gosioux76

BREAKING: USFL and XFL just confirmed the merger, but offered ZERO details. From the press release that just went out:

100%. If this is the name they're going for, you can't help but assume they're trying to insinuate, or work toward, being some kind of an extension to the NFL season. It's right there in the name: National (Spring) Football League. I wouldn't be surprised if the long-term strategy is to secure an actual affiliation with the NFL as a means of continued survival.

I like the simplified, wordless crest. It's classy and manages to convey the brand without being literal. A well-executed soccer crest. But that's about the end of what I like. They've toned down the green from the current rave green, but it still feels like too much. And adding the seafoam in addition to that green just doesn't make sense visually.

All of this is true. But none of it speaks directly to profitability. The original suggestion I was refuting was that the USFL and its hub model was a failure. I'm just pointing out that, as much as we don't like it, there's no evidence to back that up. There are, however, public proclamations that the USFL has been a profitable venture for Fox. You're 100% right that the XFL could have pursued this merger idea out of opportunity and not desperation; I can't argue otherwise. I wasn't attempting to assign reasoning for the XFL to do this, I was just pointing out that it wasn't the USFL that broached the subject.

All of the reporting we've seen so far on this merger suggests that merger talks were prompted by the XFL -- in particular its financier, RedBird Capital -- and not by the USFL. And unless someone here has seen the books themselves, we can't really know if the USFL turned a profit as they claim. As such, we also don't know that they didn't. From Forbes:

I'm not saying I believe them, but Fox has claimed that its USFL experiment has been profitable. So if to true, you'd have to imagine that the cost-savings from the hub model had a lot to do with it. The XFL's leadership, by contrast, claims it has lost around $60 million. And they play within their markets. I don't like the hub model either, but if the league is profitable, as Fox claims, then you can't really say the USFL hasn't created a successful model. And you can see pretty clearly why they'd prefer the hub model. The question we should be asking is how long the hub model will be necessary before the league feels comfortable it can transition into markets and maintain some of its profit margin.

As @TBGKon just showed, the data wasn't terribly hard to find. And as @BBTV noted, even anecdotally it appears that MLB has steered itself back toward a growth trajectory with this year's rule changes and made the game far more accessible and easier to enjoy. I can understand why there would be skepticism about expansion considering the sport's struggles over the past decade, but it seems a a bit cynical to just dismiss it without considering the real positive direction the league has taken this year. MLB has stopped the bleeding. Now let's see where it goes next.

To be fair, Rob Manfred has addressed the likelihood of expansion about as often as Adam Silver has. Both commissioners have said their leagues would explore expansion. Manfred has been saying as much since at least 2018, and even mentioned six likely markets at that time: Las Vegas, Portland, Montreal, Charlotte, Nashville and Vancouver, and even suggested Mexico as a possibility. He's addressed the topic so often that I don't really think you can call it theoretical.

It's a little jarring to see these using the neon green instead of the original kelly, but I'm not about to complain. I love these. EDIT: The language on the Wolves' website claims that this is the same green -- they call it Old Shep Green — but it's clearly much more pronounced on these jerseys compared with the originals.

If it's done right, with a small footprint stadium and minimal to no taxpayer investment, I'm confident Portland will show up to support MLB. But it's not the kind of market where you're going to get a full-throated community endorsement without seeing the fine print, and that's a good thing. The people there, from my experience, are going to want some guarantees that a stadium development won't gentrify or tax resources, that it'll make ample use of public transit and be otherwise sustainable. In a city with a severe housing shortage, they're going to fight like hell if resources get diverted away from housing to fund a baseball stadium, as they should. So any project would have to find a way to address that issue. Because of all this, you're not going to see, outside of the typical meatheads on sports-talk radio, a ton of evidence that the market is thirsty for MLB, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't still fill a stadium on the regular. The bigger issue with Portland is that the group vying to bring MLB there has gone out of its way to avoid saying who's backing the effort financially. So far it's been a lot of talk about stadium locations and negotiations with the city, but no hint at who's money is driving the effort or who would own the franchise. To a lot of people, myself included, that's a big red flag.

I've seen this point made several times over the years and, while I understand how someone comes to this conclusion, it's disingenuous at best. First of all, Portland didn't make a choice in this matter. The owner of the Timbers, who also owned the AAA club, was required by MLS to convert his venue into a soccer-specific stadium, which meant it would no longer work for baseball. He was unable to secure a location for a new baseball stadium, nor public money to finance it, and made the correct move to sell the team so he can focus singularly on MLS. And let's face it: the AAA product isn't that great and shouldn't be used as a measurement for whether a market can support MLB. Even if it were, a few years after the AAA Beavers left, the Portland suburb of Hillsboro landed the Hops, which has shifted from being a low-A club to a high-A club and continues to draw enough support that its owners are plotting a stadium expansion. This, however, isn't an endorsement of Portland as a MLB expansion market. I think a team there would do fine, but it's nowhere near a safe bet, and the metro's decades-long period of growth appears to be at its end. I just can't stand the argument that losing AAA baseball is the reason why MLB would fail there. Also: What @LMU said, but with far fewer words. haha

Is it, though? A franchise relocation would have certainly been the easier path toward landing a MLB team, but now that the A's and Rays stadium issues seem closer to resolution, the league will almost certainly be on a faster track toward expansion. So either way you look at it, Nashville won't likely be in a holding pattern for much longer.

