Sykotyk

Disposable income is definitely a concern. Ticket prices for DC and Houston were quite high though Arlington was in line with the 2020 prices as well.

I wonder if Bishop Gorman was ever approached to play at their HS stadium. Because this just looks so bad on TV. Not just the horrifically bad field conditions, but the camera angles are terrible, as well.

No team operator would agree to be a second tier team without some compensation. If there were some type of annual allocation to the relegated team from the promoted teams they might. But even then, that's a non-starter for most.

I was pretty young, so I remember the WLAF, but not able to distinguish much between that incarnation and the NFL Europe incarnation that came later. And I can't find it, but I swear the NFL Europe incarnation was originally called the WLAF for a few more seasons even when it was all Europe. But can't seem to find anything to corroborate it.

Youngstown Phantoms playing in the Cleveland Classic at FirstEnergy Stadium against Cedar Rapids. Nice Browns inspired jerseys.

People don't realize that the value of live TV has increased drastically in the past few years. Not just streaming but so many just get their entertainment from social media like tiktok. Live TV means ads are getting watched. And that ups the value of them compared to viewers watching things from streaming or on dvr. I know between last year and this year I cut cable. I had enough streaming services that it was practically redundant. Right now one million lives viewers is a good crowd where in 2001 a 1.5 would've been seen as a cataclysmic failure.

If they flew out of the major airport in SA, it's only about a 9 mile drive. If it was one of the smaller airports, a few minutes longer maybe. Either way, that's quite feasible. Fly into BWI or Reagan and straight shot to Audi Field in 4ish hours? Easily doable.

That's possible. But I also think the new shiny toy in Arlington would do everything in their power to bring the big international soccer matches out there, as well as any Notre Dame games. Just like Jerry World managed to pull away every big game from the Cotton Bowl. Bigger, nicer, more money. It will not be a match from the old stadium on the lake. But downsizing the old Soldier Field to a stadium that fits inside its original footprint that's brand new, shiny, state of the art, for a 30k or so venue suitable for outdoor concerts that size, etc could be perfect for a refresh and able to compete for events just a tad too small to make the Bears new stadium worthwhile.

Las Vegas Outlaws would've been a great callback to the first XFL. It was well received in town. The Vipers name just feels so forced. And to go with Vegas over Las Vegas just bugs me. I get why the Panthers and Hurricanes went with Carolina instead of North Carolina or their city names... but to see Vegas would be like seeing Angeles, York, or Diego. I know where/why Vegas originated but it was always a nickname, not a name. Would the "Ellay Dodgers" be fitting as an official name?

It hasn't been that long since the renovation has it? I know that the current size would be overkill for the Fire, but if they're the default/only tenant, it would make a great home field if it were reduced down to about 30-35k seats back in the original bowl with maybe field level and sky level suites along with press box.

In the XFL, each team is given one 'superchallenge' per game. You can review anything about a play. ANYTHING. To either overturn something to have something called. Missed a hold? You can have them review it to see if there was a hold, etc. It's something good to have in your pocket for any reason. As for the NFL, I like the idea of a 'Sky Judge'. Just have someone watch the broadcast. If they see ANYTHING that the officials miss, they can talk to the crew just like any other official and make a call or overturn a call. You don't knowingly let your customers see you screw up. And when you do, you correct your mistake. I liken it to this: If you have a restaurant and your server takes an order from the kitchen and on the way to the table, drops the food, but picks it up and puts it back on the plate, but try to tell the customer you didn't, that's horrific. But if you do it in the kitchen BEFORE the customer ever sees it, it's bad, but the customer at least remains oblivious. This is the NFL stance. Well, we'll just ignore that we made the mistake and hope the customers ignore us making the mistake. After all, controversy is good for ratings. I personally would just never let the customers see something and us, the league, be unable to correct it. That's just poor business.

That's entirely why the NFL needs to be transparent with replay. But their staunch refusal to be gives the impression of bias. The thing was, the replay rule was instituted to correct clear mistakes. Anything 'close' was to err on the side of the call on the field. Now, so many calls that are 'close' are overturned because 'well, we think the ball moved in his hand' rather than actual indisputable proof that it did, for instance.

It's a shame how long St. Louis has to wait for their first game of the season at home.

It really looks like the uniforms were washed with a little bleach and the blue has bled into the white.

The biggest negative for Arlington is the logo. Why they couldn't just use the Dallas Renegades logo as their primary but kept it as the secondary.

I was hoping they would let it slide. I think that's the key point of his statement. Why would he say that if the officials NEVER let a holding call 'slide'. He's a liar? Or he's telling the truth?

