GDAWG

What Globe Life looks like as a Football configuration (without any logos and hashmarks):

https://ballparkdigest.com/2020/01/24/new-globe-life-park-synthetic-turf-installed/

12 minutes ago, dfwabel said:

They will likely be visible since green paint does not match the actual grass. 

Those DC United fans will be complaining about that.

Curious to see what Globe Life Park and Audi Field look like for football and whether or not the football hashmarks will be visible during DC United games. 

I am expecting DC United fans getting all upset at the XFL ruining Audi Field.

59 minutes ago, daniel75 said:

None of these teams are independently owned correct? I imagine when they have ownerships a lot of these designs will change.

All of the teams are owned by Vince McMahon, who owns WWE. 

1 hour ago, MJWalker45 said:

It's probably still cheaper to use U of H. And a 3/4 empty stadium will look worse on TV. 

True, but the New York Guardians are playing at Met Life Stadium, which seats 80,000

1 hour ago, MJWalker45 said:

It will look better than what Rice-Eccles looked like for Salt Lake Stallions games. A team playing on a field that had colors that weren't related to the home team was telling for how little attention had been paid to aesthetics by the AAF leadership. I'm guessing that either U of H had already ordered a new turf without logos, or the league paid for a field and the cost of swapping it out and maybe even replacing the turf after the season. I also think that once it's in we'll know what the layout for everyone else is. I think they wanted to use BBVA but were told to shove off by the Dynamo. With 5 home games, and possibly 2 playoff games at the start of the season, the Dynamo wouldn't want the wear and tear of two football seasons during their regular and possible postseason with TSU playing their from September to November. 

There's also NRG Stadium, where the Texans play. 

2 hours ago, pitt6pack said:

 

Now that's interesting. That's got to be expensive too. I know that when my local high school installed turf several years ago, it was over the million dollar mark. I'd have to guess new turf here would also run in the 7 figures, so I wonder who's actually paying for this. If it's the XFL, it seems like a luxury they can't afford if they want to keep this league afloat.

This would not be a problem for Houston if they were to have played at BBVA Stadium, the home of MLS Houston Dynamo (and Texas Southern Football) or even NRG Stadium, as big as that is.  In those stadiums the Roughnecks could have had their logos and colors painted on the field without issues and money would have been saved.  Instead they play in a stadium where the logos and wordmarks of the primary tenant cannot be removed, therefore replacing the entire turf so that they can get their logos and colors on the stadium.  Seems like a waste of money.   

1 hour ago, DG_Now said:

If I were ten years old, I would think the XFL logos were awesome. In point of fact, when I was ten years old, I thought the World League helmets were awesome.

The XFL went too cute with the logos and colors.  Simple is always best. 

27 minutes ago, ShlyKBMT said:

New turf going in at UH. Roughnecks might get their own look after all.

 

 

2 hours ago, sc49erfan15 said:

"ASUN Announces Exploration of Expansion & Building New NCAA Division I Multisport Conference"

 

https://asunsports.org/general/2019-20/releases/20200122lh6utq

 

This here sounds like some stuff from Sports Fan Fiction.

So ASUN is exploring the possibility of creating a new conference via expansion, but with it's current members in tact?  Is that what it says?

I think that the Vipers might have had better uniforms if they copied the Saskatchewan Roughriders color palate as the Jets did. 

26 minutes ago, Sodboy13 said:

Practice squad gets practice gear. Blank helmets, screenprinted solid-color porthole mesh jerseys. Why pay for a design you're never going to sell?

So basically, white helmets, white jerseys and white pants?

I wonder what the colors of the rumored practice squad team "Team 9" is going to be.  I suspect it will be outrageous. 

3 minutes ago, neo_prankster said:

 

You're gonna let uniforms ruin your enjoyment of a new league?

 

Give the XFL a chance!!!! We need for the NFL to have some competition every now and then.

The NFL already has competition.....sort of:

It is the only Alternative football league that is taken seriously by many of us here.  People tend to forget that and only focus on the United States.   

On ‎1‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 6:28 AM, Volt said:

Tampa’s stadium will look nothing like that, considering it’s mostly Red in real life.
 

I still don’t get the color choices of this league.

That is going to look weird since the Vipers do not have any red in them.

17 hours ago, pitt6pack said:

Saw this image of a painted Vipers field rendered for the XFL commercial that aired on FOX last weekend:

 

Lot's of interesting things in this image. Firstly though, I don't think this is what we would see for a Vipers field come game day, but maybe it shows some hope that the fields won't be XFL 2001 like (which had no team logos at all, just an XFL logo at midfield, and black endzones with XFL logos in the center). The image looks like it came from a Buccaneers game this year, since you can see the NFL 100 logos are still on the field in this image. And there's no way the XFL will be able to fill this size of stadium to capacity (although, in smaller stadiums, like in DC, they should be filling stadiums if they want a chance to make multiple years out of this league). I'd hope to see a bit more creativity for field designs out for the XFL this time around. Hopefully they took notes form the AAF when it comes to field design. 

the AAF had some worse field designs, especially in Salt Lake City, when the stitching could not be removed from the field.

