselves "Chicago." (I am not one of those people.) "Rockford Rush" is a perfectly cromulent name for a market with its own well-established minor league sports scene. You aren't going to win over Stateliners by pretending you're Chicago, and you're not going to get Chicagoans coming 70 miles out on I-90 to see you because of it, either. So what's the point?

Welcome to "Whose League Is It Anyway?," the game where the finances are made up and the home markets don't matter.