UFL: the next "other league" failure?

by Brian Galliford on May 31, 2007 9:15 AM EDT in News Comment 5 comments

Cuban will likely pull his best Trump impersonation

A report from ESPN.com last night indicates that current Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is one major name involved in the potential start-up of a new professional football league. The league, at this very early point, is planning on calling itself the UFL and would ideally consist of eight teams. The idea was not Cuban's, however; Wall Street investor Bill Hambrecht conceived the league, and not ironically was an investor in the Oakland Invaders of the infamous USFL. Cuban is involved as a potential owner of one of the eight clubs. Here's what Cuban wrote on his blog about the proposal:

The NFL wants and needs competition. They have grown so big and powerful that every move they make is scrutinized by local or federal officials. A competitor allows them to point to us and explain that their moves are for competitive reasons rather than the move of a monopoly.

A case can be made for needing competition, but Cuban should realize that up to this point, competitive leagues have not worked. The AFL forced a merger with the NFL; the WFL and USFL went defunct; the XFL was one of the more colossal flops in professional sports history. Only the CFL and the Arena Football League survived, and it's because they don't try to directly compete with the NFL. I just don't see a new attempt working this time either.

This has direct ties to the Bills and their future in Buffalo as well. Directly from Cuban's blog again:

They just extended their CBA. Their CBA structure is not designed for a competitive environment. Competition for top players, even if the UFL gets just a few, increases prices at the top end for all teams. Every star will get paid more, but still have to fit under the cap. That forces teams to use more low cost players, at the expense of signing the middle of the roster. That gives us access to quite a few very, very good NFL players. The downside is that it will significantly impact small market NFL teams and its unclear how the NFL would respond to that and what the impact would be on the UFL.

The idea here is that driving elite players out of the NFL would allow only big-market NFL clubs to compete with UFL clubs for these elite players' services. This would leave smaller-revenue clubs like the Bills with virtually no chance of landing elite talent. Hence why I hope that this league doesn't come close to materializing. Yes, folks - I am very against this. In no way do I believe the NFL needs competition, nor money-hungry owners sucking the life out of the most functional professional sport around. There are already two "other" professional football leagues, and adding a third one to take on the big, bad bully of the NFL likely won't work.

Does anyone have anything they'd like to share about this developing story?

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Comments

XFL is too recent...

This is dead in the water, until 2011 or so, minimum.

by Dock Ellis on May 31, 2007 10:08 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

The NY Times disagrees

Very interesting article here for anyone who is interested:

NY Times

Buffalo Rumblings: we are awesome.

by Brian Galliford on May 31, 2007 12:21 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yuck

I just see this as a bad idea.

Do we really need another football league? With the popularity of the NFL right now, there is no way a new league could draw much interest or support away from it. I don't think there's going to be too many fans who would rather see a second league to add competition to the NFL. The product would have to be the same or better, which won't happen because....

To get some top players, the new league would have to throw monstrous contracts at these guys and I mean NBA like contracts. With that, there'd be very few 'elite' players because where would that money come from?? Not too mention, are there even enough second rate players that would even make this league desirable to watch? I mean, I've caught a few minutes of NFL Europe and those guys pretty much stink. Would this new league be filled with guys who would normally represent the last 10 or so spots on NFL rosters??

I wouldn't touch a project like this if I was an investor. Cuban needs to just buy an NFL team instead of trying to form a whole new league to 'compete'. Talk about having too much $$$$...

by Kurupt on May 31, 2007 12:47 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Disagree

From the sounds of it, the league is going to be able to get players - and good ones at that - at some point down the line. This is a result of the CBA and the salary cap - mid-range guys (Darwin Walker is a good example) would conceivably leave the NFL if a UFL team paid him ridiculous (read: Jerry Sullivan) amounts to be their #1 DT.

The biggest mistake the UFL is making, however, is the idea of playing their games on Friday nights. Like it or not, that's HS football night - and their TV audience won't increase just because they're a pro football league. I think they'd be better served with the USFL model of playing in the spring - who wouldn't want to watch solid players right now, when very little is going on in the NFL?

Buffalo Rumblings: we are awesome.

by Brian Galliford on May 31, 2007 5:56 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Re: Disagree

Yeah, but who really wants to go see the likes of Darwin Walker as the so-called stars of the league?

I still don't know where this league would get the money to go out and sign name guys, and numerous ones at that. Yeah, the owners will have deep pockets, but are they all willing to risk so much to try and get this going? The selling shares to the fans thing sounds intriguing, but could it work? Would there be enough initial interest to really get the ball rolling?

If this league is expecting to build itself around guys like the Jake Delhomme's, LaMont Jordan's, Brandon Lloyd's of football (as examples), they're nuts. Those are the best type of players they can expect to lure from the NFL, IMO. They won't be pulling true stars over there unless they start handing out better than Nate Clements money to players, and I still don't see how that would be funded.

This league is a nice idea on paper, but when push comes to shove, I really don't see how it's going to build itself up and retain the staying power it'll need to actually compete with the NFL. Conceivably, I still don't know how they'd be able to provide a similar product without spending the same amount of cash NFL teams do. With that, how would it be funded?

Anyways, there's no way an 8 team league would compete regardless. It'll be a nice diversion, maybe, but as you said the Friday night timeslot probably won't be all that popular. That may not be such a huge issue because who is going to have any interest in these teams outside of the 8 local markets? I'd watch the games if I was doing nothing else and would hope they would be played at the bar I'm at that night, but I'm not going to schedule my night around those games, like I would a Bills' Sunday. How many people in the heart of Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Alabama, etc are going to have much interest in this league?

by Kurupt on May 31, 2007 10:58 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs