Letters to the Editor
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Thanks for the heads up
It's been my experience that the progeny of these type of men tend to be some of the least respectable people on the planet. But, considering how much I respect Salon, I'll give this guy, and his talented daughter, a pass. It's comma-monday.
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I'd rather see this money invested in something else...
...like a good, clean renewable energy source. Or stem cell research. At least those have a snowball's chance in hell of working or yeilding some kind of observable results. If Orlando gets a football team and only Orlandonians watch, does it really exist - at least in the national zeitgeist, does it exist?
Maybe I'm not feeling it today, but with two national football franchises (yea, college football is a franchise) running concurrently over a 4-5 month period, I'm not really sure where these guys think their audience will be coming from. Sure, everybody has football withdrawals come February but after all the hype with Bowl games and the SuperBowl, I'm also footballed-out come February.
There's a reason why the staggered schedule of the big 4 works so well. There's enough overlap that, for the most part, when one league's championship is awarded, its just starting to get interesting in the next league. It just doesn't leave much time for other sports interests - Olympics and X-Games notwithstanding.
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Good job King
No gratuitous swipes at Dirk Nowitzki in this column. BTW, his PER against Golden State was over 20. Not MVP-worthy, but All-Star caliber. Will you be instituting a policy against naming Zach Randolph, Stephon Marbury and Vince Carter by name? The first guy asked off from the club to get titty dances, the second is a cancer that didn't want to share the spotlight with KG in Minnesota, and Carter so dogged it in Toronto that he once tipped off the Sonics bench to a play the Raptors were going to run at the end of a game. But let's go ahead and keep ripping a hard-working, team-first guy because he played a bit below his standards. At least he didn't just up and quit like Kobe did last year against the Suns.
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setup for acquisition?
"Stay independent as long as possible" - isn't that what the YouTube founders said a couple months before Google bought them for $1.6 billion?
The web start-up business model is to find a unique angle, grow quickly without stressing about profitability, then get bought by a larger competitor that you outflanked with the aforementioned unique angle. Especially given the presence of the Google exec, that's gotta be their approach.
My guess is that they're hoping to demonstrate the viability of minor-league pro football in markets couldn't support a real NFL franchise, get acquired, and become the NFL's designated development league.
Even if the UFL/NFL Minor League is just breaking even (or not losing too much money), it still makes sense for the NFL to get out of having to rely on college football as its exclusive player development system.
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Hmmm. . .
As a soccer fan above all else, I always have a pipe dream that promotion and relegation will someday come to American sports. If the UFL eventually became a lower level NFL league, that's what I'd love to see.
In my fantasy, parallel to the championship playoffs, there would be a second set of playoffs where the worst eight teams would face off. These teams would be playing for the right to stay in the NFL's top league. Unlike in normal playoffs, the losing team would advance from each round, and at the end, you have the Desperation Bowl, where the two worst teams face off to see who will drop.
This would spice up the end of the season considerably, since almost every team would be in range of one or the other playoffs.
On the UFL side, the Champion would not only get a nice, shiny trophy but also entry into the NFL, replacing last year's worst team. In addition, they would get the first pick in the draft, as the lowest team in the league.
This system would also allow the NFL to expand or rebalance the league without the problems or having to rob Peter to pay Paul. San Antonio wants in to the NFL? Fine, you can start a UFL team and if you've got the goods, you can win promotion into the NFL. The beauty of this system is that it can go as far down as you want. Once the UFL is full, you can start a third tier and once that is full, a fourth, and so on and so forth. That way, the country can have just as much football as it wants. Or can stand, whichever.
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College Football
I think the idea is interesting, but I keep wondering: why do these articles never discuss college football? King asked about high school competition because of the Friday night thing, but it seems to me that the real competitor is the NCAA, which is essentially a minor league of the NFL. Will USC fans jump to the Los Angeles __________? Or will they, more likely, stay invested emotionally in USC, watch the NFL occasionally on Sundays, and the UFL only on boring/lonely Friday nights?
It seems to me that league officials should be figuring out how to compete with college teams as much as they're trying to compete with the NFL...
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Its All About the Quarterbacks
As a Canadian and longtime fan of the NFL and Canadian Football League I can tell you the same thing I said about the XFL: There aren't enough QBs to go around. There are plenty of most of the other positions maybe even running backs but not QBs. The CFL has always been very entertaining football but it has had a problem for the last 15 or so years there are never enough quality throwers to go around and without one your team stinks. The NFL now regularly has at least 5 QBs on the payroll with the 3rd string clipboard guy often making 500-900K. Pay in the CFL is usually 250-500k for QBs with the Arena league being a little less than that. So unless this new league is willing to throw 1-2 million at some QB prospects they'll never make a go of it.