USFL 2023 Season

[gosioux76]

5 minutes ago, Skycast said:

 

Kinda, sorta, but not really...it's with the NFL Alumni Association or something like that.

Sort of. It's with the NFL Alumni Academy, which develops and trains free-agents released from NFL training campus during the NFL season to prep them for signing in-season contracts with NFL teams that need replacement players due to injuries. My guess is that it serves as the backup for practice squads. 

 

The new deal with the XFL has the two organizations working together to identify which players will train at the NFL Alumni Academy. Those players will then receive an automatic opt-in contract to play in the XFL once the NFL season is over. 

 

So it's more of an alignment with an adjunct of the NFL Alumni Association, not the actual NFL. In other words, this isn't like the World League/NFL Europe, which was an NFL-backed spring league. 

 

Still, it's a smart personnel development move by the XFL, but I don't think it has the sort of gravitas that that an actual partnership with the NFL would carry. 

[gosioux76]

5 minutes ago, Cujo said:

 

Huge W anytime you can partner up with the beast that if the NFL.

 

It also beats anything USFL has going for them.

 

 

Except, they don't really have a partnership with the NFL. They have a deal with a private training organization affiliated with the NFL Alumni Association, which is an entirely different beast. It's good marketing, and a good buzz builder, but it's not the NFL. 

[GDAWG]

14 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

Do they? I didn't know that.

 

Nice knowing you, USFL.

 

They have an agreement with the NFL in that the XFL becomes a petri dish for the NFL to test proposed rules the NFL are considering in the future, testing of new equipment and tech, and development of referees and coaches.  Stopped short of player development though.  

[Cujo]

1 minute ago, gosioux76 said:

Except, they don't really have a partnership with the NFL. They have a deal with a private training organization affiliated with the NFL Alumni Association, which is an entirely different beast. It's good marketing, and a good buzz builder, but it's not the NFL. 

 

And what does the USFL have going for them?

 

I'll wait.

[Skycast]

6 minutes ago, Cujo said:

It also beats anything USFL has going for them.

 

Honest question here, I'm very curious as to why, with the constant negativity, you continue to waste your time discussing something you fully expect to fail and don't seem to be backing at all. If that's not your intention then my apologies, but it's certainly the way your posts come across.

[Skycast]

2 minutes ago, Cujo said:

And what does the USFL have going for them?

 

Off the top of my head...they are currently playing games, they have a three year plan with funding set aside by Fox, they also have a partnership for games airing on NBC networks/streaming as well. I'd say right now that's enough.

 

At this point I'm just rooting for one of these spring leagues to stick around for the long haul to give me some spring football to watch.

[gosioux76]

10 minutes ago, Cujo said:

 

And what does the USFL have going for them?

 

I'll wait.

 

Yeah, I don't get the animosity either. I've said multiple times, this USFL could easily fail like the others. But sitting here practically wishing for it just seems to be counterproductive and, frankly, useless dialogue. 

 

But to your question, the answer is quite a bit. For one, it's owned by one of the biggest TV networks on the planet, and has broadcast partnerships with not only that network (Fox), but one of the other biggest TV networks on the planet (NBC.) It has name recognition and sports nostalgia in its favor, too.

 

And even so, I wouldn't necessarily pick sides in this competition. I'm not favoring the USFL over the XFL just because I defend it. I'm for giving them both a reasonable chance to succeed -- the benefit of the doubt, if you will -- rather than moaning about how it's a bad look that a made-for-TV football league isn't drawing 50,000 people into the stands. 

[CS85]

The animosity in this thread is weird.  Answer these questions:

 

1.  Do you like football?

 

2.  Do you want to watch football when the NFL/NCAA are off?

 

If the answer to either of those is yes, maybe learn to take your meds consistently and find the pleasure in life, not sweating the small stuff like "which is the best spring football league" debates.

 

I think the Arizona Coyotes/Glendale thread turned a lot of people on this board into weirdos who want to poorly cosplay icecap, admiral, sodboy, etc.  by dropping trow and urinating on any Sports Thing that seems buffoonish or amateur.  Besides the unoriginality of those knock-off posters, they're only mocking the NHL, and it's 100% merited.

 

These fledgling spring football endeavors are only acceptable to trash in a Basically Sports podcast, and that's heavily tongue in cheek, because we not-so-secretly love all janky smalltime sport ops. 

 

If the USFL looks crappy to you, don't watch.   If you prefer the next iteration of the XFL, cool.  But mocking attendance and overall function of a league that barely exists is low-effort posting, IMO.

[gosioux76]

13 minutes ago, GDAWG said:

 

They have an agreement with the NFL in that the XFL becomes a petri dish for the NFL to test proposed rules the NFL are considering in the future, testing of new equipment and tech, and development of referees and coaches.  Stopped short of player development though.  

Yes, I forgot that part. So I'm wrong. They do have a partnership with the the NFL, just not one involving player development. Thanks for pointing that out, @GDAWG

[DG_ThenNowForever]

1 minute ago, CS85 said:

If the USFL looks crappy to you, don't watch.   If you prefer the next iteration of the XFL, cool.  But mocking attendance and overall function of a league that barely exists is low-effort posting, IMO.

 

FWIW, I'm not mocking but observing. I'm taken aback by low attendance. And also learning in real time that the USFL is in two markets only this season and reacting to that. As a casual observer, I'm casually shocked.

 

I'm not rooting for the death of any pro sports league. The more jobs for athletes the better. Make money!

