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Death of the Alliance of American Football


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24 minutes ago, MJWalker45 said:

Regardless of pay, most high schoolers aren't big enough to deal with players getting cut from NFL, CFL and Arena League squads. If they actively chase after high school players the AAF would be looked at as desperate for players and that would affect the league negatively. I think it should be avoided at all costs since high schoolers can't enter the NFL until 3 years after they graduate high school.

 

Yeah, that's the problem. A league almost has to decide whether to be an alternative to college football for NFL prospects, or to be a place for post-grads to go if they're trying to get into the NFL. There's probably room for both within the pro football landscape, but it'd be hard for a league to do both successfully.

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I'm not sure I understand why these leagues seem to always insist on playing in the spring. Is it a heat thing, that it's just too hot to play football in the summer? I don't get it.

 

I also think it's foolish to launch right after the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl to me is usually the culmination of the best month of football I'll see all year. Following that up almost immediately with comparatively subpar football will be nothing but disappointing. And if the idea is to draw audience by riding the momentum from the Super Bowl, then it's a terrible idea. Frankly, when the Super Bowl is done, I'm glad it's over.  I have football fatigue by that point. Maybe I'm the outlier. 

 

But if you put a semi-interesting pro league on in primetime during the summer — say, maybe, a mid-week schedule — I'd probably check it out. 

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1 hour ago, McCarthy said:

An alternative to college football that pays the players a living wage and has an age limit, a football juniors, if you will, might work. 

How?

 

I volunteered with a successful semi-pro team for 5 years. We drew around 1500 fans per home game, and frequently saw a tenth of that at road games. Unless you CARE about the players in the game, you won't watch, even if it is in your backyard.

 

You say that this will be better football, and I won't argue. I will still counter that with this - unless you have an NFL team (gambling interest) or an NCAA D-1 team (gambling interest), the only people that will be interested are family members.

 

I've said this before. Regarding any future alternatives to the NFL, see above. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's where I sit.

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2 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

How?

 

I volunteered with a successful semi-pro team for 5 years. We drew around 1500 fans per home game, and frequently saw a tenth of that at road games. Unless you CARE about the players in the game, you won't watch, even if it is in your backyard.

 

You say that this will be better football, and I won't argue. I will still counter that with this - unless you have an NFL team (gambling interest) or an NCAA D-1 team (gambling interest), the only people that will be interested are family members.

 

I've said this before. Regarding any future alternatives to the NFL, see above. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

I believe that would be true of a league with HS grads, but not one that is mostly college players (juniors & higher) and "grads" who could not make the NFL.  If you build a fantasy element, as the league wants to do, and you have enough players who were starters at local schools (fan favorite if not All-Americans) you can garner support.  

 

I do think a late March or April start would help because it provides enough gap after the Super Bowl for people to miss football (I am itching for it already) and because the weather in most parts of the country is not horrible.  

 

But, on the player side, I think you could get 20k a game to attend if the league is on TV, has good marketing and branding and has local college stars such as:

 

1) an Orlando team stocked from Miami, Florida, Florida State, UCF, USF, etc.

2) A Birmingham team full of Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Miss St. and Georgia players

3) A San Antonio team with Texas, A&M, Tech, Houston, SMU, etc. 

4) A San Diego team with SDSU, USC, UCLA, Fresno, etc.

5) A Portland team with Oregon, OSU, UW, WSU, Boise St.

6) A SLC team with BYU, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, ASU, etc.

7) A Raleigh team with Duke, Wake, UNC, NCST, ECU, So. Carolina and Clemson

8) A St. Louis team with Oklahoma, OSU, Mizzou, Arkansas, LSU and Iowa players

 

You need to tap into those folks who miss pro football by April and those folks who love college football.  That provides the in-stadium crowd, and then the quality of play and the quality of broadcast (internet or TV) will go a long way to pushing viewership.  

 

I say this as someone who loved the USFL, watched the WLAF and now watches the CFL just to get a football fix earlier in the year. 

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16 minutes ago, WideRight said:

But, on the player side, I think you could get 20k a game to attend if the league is on TV, has good marketing and branding and has local college stars such as:

 

1) an Orlando team stocked from Miami, Florida, Florida State, UCF, USF, etc.

2) A Birmingham team full of Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Miss St. and Georgia players

3) A San Antonio team with Texas, A&M, Tech, Houston, SMU, etc. 

4) A San Diego team with SDSU, USC, UCLA, Fresno, etc.

5) A Portland team with Oregon, OSU, UW, WSU, Boise St.

6) A SLC team with BYU, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, ASU, etc.

7) A Raleigh team with Duke, Wake, UNC, NCST, ECU, So. Carolina and Clemson

8) A St. Louis team with Oklahoma, OSU, Mizzou, Arkansas, LSU and Iowa players

 

You need to tap into those folks who miss pro football by April and those folks who love college football.  That provides the in-stadium crowd, and then the quality of play and the quality of broadcast (internet or TV) will go a long way to pushing viewership.  

 

I say this as someone who loved the USFL, watched the WLAF and now watches the CFL just to get a football fix earlier in the year. 

What you wrote has been tried for nearly the last 20 years.

The Spring Football League of 2000

 

The Regional Football League of 2001

 

All American Football League of 2007

 

The A11FL of 2014

 

And the recent glut since 2014 like MLFB, American Spring Football League and different but also stillborn Spring League of America Football.

 

20,000/game won't cover expenses, ever.

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4 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

I don't get the talk about the weather.  This is football and not baseball we're talking about, right? In football the weather doesn't matter.  Indeed, some people prefer to watch football in the snow and the cold. (The techinical term for such people is "nutcases"; but they exist in abundance.)

As long as it's not snow by the foot that makes travel impossible, winter weather is not an issue. If some new league fails, it will fail for reasons having nothing to do with the weather.

 

Nobody is going to watch mediocre football played by teams they have no attachment to in freezing weather or in sleet or snow, which is extremely common in February,  (hell we just had a N’oreaster yesterday and it’s late March.). 

 

 

20 hours ago, the admiral said:

Can you use your one allotted gorilla play on the daily double?

 

 Dumb question - why the hell wouldn’t you?  It makes it even tougher on the coaches since they’ll have to decide whether they want to blow the gorilla play early, or save it for a crucial conversion bet play. 

 

One thing is for sure - if a team loses and it didn’t use its gorilla play, that coach is going to get absolutely roasted. 

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

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4 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

I'm not sure I understand why these leagues seem to always insist on playing in the spring. Is it a heat thing, that it's just too hot to play football in the summer? I don't get it.

 

I also think it's foolish to launch right after the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl to me is usually the culmination of the best month of football I'll see all year. Following that up almost immediately with comparatively subpar football will be nothing but disappointing. And if the idea is to draw audience by riding the momentum from the Super Bowl, then it's a terrible idea. Frankly, when the Super Bowl is done, I'm glad it's over.  I have football fatigue by that point. Maybe I'm the outlier. 

 

But if you put a semi-interesting pro league on in primetime during the summer — say, maybe, a mid-week schedule — I'd probably check it out. 

 

Agree - Football is a fall sport.  You need a break to MISS it.  And half of the most entertaining things in all of football happen in the offseason.  

 

These leagues should approach the NFL to be their official developmental league and play concurrent to the NFL season on Thursday nights.  The league/networks get Thursday night football and the NFL players don’t have to play on Thursdays. 

 

Lots of interesting concepts to think about...these teams can basically be full-fledged practice squads, in effect being a JV team.

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5 minutes ago, Volt said:

 

Agree - Football is a fall sport.  You need a break to MISS it.  And half of the most entertaining things in all of football happen in the offseason.  

 

These leagues should approach the NFL to be their official developmental league and play concurrent to the NFL season on Thursday nights.  The league/networks get Thursday night football and the NFL players don’t have to play on Thursdays. 

 

Lots of interesting concepts to think about...these teams can basically be full-fledged practice squads, in effect being a JV team.

FXFL tried Thursday-Saturday nights.  They couldn't even give seats away via GroupOns.

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I just can't imagine this isn't a rush job to beat the XFL to the field.

 

First, the XFL tried the whole "No kicks, only 1 point conversions" and realized almost immediately that the purpose of the two-point conversion to help try and tie up games that are close. It's not exciting because it's difficult. It's exciting because a team down 22-14 is trying to TIE the game with a conversion, rather than be stuck 22-21 by making it. Sure, this AAF makes it worth two points to the XFL's single point, the fact still stands that the XFL changed the rules for the playoffs to create the 2 and 3 point conversions (which I would be in favor of a new league or even NFL doing again).

 

In XFL, the regular conversion was 1 point, from the 5 was 2 points, and from the 10 was three points. Now, that made some intrigue in close games late.

 

And for those talking up CBS.... it's a time-buy. There's no way CBS is betting on this league being successful. Those two CBS games (first and the title game) are bought air time that the AAF will have to fill with their own commercials (same as AFL does). Same as the CBSSN games would be possibly a 50-50 split after production costs at best. Which will be peanuts for the league. And worse, 75% of the league's games will only be online through their own app? Seriously?

 

You need to market yourself to a wide audience. By restricting access to 75% of your games on a proprietary app is foolish. You need Twitter, Amazon, YoutubeTV, etc to make a go of it online. Somewhere you can get eyeballs seeing that a game is even going on. Because utilizing a third-rate cable sports property and your own app, is bound for failure. Even if you have in-game fantasy sports.

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6 hours ago, the admiral said:

I searched high and low for the original gorilla discussion and I couldn't find it.

 

The search feature on this site is downright lousy. Can’t even page through results without waiting 30 secs between clicks. This was the best I could find. 

 

 

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

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11 hours ago, Lee Noire said:

I don’t know if this will succeed, but I hope it does. Kinda sick of the NFL being the only game in town. It would be nice to have a different option.

You see - here is why this will FAIL. The NFL ISN'T the only option. There are semi-pro football teams that sound just like this league all over the country, and no one gives a rat's @$$ about any of them. We speculate on how we would love and watch this and blah blah blah. We fondly remember the USFL or WFL or WLAF depending on our age, but we are the minority in that we care about the uniforms as much as about the game itself.

It's where I sit.

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The scale of a semi-pro league vs. the hypothetical professional league alternative to college would be much different. I’m talking about a league with some deep-pocketed investors and national TV and streaming and a fantasy element. 

 

I haven't really thought about it all that much, but I’m thinking it would be a smallish league of about 10 teams with players aged 18-23 and they’d get paid a liveable wage. It’d be like how junior hockey and NCAA hockey coexist. Obviously it wouldn't be off and successfull in year one, or even year 5, but I think it could eventually work with the right investors to weather the early years when they get to a point where the talent really stacks up. If a guy wants a path to the pros, but isn’t interested in taking classes then he can sign a deal with this league and take his chances. Cue jokes about guy already get paid and don’t really go to class. At least with this league everything would be transparent and on the up and up.

 

Imagine if Cam Newton had an option instead of junior college after he had trouble at Florida. If its funded correctly and managed well then you’d get a lot of guys with NFL caliber ability who’d take that option rather than college.

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1 hour ago, McCarthy said:

It’d be like how junior hockey and NCAA hockey coexist. 

...

Imagine if Cam Newton had an option instead of junior college after he had trouble at Florida. If its funded correctly and managed well then you’d get a lot of guys with NFL caliber ability who’d take that option rather than college.

 

This feels like one of those "on paper, it's a great idea" kind of things. But the amount of time and money it would take — not to mention the losses its backers would need to absorb — to get a new league to the point where it was a comparable option to the NCAA, would be staggering. I'm not sure there's such a thing as an investor willing to take on that burden, especially considering the failure rate of leagues like this. It's the definition of a risky investment.

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4 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

You see - here is why this will FAIL. The NFL ISN'T the only option. There are semi-pro football teams that sound just like this league all over the country, and no one gives a rat's @$$ about any of them. We speculate on how we would love and watch this and blah blah blah. We fondly remember the USFL or WFL or WLAF depending on our age, but we are the minority in that we care about the uniforms as much as about the game itself.

The problem with most of these semi-pro leagues is that they just don't have the money or the reach of these new start-ups. There are semi-pro teams in the Midwest that have played for over 50 years, even a couple leagues in the Northwest retain most of the same teams for over 30+ seasons. But without multi-million dollar league deals most people have no clue where they are, let alone the names of the teams and leagues. Facebook is awesome for getting their info out but without access to better players they will continue to be overlooked. 

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Just now, MJWalker45 said:

The problem with most of these semi-pro leagues is that they just don't have the money or the reach of these new start-ups. There are semi-pro teams in the Midwest that have played for over 50 years, even a couple leagues in the Northwest retain most of the same teams for over 30+ seasons. But without multi-million dollar league deals most people have no clue where they are, let alone the names of the teams and leagues. Facebook is awesome for getting their info out but without access to better players they will continue to be overlooked. 

I agree with that. But I will also say that better players won't bring more eyeballs because they aren't playing for "my team".

It's where I sit.

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