3 hours ago, CaliforniaGlowin said:

This chick who pulled the jack move was employed by the Streets.  When a person is hired to do a job, there is a certain level of implied trust that the worker will not commit a crime.  Yes there should have been better security, but one would think these kind of things wouldn't happen.  And better security requires more money, which a new small team wouldn't have.

 

If a worker steals from a big company, the company doesn't send people home citing workplace safety, they just fire the worker.  It's not like the Streets thief was packin a gun in the place, she was just trying to be opportunistic and saw a lack of security.

This is how unstable indoor teams are, that they don't even screen or vet employees.  It is yet another reason the sport isn't taken seriously. 

2 hours ago, Gothamite said:

 

You're absolutely correct.  Major League Soccer did this for a while, but only out of desperation, and as soon as the league was stable (meaning the strategy had worked), the owners sold off the extra teams to new ownership.

 

 

 

This is the real problem.  Many minor leagues don't properly vet new owners, largely because they themselves can't afford to.  If they kept out the hustlers and con men, they wouldn't have enough owners at all.  Keeping with our soccer theme, we saw this with the second incarnation of the NASL.  They took in people who just didn't have the money to run a team, and then expressed shock and surprise when they failed to keep up.

 

You want to talk competitive integrity?  It starts with the league making sure that the owners can afford to pay the bills and then ensuring that they do.

MLS has a stable group of owners these days, despite one of them being an over privileged trust fund baby who tries to be super cool (but fails to do so) by becoming friends with Matthew McConaghuey (his name being Anthony Precourt).  And despite 200 owners for LAFC, they do have former NBA executive Tom Penn as the face of the ownership group as he represented the group when they announced the 2020 All Star Game (plus they have people involved who own the Golden State Warriors, LA Dodgers and Joe Tsai, the owner of the Brooklyn Nets and owners of Cardiff City and QPR).  From the recent expansion teams that have more than one owner, I would assume that with St. Louis, Carolyn Kindle Betz will be the public face of their ownership.  Same for Sacramento and Kevin Nagle.  With Miami, the face of ownership is David Beckham.  Also a large majority of MLS owners own teams in other sports and two brand new minority MLS owners, Russell Wilson and James Harden are still actively playing.  MLS' ownership strategy tends to lean towards owners who own sports teams in the Big 4 or sometimes European soccer clubs.  Nothing wrong with that though as it ensures stability for MLS clubs. 

It's another thing about these indoor teams, sometimes they have a bunch of owners and nobody to represent the team as face of ownership, which causes chaos.  Having someone has the face of the ownership group represents stability, but sadly these indoor teams do not have any.  It means a revolving door of presidents, GM's and coaches. 

If I remember correctly, the NBA G League no longer has the issue of unstable owners since a majority of them are owned by NBA teams anyways. 

1 hour ago, Gothamite said:

 

Single-entity is not at all the same thing as one person owning more than one team.

 

Single-entity is a creative corporate structure that in practice is virtually identical to franchise structures like MLB, the NFL, or NBA.  There’s a greater difference between condo and co-op apartments than there is between single-entity and the franchise model.  Yet nobody doubts that co-op “shareholders” actually own their apartments in all but the most technical sense.

Ah okay.  Still I think one person owning multiple teams is not a good idea.  It never is and it's one of the reason's that the sport of Indoor Football is a mess. That and the leagues tend to allow anyone in who has money without regard for background checks.  It's the total opposite of how the major professional leagues vet potential owners.  I always wonder how the owners of these indoor teams make their money.  The only indoor/arena football team owners with any credibility were Ted Leonsis and (probably) Ron Jaworski.  We know how both made their money and where it came from.  For many of these owners, an indoor football team is the only team they own so they lack the experience to own a sports team.  Now I know that the NFL experiment with the AFL failed, but at the least some of these owners could own minor league teams in other sports but they don't. 

22 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

 

No deal.

 

The owners of the New York Streets were incompetent and irresponsible. They were also dishonest: at the start of the season they announced that the team would be playing some games at Madison Square Garden, even though there was never any such agreement in place, and all Streets home games were always going to be played at the undersized Westchester County Center. 

 

The burglary fiasco over which these owners presided brought only ridicule to the NAL and to the sport of arena football — and, by extension, to all small leagues. I resent this team for its negative contribution to the image of smaller leagues. The Streets were properly booted from the NAL.

 

I possess some New York Streets team gear. And even at selling hats and shirts to an eager buyer this team proved incompetent; earlier in this thread I described the big hassle of getting these idiots to take my money. I will sometimes wear these items because they look cool; and, when someone asks what that logo is, I am ready with an account of the team's dysfunction.

 

I have neither loyalty to nor respect for the owners of the New York Streets; and I can only suggest that someone who admonishes against psychoanalysing others would do well to heed his own advice.

 

Finally, my socialist concern for working people is fully intact.