Yes, but it wouldn't surprise me if, as owner, they saw value in expanding the exposure of the league across other networks. It's also possible that the XFL's TV deal isn't of value to them at all. The XFL also has a partnership with the NFL to be a testing ground for new rules, innovations, etc. That affiliation could be of value to the USFL.

RedBird Capital as an investor. Possibly an existing TV deal with Disney/ESPN/ABC. A successful franchise in the St. Louis market. The XFL isn't without its attractive assets. In this case, the whole isn't as valuable as portions of its parts.

This will almost certainly be the case. All of these merged-league realignment theories are fantasy, I hate to say it. There's no logical reason why a supposed profitable entity (USFL) would merge with one losing $60 million a year as part of an expansion strategy. Deals like that are usually asset transactions, where the buyer gets what it wants from the seller and discards the rest. In this case, I'd suspect the USFL is buying out RedBird from its XFL investment so it can instead invest in its league. I hope I'm wrong, but I'll really be surprised if this results in a 16-team league. If the plan is to have this merged league in place for the 2024 season, they'd have only 5-6 months to figure out what to do about franchise locations and venues, and somehow find the capital to finance it all. If you believe what Fox says, the USFL is the profitable one in this deal, which means they'd be the one steering the direction of this merged league. And remember, the USFL is the league that used hubs as a cost-cutting strategy. Knowing all that, my prediction is that this will result in a league of no more than 12 teams. Like the USFL, it will be a made-for-TV product that will continue to play in hubs rather than host cities for at least two more seasons.

Even if this were true, the Gamblers are only a few small moves away from matching the simple but outstanding look of their USFL 1.0 brethren. That G logo is an icon of the USFL. The Roughnecks branding has been a dumpster fire from the jump.

I really like the idea of having each league be separate divisions, with an AFL/NFL-style championship game. It allows them to retain a bit of their personalities as leagues, such as it is.

A couple other notable details from the Axios story: The plan is to have this merged league in place for the 2024 season. So they're not messing around. The story cites Fox executives as saying the USFL is profitable while the XFL lost $60M. I find that odd.

Axios reports today that XFL and USFL are in advanced merger talks. An announcement could come as early as this week. Story here.

And if anybody comes on here with some nonsense suggesting the Twins switch to purple and gold or royal and kelly green or chartreuse and khaki I'm going to burn this place down.

Here comes the Suns, doo-doo-doo-dooHere comes the Suns, and I sayIt's alright

I 100% agree. Also, the idea of horns on a helmet might seem like a novel idea, in the same class as the Eagles wings and Vikings, but it's becoming clear that those two teams seem more like the exception than the rule when it comes to pulling that look off. The Texans are more likely to swing and miss, a la the Edmonton Elks and San Antonio Brahmas. The Texans feel like a franchise trapped by its own good logo. That Texas flag bull works on every level, except for the fact that they wrapped it in colors that have grown stale. Now that every team is trying to pull off multiple helmets, the Texans have very little to go with other than changing the base color of the helmet. And since it's literally the only thing they've worn in their 21-year history, they have no other visual references to pull from. So I understand why they're seemingly throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. There's a real sense of jersey/helmet envy going on there. The easiest thing to do in this case would be to swap the navy for powder blue in the color palette. (And maybe switch to Oilers-esque helmets.) They wouldn't really be treading on anybody's territory. The Titans have made it clear their intent to be a navy-first team, leaving the powder/red/white company there for the taking. And the Texans would end up with a refreshed look that will also likely energize the fan base.

I get what you're saying. I guess I was speaking more toward dress codes as a whole. @BBTV made the point more succinctly: Dress codes, whether for coaches or rank-and-file employees, are little more than work costumes that suggest a comical degree of seriousness that isn't justified. Just do the job. Wear what you want.

This is the right response. I dislike dress codes in general. They're a tool for micromanagers and another means of stifling personal identity in favor of homogeneity. What you wear doesn't affect what you do.

I've never been that fond of the faux-leather-helmet throwback uniforms. I think it's the gold numbers that throw me off. For some reason they look cheap. I'd always felt, outside their classic uniforms, this is the best Washington has ever looked: With a different helmet logo, these could stand the test of time.