Are you serious? There are plans to start another renegade pro football league and Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks is in the thick of things. What amazes me about this is that there have already been three failed attempts and one successful attempt to compete with the 87 year old National Football League.
The only success was the merging of the former American Football League with the NFL in 1970. And don’t forget the taunts that the AFL put up with for all those years in the 60’s when they were laughed at as the junior circuit and a renegade. And I wanted to take an opportunity here to extend the utmost of thanks to former commissioner Pete Rozelle for being so brilliant at implementing that merger back in 1970.
Anybody that has been a fan of football should remember the three failures. So I’ll get into a little of the history behind my reasons for writing this article. If you have ever read any of my other articles, you know I always dig into the background before undertaking the gist of the endeavor. It just gives you, the reader a little more insight.
So let’s turn the clock back to 1973 when the World Football League was founded and then the inaugural season in 1974. The season was to run from July 10th through November 13th --- a 20-game season that was to be played over the course of 19 weeks. As a side note, Gary Davidson, the driving force behind the WFL, was also instrumental in formulating the American Basketball Association and the World Hockey Association.
Within the first few weeks of the season, the WFL was touting average attendances of 43,000 throughout the league. But this boasting would eventually lead to its undoing. The Jacksonville Sharks soon admitted that 44,000 tickets were giveaways, and the Philadelphia Bell reportedly admitted that 100,000 of their first 120,000 ticket sales had been sold for next to nothing. By the sixth game of the season, the renegade league was in serious trouble.
Two of the franchises, the Detroit Wheels and the Florida Blazers were looking into relocating to Charlotte and Atlanta respectively. By September, the two teams went through with the relocation, and then the New York Stars moved to Charlotte as the Hornets, and the Houston Texans moved to Shreveport, and became the Steamer. In October, the league pulled the plug on the Detroit and Jacksonville franchises, and later on, an article was circulating that stated, “Reports of financial hardship abounded. Two such stories were of Portland Storm players being fed by local citizens, and of the Charlotte Hornets having their uniforms impounded for not paying a laundry bill from the time the team was located in New York” according to Wikipedia.
Despite reports of the WFL being dead in its tracks, the teams returned for the 1975 season. However, only two teams (Memphis and Philadelphia) out of the original 12 teams returned with the original ownership in tact, the schedule got trimmed from 20 down to 18 games, and there were no more games televised on Wednesday nights. All the programming moved to Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. But all was for naught as the league folded only five weeks into the season.
Now we turn the clock ahead seven years to 1982 for the founding of the 12 team United States Football League. Seventeen years earlier, David Dixon, who was the driving force behind starting the Saints franchise in New Orleans, actually hired a research team to do a feasibility study on the likelihood of a new football league succeeding. The success of the AFL and the demise of the WFL were taken into serious consideration as the basis for the study. The study evidently proved worth its weight in due diligence, and 1983 was the USFL’s inaugural season.
Dixon immediately enticed 12 cities into the newly formulated (on Paper) league; nine of these cities had NFL franchises already, but Dixon could care less. Once again, as with the WFL, instability plagued the fledgling league due to closure and relocation of franchises. In need of capital, the league expanded from 12 to 18 teams literally overnight. But this did not stop the relocation bug from biting the league in the butt. The Boston franchised moved to New Orleans and the Chicago club literally traded all of its players for all of the Arizona franchise’s players. The strongest team in the league, namely Chicago, finished dead last in its division, and was taken over by the league.
Moving ahead to the 1984-1985 off-season, the league announced that at the start of the 1986-1987 season that it would be moving the schedule to the fall and attempt competing with the NFL. Within weeks of the start of the 1985-1986 season, the Boston and Philadelphia franchises relocated, the Michigan franchise merged with the Oakland franchise and the Pittsburgh team folded. The Los Angeles Express, born into controversy from the very beginning, filed bankruptcy.
The Washington team moved to Orlando, the Arizona team merged with Oklahoma, and the Chicago franchise, which had been run by the league without ownership folded entirely. After the season ended, the San Antonio and New Orleans franchises disbanded, and the Los Angeles and Oakland teams suspended their operations. Additionally, Denver merged with Jacksonville, and Houston merged with New Jersey. But the dream of starting the ensuing 1986 season in the fall stayed a dream, and play was ultimately suspended for the season. The USFL would never play another game.
Despite the signing of a marquis player like Herschel Walker, as well as other names like Doug Flutie, Reggie White, Jim Kelly, and Steve Young, historical hindsight mandated that this was considered to be what led to the league’s demise. The now infamous USFL vs. NFL court battle was about to begin, with the USFL claiming that the NFL had bullied the three major networks into not broadcasting any USFL games in the fall.
The initial suit, had it flown as expected, would have awarded the USFL $567 million dollars in damages (which would have tripled to $1.7 billion under Anti-Trust Laws), and hoped to void the NFL’s contracts with ABC, CBS, and NBC.
According to Wikipedia, “The USFL proposed two remedies: either force the NFL to negotiate new television contracts with only two networks, or force the NFL to split into two competing 14-team leagues, each limited to a contract with one major network. Each NFL franchise was named as a co-defendant, with the exception of the then-Los Angeles Raiders; Raiders owner Al Davis was a major witness for the USFL. Howard Cosell was also a key witness for the USFL.