 

In the first season of the ABA, the team that would the next seasom become the New York Nets was slated to host a one-game tiebreaker playoff game. The team arranged to rent an arena in Commack, Long Island because its regular home arena in Teaneck, New Jersey (the team was the New Jersey Americans for that season) was not available. But the Commack arena, after it was inspected by the league, was deemed unplayable. A forfeit was charged against the New Jersey team. This is an example of a genuine case of workplace safety.

 

 

 

Only the prospect of being fined more money than they made from the game's gate receipts, and then getting booted from the league. Contrary to your assertion, the Streets did not get "a slap on the wrist"; in fact they got the death penalty. (And rightfully so.)

 

Unfortunately, Carolina got what amounted to no penalty at all for walking off the field without authorisation, as the forfeit loss did nothing to prevent them from advancing to the championship game.

 

 

 

That's more than most fans have done to support small leagues, certainly way more that I do, even given my purchase of gear from the Arena League, the NAL, the MLL, WTT, and others.  

 

I therefore retract my assertion that your comments are motivated by a hatred of small leagues, and offer my apology to you.

 

But I do believe that that attitude is prevalent. If the NBA or NFL made a decision not to halt a game, but a team walked off anyway, no one would begrudge one of those leagues calling a forfeit against the abandoning team.

 

 

 

I can't go along with this. I continue to assert that the idea that no team may act unilaterally should indeed be a universally-held value.

 

Even if someone disagrees with the league's decision on not calling off a game (which, as I have already acknowledged, is a reasonable position), once the decision to continue the game has been made by the league, all fans need to agree that a team has no right to disregard that league decision. We must (in the words of the great Sam Hinkie) trust the process. Otherwise pro sports are a sham.

 

 

 

 

You got that right. In the 1890s, the National League had a big problem with what came to be known as "syndicate baseball", whereby owners had stakes in multiple teams. National League teams in Baltimore and Brooklyn were under common ownership, as were the New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds. After the most egregious case, in which the common owners of the St. Louis and Cleveland teams moved all their best players to St. Louis and consigned the 1899 Cleveland team to the worst season in history, the National League finally made a rule against this practice.

 

We got rid of that sort of corruption in baseball a long time ago, only to see it reappear in today's small leagues. We really need a federal law that prohibits ownership of multiple teams in the same league. Such a law would also rule out the odious "single-entity" structure, under which all teams are owned centrally by the league, which, in effect, results in all owners having stakes in all teams. 

The XFL has that structure.  All 8 teams are owned by Vince McMahon.  The AAF went single entity and we all know how that worked out. The Big 4 has all individual owners.  MLS has investors, not owners and I think that the Indoor leagues should go this route at least. Single entity is a conflict of interest in a lot of ways.  If one ones multiple teams in the same league and that owner has a lot of power in that league (as Rob Stone does in the NAL) it would be considered as favoritism, giving those teams an unfair advantage over everyone else. 

One of the main issues with these indoor leagues is that there are multiple teams owned by one or two guys, which causes issues.  We saw this in the Arena League with Ted Leonsis owning Baltimore and Washington DC and Ron Jaworski owning Philly and Atlantic City.  Unlike with the owners of the NAL or IFL, we know how Ted makes his money.  We know that Ted is finally solvent because if he had not been, I doubt he would be an NBA and NHL team owner.  The folding of the Arena League hurts Leonsis, but it's not likely to affect his ownership of the Capitals and Wizards. 

Apparently the money guy of the NAL is Ron Shurts, a businessman who owns the Carolina Cobras and Jacksonville Sharks, which means conflict of interest since both teams played in the NAL Championship last year.  I don't know how he makes his money, but probably through questionable means.  The Indoor Football League has a new money backer: The Germain Family, who are apparently an auto dealership family from Columbus, Ohio who will be owning two teams, the Frisco Fighters (giving DFW their third pro football team after the Cowboys and Renegades) and a Columbus, Ohio IFL Team in 2021.  The IFL already as three teams owned by Roy Choi (not the celebrity chef, but a man who owns a casino gaming company) in Cedar Rapids, San Diego and Oakland, the latter of whom is also co-owned by current Seahawks RB Marshawn Lynch.  The Arizona Rattlers are coached by Kevin Guy, who owns the Tucson Sugar Skulls in the same state and same league.  As a result, Arizona vs. Tucson has been known as the Kevin Guy Bowl. 

4 hours ago, Gothamite said:

Again, I’m absolutely shocked that any of this is in dispute.  Are the rights of workers so disposable when they get in the way of our entertainment?
 

The league behaved shamefully.  They should not have forced Carolina to work in an unsafe environment.  If the league had any integrity at all, they would have postponed the game. And if a forfeit was necessary, it shouldn’t have rewarded the team who failed to create a safe working environment.
 

The situation was entirely the Streets’ fault in the first place; their failure was the original sin from which everything else sprung. Bad enough that Carolina was punished at all, and absolutely deplorable that the league decided to punish them more. 

yeah, if anything that lessens any credibility the NAL may have had.