I think people are forgetting the FIRST year of the Brady era. The tuck rule? The injury and whether it was going to be Brady or Bledsoe playing in the Super Bowl? Going against 'the Greatest Show on Turf' who was the darlings of SB XXXVI but quickly became the Evil Empire because of how explosive they were under Warner leading to the biggest underdog ever winning (18 points at the time)? No. Brady had such a ridiculous jock riding from the start it was nauseating. Rather than just letting it fester and be tolerable, the NFL rode that train for two decades. But the NFL does that with every 'star'. They're either your favorite player or you loathe their existence. I don't know how the NFL marketing continues to do it like that. But, people do forget the long stretch where the Patriots were just 'good' and not great under Brady. They won three Super Bowls in 4 years (Rams, DNP, Panthers, and Eagles). Then went NINE YEARS without a Super Bowl title. I know in that time they had the undefeated season, and two losses to the Giants. But the NFL felt 'wide open' during that time. Teams figured out Brady and Belichick. They cakewalked through the East most years, but they struggled in the playoffs against great teams again and again. And the Giants and Eli (the Manning that Brady couldn't beat) did them in twice in those 9 years. AND THEN, the NFL got back on the Brady Train. Four SB appearances in 5 years, 3 titles and one Philly Special loss. Absolutely repulsive praise of all things Brady and the Patriots. As if the rest of the league didn't exist. Because as much as NFL promoted Rodgers, nobody liked him. He was very unlikeable and Titletown or not, NFL just shuddered at the thought of him doing anything. Say what you want about Favre, but he at least had character as the Packers QB. And in that long span at the end, the only SB Brady didn't get to go to was the Manning farewell game where his entire defense hoisted his desiccated corpse off the ground and carried him to a Super Bowl title. There used to be the claim that the NFL Salary Cap brought 'parity' to the league. In hindsight, it never did. Teams that became successful stayed successful. And one-off blips like Carolina, San Francisco, Carolina, Seattle, etc, could jump up and make a title and even win it one year, weren't going to go against the NFL buzzsaw for too long. Because the Salary Cap doesn't create parity. You overpay for one year success and dismantle (looking at you Rams) or you cycle through mediocrity for years with the occasional blip.

It's not whether the NFL is favoring teams... it's just that when it appears the NFL is favoring teams that it hurts the sport. The NFL favored the Patriots since the first storybook season of Brady. And now they've jumped to Mahomes being the 'evil empire' that fans love to hate and have promoted them as that team. The NFL doesn't realize that they lose fans to this appearance every year. The fact the population still grows and therefore their numbers continue to increase... they're doing it at the expense of the fans that were there through it all.

One more TD and we have the highest scoring SB in history. 75 in SB29 was the highest. 49ers 49-26 over Chargers.

Phoenix is a huge transplant market, so a lot of Chiefs and Eagles fans already live there. So, getting to the Super Bowl isn't as 'last minute travel decision' as it is for some. It's just the ticket cost. And after the Pats-Seahawks fiasco with tickets, short selling them isn't as likely now. So, more 'true fans' are able to get their hands on them.

At first I thought it might be inspired by the Redbird Capital logo. But, either one they're using look nothing like that. I agree. I can't think what that fleur-de-lis with a spearhead(?) going through it has anything to do with Vegas or snakes in general. A fleur-de-lis that's a snakehead would've been kinda cool even if unexplainable. But this, is just odd. Everything about the Vegas team feels like such a swing and a miss.

So the USFL schedule came out and somehow it's even worse than I imagined it could be. Rather than being a 'host city' for teams.... they're doing a tour. Each week at a different venue for all four games. It's hard to take this seriously. I thought I might get to go to a few games in Canton. Yeah, in June. The last three weeks of the regular season are all played in Canton. Week 1 - Memphis Week 2 - Memphis Week 3 - Birmingham Week 4 - Detroit Week 5 - Detroit Week 6 - Memphis Week 7 - Birmingham Week 8 - Canton Week 9 - Canton Week 10 - Canton (edit) Wait... the USFL website is completely screwed up in how they're showing the schedule. https://www.theusfl.com/schedule

Depends which direction the AFL takes. If they go back to their original summer schedule and leave the late winter and spring schedule for the XFL, it opens up a lot more options. One, the original plan for the AFL was to be an offseason tenant for NBA and NHL venues. So, the XFL markets will be done about the same time the AFL is starting. The USFL isn't much of a threat except for Birmingham (doubtful for the AFL anyways), Memphis (also doubtful), Canton (that old arena in town is not an option, at all), or Detroit (not likely to be an option as the Fury never had success at the Palace and without Illitch's support the Drive wouldn't have either). Two, the AFL has some key markets, if small, where in house attendance will be great, and some interest from NFL owners once again. If NFL bylaws haven't changed, the NFL owners are once again allowed to own AFL teams in their home markets. I don't think we'll see Jones ever have another one after what happened with the Desperados and the knockoffs that tried to play afterwards. But, it's a possibility. If they are starting new and either enticing old markets back or starting competing teams I could see: Orlando, Tampa Bay, Phoenix, Denver, Los Angeles, Des Moines, Albany, Nashville, Cleveland and Indiana as frontrunners for markets that had good numbers before, and if they actually market as 'big league' will return to the arena to support the new teams (some preferably with throwback monikers and not all starting with new names). Other markets could be St. Louis, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Columbus, Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, Jacksonville, New Orleans, and even Little Rock. If they're thinking of other small markets to help fill in the 16, there's Spokane, Loveland CO, Albuquerque, Amarillo, Norfolk, Fort Wayne, Worcester MA, and Rockford IL.

I remember the only real options were Tennessee Copperheads, Tennessee Titans, Tennessee Wolves, Pioneers, and a few others. I remember at the time the league had basically stated somewhere that it would not be a 'collective noun' name. Had to end in an S. As for Tennessee Vipers... the Tennessee Valley Vipers already existed in Huntsville, Alabama at the time just a short drive down I-65. No way was that name going to be a realistic option. Even if it was available, they weren't going to take an AF2 name if they were trying to be taken seriously. I also remember a ton of pushback by fans not wanting to give up the Oilers name as Tennessee was the mythical home state of the Clampetts who were from Tennessee when they struck it rich from oil. Even if it were fictitious, it was a contention made back then.

I thought there was one, but I was wrong. Searched the whole city and the biggest stadium I could see probably only holds about 6-7000. Even just outside the city, nothing seemed big enough. Old Miller Park (whatever name it is now) might have the space for a football field. But, not sure.