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the USFL is back

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Sandman

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The United States Football League Returns in 2022 | Fox Sports PressPass

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Los Angeles – Today, the United States Football League (USFL) announced that the league will officially return in the spring of 2022.

Initially launched in 1983, the USFL originally was an upstart spring football league consisting of 12 teams which featured some of the most exciting and recognizable young football stars in the country. When relaunched next year, the new USFL retains rights to key original team names.

The league will target a minimum of eight teams and deliver high-quality, innovative professional football to fans throughout the spring season.

“I’m extremely passionate about football and the opportunity to work with FOX Sports and to bring back the USFL in 2022 was an endeavor worth pursuing,” said Brian Woods, co-founder of the new USFL and founder and CEO of The Spring League (TSL). “We look forward to providing players a new opportunity to compete in a professional football league and giving fans everywhere the best football viewing product possible during what is typically a period devoid of professional football.”

FOX Sports will serve as the official broadcast partner for the USFL. FOX Sports also owns a minority equity stake in the company that owns the USFL.

“The relaunch of the USFL is a landmark day for football fans and FOX Sports,” said Eric Shanks, CEO and Executive Producer, FOX Sports. “Football is in our DNA and the return of this innovative and iconic league is a fantastic addition to our robust slate of football programming.”

More information on the USFL, including cities, teams, head coaches, and game schedules, will be announced at a later date.

 

This should be interesting. I wonder if they'll accept guys right out of high school?

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mr. sunshine
mr. sunshine

Houston Gamblers >>> Houston Texans 

mr. sunshine
mr. sunshine

Good for Houston. They haven’t had a pro football team since 1996

Sandman
Sandman

The Gamblers logo is fucking great. Pretty much perfect.

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Cardinal12

Cardinal12 34

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More football is always good. Seems like these leagues end up trying to adopt wacky rules to differentiate than NFL, which I think is a mistake. I think they are going to have to live and die by drawing in decent QBs which is a tough task. 

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Guest Lobo

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I wonder if they'll get any of the original team owners (or their children) to come back around and participate in this financial disaster?

I went to a Chicago Blitz game before I ever went to a Bears game.  Fun fact, Walter Payton was just days away from taking a lucrative deal from the Blitz to switch over from the NFL in 1984.  It was very close until Payton got some sound financial advice from people he trusted who doubted the Blitz could really make good on all the promised payments in the second year.  Payton backed off and I'm told had a pretty good year with the 1985 Chicago Bears.  

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Guest Lobo

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27 minutes ago, 'stache said:

Why do they keep doing this? Are people loaning money to support this? It will fail like every other fucking league that has tried. What makes anyone think this time will finally be different?

Because it almost, kinda, sorta worked for about 18 months back in the 1980's.  I doubt you can leverage that past performance 35-40 years ago for current lines of credit.  I'm guessing this entire thing is being financed purely by equity, maybe a SAFE, maybe an aggressive mezz piece, I dunno.  And most of the people that actually made it out alive financially of the last USFL are now dead in real life.  The ones that are alive are either financially insolvent or facing serious charges of financial misdeeds.  

I guess the rebrand makes sense since any football fan over 40 remembers the USFL.  But the problem is, banks remember the USFL, too.

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Al_4_ISU

Al_4_ISU 12,452

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The biggest mistake these leagues make is doing this right after the main football season ends.  Do it in the late spring/early summer as an appetizer for the main course, and avoid markets that currently have NFL teams.

If you want 8 markets that will support this, you need football hungry places that don't have NFL teams:

OKC/Tulsa, Omaha, Des Moines, Columbus, Birmingham, San Antonio, Columbia SC, maybe Memphis

A minor league that insists on NFL markets and starting the week after the Super Bowl will be toast.

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orangecat92

orangecat92 306

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The idea of spring football is great, just stay in your lane and stick to the spring.  Can you imagine the crowds that would fill up a San Antonio stadium?  Should be 100% full.  I would hope the owners would try to stay in cities that do not currently have NFL teams, which I believe is the idea.  Wouldn't mind seeing what a few kids straight out of high school can do as well.  I am thinking pre-season workouts would start right after bowl games, so the garden variety kid out of high school would have about seven months(June 1 to January 7 or so) to get himself in condition to go up against the bigger guys.