[Cujo]

13 minutes ago, Skycast said:

Honest question here, I'm very curious as to why, with the constant negativity, you continue to waste your time discussing something you fully expect to fail and don't seem to be backing at all. If that's not your intention then my apologies, but it's certainly the way your posts come across.

 

Besides optimism, what makes you think the league will last -- especially when you comp it to previous spring leagues who all folded within a year.

 

The XFL 2.0 got off to a decent start, had a good amount of fans, big tv networks were onboard, but covid basically squashed it. Glad they're getting another shot at it next year. They seem to have had the most decent model (of the 2000s leagues) up to now.

 

AAF was off to a far better start that USFL 2.0 as far as attendance, bigger buzz after Week 1 compared to USFL, and they were gone in two months. They didn't have networks dumping hoards of money not the league, but if nobody's watching or the product is bad (which is appears to be) networks will just bail ala XFL 1.0

[gosioux76]

1 minute ago, Cujo said:

 

Besides optimism, what makes you think the league will last -- especially when you comp it to previous spring leagues who all folded within a year.

 

I think you're engineering phantom arguments at this point. There's a difference between believing something will succeed and openly predicting its imminent demise. Nobody here seems to be claiming they have confidence the USFL will last. They're just willing to give it a chance without (gleefully) presuming, after only one week, that it's destined for failure. 

[Skycast]

43 minutes ago, Cujo said:

Besides optimism, what makes you think the league will last -- especially when you comp it to previous spring leagues who all folded within a year.

 

It's fairly obvious at this point that trying to discuss this with you is a wasted effort, so I'm pretty much done interacting with you.

 

I don't think it will succeed, at this point in the game I have a healthy dose of skepticism that any spring league will succeed and last. And am however hoping that the USFL or the XFL (or ideally both) do make it, I don't have a preference either way and in that direction I will continue to be optimistic, look to the bright side and think about the positive things while keeping the negative in mind without trumpeting doom and gloom.

 

Are there already some red flags with the USFL? Sure there are, just like their will be with the XFL. The thing that gets my goat is the constant negativity out of many people and the off-base observations.

 

For example I've seen in many places people talking about the lack of people in the stands and they fail to take into account that Fox right now has plans for this as a made-for-TV product to fill air time. They also fail to bother with attributing the Sunday attendance with the fact that their was a weather delay and it was Easter Sunday...ditto for the Monday rescheduled game at which the honored the Sunday tickets but I'm sure many already had plans and whatnot.

 

Bottom line, just turn away if you want to be negative, life is too short and if it's not your thing then that's fine and dandy.

 

[Cujo]

8 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

I think you're engineering phantom arguments at this point.

 

You can come at me, but this entire thread (which includes many other members) is just debates about will it/won't it last, or talk about the pizza salad guy. Not one thing is about the on-the-field play, discussing games or player performance.

 

I've got no problem stepping back, letting the league play out and post "I told you so" next month when the league folds.

[gosioux76]

1 minute ago, Cujo said:

I've got no problem stepping back, letting the league play out and post "I told you so" next month when the league folds.

You seem to be missing the point. Nobody's arguing with you about whether it will or won't last. In fact, several of us, myself included, have agreed: It very likely could fail. History tells us this. I don't see anybody arguing that point. 

 

The issue is that so many of you seem so eager to label it a failure after only one week. It's akin to a sports radio meathead calling a top draft pick a bust after only one game, or declaring a baseball game over after the top of the first inning. 

 

The odds might be in your favor, but you can only get so much satisfaction from an "I told you so" moment in which very few people disagreed with the eventual outcome. 

 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

What complaints about the lack of fans in the stands miss is that the owners and organisers of this league knew that few fans would turn out (except perhaps for a Stallions game), and didn't care.  The point is to show the games on television; the in-person crowd is irrelevant for this first season.

Also, the Monday night game was rescheduled from a rainout the previous night.  (One might ask how a football game gets rained out. But that's a different topic.)  The idea that only a handful of people were in attendance for a game that was not on the schedule is completely unsurprising. 

 

When the Yankees and Royals reconvened at Yankee Stadium after the American League president overturned the umpires' (correct) call on the pine tar incident, only about a thousand  fans were in the Stadium. And that's Major League Baseball, featuring players whom people know, with a rivalry that was intense; and it also came after a lot of notice about the resumption. So we should not expect anyone at all to be at a hastily-rescheduled game featuring teams of unknown players on the third day of a league's history.

[Skycast]

3 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Also, the Monday night game was rescheduled from a rainout the previous night.  (One might ask how a football game gets rained out. But that's a different topic.) 

 

It was the lightning and at that point the late hour, not the rain.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

1 minute ago, Skycast said:

4 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Also, the Monday night game was rescheduled from a rainout the previous night.  (One might ask how a football game gets rained out. But that's a different topic.) 

 

It was the lightning and at that point the late hour, not the rain.

 

Ah, very good.  Thanks for the information.

[Red Comet]

At this point, my belief in these spring leagues is “Trust, but verify”. I want there to be viable competition/alternative to the NFL but every league I’ve seen so far has failed to even come close with only the UFL and NFL Europe lasting more than a season in my 32 years on Earth. I hope the best for the players and coaches, but I’ll have hope in its viability if/when Season 2 rolls around. 

[TBGKon]

3 hours ago, Cujo said:

Monday's game was EVEN WORSE.

 

This pic was taken at kickoff.

 

How about we chalk Mondays game up to the fact that it wasnt supposed to be played that day?  I wont speak for the rest of the weekend, but lets look at the details.