“The case went to trial in the spring of 1986 and lasted 42 days. On July 29, a six-person jury handed down a verdict that, while technically a victory for the USFL, in fact devastated the league. The jury declared the NFL a ‘duly adjudicated illegal monopoly,’ and found that the NFL had willfully acquired and maintained monopoly status through predatory tactics.”
Unfortunately, all the other claims made by the USFL against the NFL were rejected by the court. The USFL had changed its strategy and had suggested a merger with the NFL in order to save the league and their other demands were given a “thumbs down”. Ultimately, it took four years and US Supreme Court intervention to finalize the issue in 1990. The result was that the USFL was awarded a check for $3.76 --- that’s three dollars and seventy-six cents --- no millions attached. R.I.P. United States Football League.
But the USFL left its indelible mark on the NFL to this day with various aspects of their game adopted into the NFL rulebooks. Almost all of the renegade league’s on-the-field innovations are now part of the NFL. In addition to this, Arizona and Jacksonville were awarded an NFL franchise, and so was Memphis by virtue of the Houston Oilers relocating.
Now let’s turn the clock ahead to February 3rd, 2000, when Vince McMahon, the owner of World Wrestling Entertainment, is given credit for founding the XFL. The letter “X” did not stand for “Xtreme” contrary to popular belief. An Xtreme Football League had already been created and later merged with the Arena Football League, so the “X” really didn’t stand for anything. Originally created to be a joint venture between NBC and the World Wrestling Federation, it lasted only one year. The inaugural 2001 season was ultimately its swan song --- the flash in the pan.
Originally televised on three networks (NBC, TNN, and UPN), the XFL enjoyed immediate viewing success during its initial broadcasts by attaining an audience of roughly 14 million viewers. But their audience declined drastically after the first week of the season and the media began attacking the XFL due to poor quality of play.
Another nail in the coffin of the league was the fact that its founding father, Vince McMahon, by virtue of his affiliation with professional wrestling, caused the league to come under scrutiny and be ridiculed by the media because of the ongoing stigma that professional wrestling was a complete fake. In fact, many journalists questioned the possibility of the games being fixed. All of this led to the league’s failure after only one season of play.
Now that the history lesson is out of the way, can you catch my drift here? So let’s look ahead to August of 2008 when the United Football League plans its debut. According to an article dated May 31st, 2007 by TOW Sports Newswire, “The New York Times Sports Magazine reports that Wall Street playmaker Bill Hambrecht, Google executive Tim Armstrong and the new league's first owner Mark Cuban plan to launch the United Football League (UFL) by August 2008.”
Already, there are indications that this may never get off the ground at all since a minimum of eight teams is the requirement for launching the new league. So far, Mark Cuban is the only person committed to team ownership, so unless they find the other seven fairly soon, this bird won’t fly. Due to the fact that the road to success could take several years (pure speculation acknowledged), the founding fathers of the league are expecting owners to absorb losses for up to five years.
Because the NFL is the major obstacle to the new league’s success, the founding fathers are taking what they feel is a non-confrontational approach by establishing franchises is non-NFL major sized cities. To quote Mark Cuban, “There are quite a few good-sized non-N.F.L. cities that can support a pro team.” Does this mean that the Los Angeles market may see the return of a pro football franchise? Anything’s possible. It’s the probability that you have to question.
Another facet to the UFL’s philosophy is that they are planning on challenging the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 which basically prohibits the NFL from broadcasting most Friday nights during the fall part of the season. However, they will be purchasing contracts with a cable network like TNT, USA, or Versus on a smaller scale than that of the major networks. This poses the obvious dilemma of broadcasting to a smaller viewing audience compared to the likes of ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC. And when it comes to the success of anything broadcast on television, it’s all about ratings. The UFL needs to be worried already.
So what are we looking at? What’s the lesson here that needs to be addressed? Well, for one thing, three failures out of four attempts do not shift the odds in favor of this league succeeding. Secondly, as mentioned in one of the above paragraphs, this bird may never fly if they can’t get eight prospective franchise owners to commit to this league. Thirdly, always remember that the success of the AFL only transpired because of one smart man (Pete Rozelle) and one smart team owner (Lamar Hunt) who were visionary geniuses and laid the groundwork for implementing the landmark AFL-NFL merger and creation of the Super Bowl that determined the champion of pro football. Finally, the largest obstacle for this league, as well as the deceased leagues of the past, has always been and will continue to be that 87 year old patriarch of pro football; namely the National Football League.
On a closing note, never let it be said that I’m against a new football league coming into existence. I’m merely skeptical about the possibility of its success. Those of you who want this league to succeed need to put your hearts to the side and look at past historical facts as objectively as you can. If you can honestly come up with reasons that you feel this league will succeed. I will be more than willing to read and respond to your comments. As always, I welcome those comments and any questions that you may have regarding this subject matter.
References:
Wikipedia http:///en.wikipedia.org The Online Wire http://www.theonlinewire.com
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