 Spring football might pay off for the kid.  Imagine getting with a high-quality personal trainer, adding the necessary bulk in seven months, get paid to play in the spring, take the summer off, repeat process for the next year, get a raise and by that time is well known enough to have endorsements in San Antonio, then a third year and after that I think he would be old enough for the NFL?  

Something like that.  Makes sense.  Why not? Also would be financially mature enough to handle the NFL.  

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BornOrange

BornOrange 1,441

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The USFL screwed up by trying to compete with the NFL, at first for players and then by playing in the fall.

Unfortunately for us, if the USFL is going to be successful this time around, it will be at the expense of college football. They will concentrate not only on players rejected by the NFL, but on players not yet eligible for the NFL. Kids who want to get paid will go to the USFL instead of playing college ball, or will leave college ball early to play in the USFL.

The NFL will scoop up the best USFL players, but the USFL will be raiding college teams just as much.

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'stache

'stache 21,798

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43 minutes ago, Jshep34 said:

Xfl was on track to succeed but covid screwed that up. Happy to see the return of the old team logos and names.
Bring on the Gamblers and Roughnecks!!!!!

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 

It was going to fail. All minor league football will fail. It is guaranteed. I lost interest after watching the first week out of curiosity. I tried again midseason and my immediate observation was that the QBs mostly sucked which meant the games mostly sucked. I enjoy all professional sports to some degree, so NBA and MLB are interesting enough until the next football season. I think there are enough people like me that the die hards who want football year around aren't enough to support an entire league longterm.

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notre dame joe

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3 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

The biggest mistake these leagues make is doing this right after the main football season ends.  Do it in the late spring/early summer as an appetizer for the main course, and avoid markets that currently have NFL teams.

If you want 8 markets that will support this, you need football hungry places that don't have NFL teams:

OKC/Tulsa, Omaha, Des Moines, Columbus, Birmingham, San Antonio, Columbia SC, maybe Memphis

A minor league that insists on NFL markets and starting the week after the Super Bowl will be toast.

Yes I don't know how these leagues get fixated on the points in time where people don't watch them or football in general.  Right now a league of undrafted players would be competitive with the NBA finals and in a few weeks would outdraw MLB. 

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Al_4_ISU

Al_4_ISU 12,452

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2 minutes ago, notre dame joe said:

 

Yes I don't know how these leagues get fixated on the points in time where people don't watch them or football in general.  Right now a league of undrafted players would be competitive with the NBA finals and in a few weeks would outdraw MLB. 

Exactly.  If guys were willing to deal with July heat, a May-July league would absolutely crush it.  By mid June it would dominate.

Season over by 8/1 to get out of the way for the college/NFL ramp up.

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Guest Lobo

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There really are some markets where something like this could do unbelievably well financially.  Problem is you need most, or all, markets to be viable for your one franchise to thrive.  Apparently a 12-team league doesn't really work if there's 3 teams left standing to pay their bills at the end of mid-way point.  

San Antonio would be an absolute no-brainer.  Real big shocker for y'all to guess which 2 Texas-Exes are leading the play for that franchise. 

I would think the Bay Area/NoCal could sustain a team either in San Jose, Oakland, or Sacramento 

And Columbus, Ohio.  

Those would be my three picks from a financial viability standpoint.  If they're allowing Canadian cities, that would change it up a bit.  

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DougO

DougO 5,243

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I really enjoyed the USFL back in the day. If they had stayed in the Spring it might have lasted for many years. It was a good brand of real football with some pretty good coaching and enough stars and league-made names to keep ones interest beyond just rooting for laundry and geography. Not sure if it's possibly to recapture that again, which the recent leagues have failed to do pretty miserably. But I'm always willing to take a look.

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ousux

ousux 5,597

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I went to several USFL games back in the day, usually Houston or San Antonio games and have to admit that I enjoyed them 1,000,000% more than I did NFL games.
I had more fun attending the few Arena/Indoor league games I've been to, doesnt mean the actual quality of football translates to tv broadcasts like the NFL. Same with minor league baseball, but at least the actual ball being played in minor league stadiums is pretty good on average..
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jTower

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8 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

The biggest mistake these leagues make is doing this right after the main football season ends.  Do it in the late spring/early summer as an appetizer for the main course, and avoid markets that currently have NFL teams.

If you want 8 markets that will support this, you need football hungry places that don't have NFL teams:

OKC/Tulsa, Omaha, Des Moines, Columbus, Birmingham, San Antonio, Columbia SC, maybe Memphis

A minor league that insists on NFL markets and starting the week after the Super Bowl will be toast.

Unfortunately including BHM is the kiss of death for any alt league. 

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Blotto

Blotto 23,491

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On 6/3/2021 at 11:03 AM, Lobo said:

Because it almost, kinda, sorta worked for about 18 months back in the 1980's.  I doubt you can leverage that past performance 35-40 years ago for current lines of credit.  I'm guessing this entire thing is being financed purely by equity, maybe a SAFE, maybe an aggressive mezz piece, I dunno.  And most of the people that actually made it out alive financially of the last USFL are now dead in real life.  The ones that are alive are either financially insolvent or facing serious charges of financial misdeeds.  

I guess the rebrand makes sense since any football fan over 40 remembers the USFL.  But the problem is, banks remember the USFL, too.

Not really. It was a financial trainwreck, driven largely by wild spending to lure names to the league that would people would actually watch. I see no evidence that people will really give a shit about spring football with a bunch of no name players. With the original USFL, there were multiple stories of shit ass meals, crappy travel arrangements, checks bouncing etc...because after paying the salaries of the Herschel Walkers, Steve Youngs etc... there wasnt much left. Today's star players arent gonna put up with that bullshit when the NFL is the most lucrative pro sports league in the world.

So you will have a bunch of also rans fucking around for one or two seasons until the league folds, because in reality nobody really is going to spend a lot of money supporting some jagoff team in the spring when they already have an NFL allegiance in the fall. as long as all the money for these boondoggles is private I don't really give a shit, they can do what they want with their money, and if flushing it down the toilet is their choice, so be it. If there is ever a successful spring league, my guess it will be rolled out by the NFL as a minor league development type scenario.  But I think you would need their buyin from the getgo, rather than hoping to force the NFL's hand into a merger after demonstrating  couple of years of success.

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Guest Lobo

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3 hours ago, Harrison Bergeron said:

Fuck Trump for killing v1 and the Houston Gamblers.

The man's a genius.  You shut your whore mouth.  

Seriously though, somebody really should contact him about putting his brand behind this to give it some "oomph" 

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notre dame joe

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8 hours ago, Blotto said:

Not really. It was a financial trainwreck, driven largely by wild spending to lure names to the league that would people would actually watch. I see no evidence that people will really give a shit about spring football with a bunch of no name players. With the original USFL, there were multiple stories of shit ass meals, crappy travel arrangements, checks bouncing etc...because after paying the salaries of the Herschel Walkers, Steve Youngs etc... there wasnt much left. Today's star players arent gonna put up with that bullshit when the NFL is the most lucrative pro sports league in the world.

So you will have a bunch of also rans fucking around for one or two seasons until the league folds, because in reality nobody really is going to spend a lot of money supporting some jagoff team in the spring when they already have an NFL allegiance in the fall. as long as all the money for these boondoggles is private I don't really give a shit, they can do what they want with their money, and if flushing it down the toilet is their choice, so be it. If there is ever a successful spring league, my guess it will be rolled out by the NFL as a minor league development type scenario.  But I think you would need their buyin from the getgo, rather than hoping to force the NFL's hand into a merger after demonstrating  couple of years of success.

The problem with all these knock offs is that they sell a lesser version of the same thing.  The only one that actually competes is college football.  That's because CFB is not selling you that these are the best football players in the world. 

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