Omg thank you so much for this. I was hoping/waiting for just this type of article.
The E:60 and/or 30 for 30 on this is goign to be awesome too
Totally agreed.
Also, a paragraph I’d missed the first time I’d read through the SI article:
“It may have been due diligence on the television front, however, that eventually helped inform Dundon’s decision to shut it all down before his investment reached nine figures. According to a high-level sports exec from one of the four major networks, Dundon called to ask about the Alliance’s TV future. What he learned: While it wouldn’t necessarily always be this way, the AAF would have to continue paying to be on the air for the foreseeable future.”
Read that one again: the AAF was on CBS, TNT, and the NFL Network, but they weren’t making any money from that – in fact, the league was apparently paying for that airtime. Doing so was clearly an investment in the league’s future, by generating visibility and accessibility, but it was also clearly an expense that Dundon decided was too much to continue to bear.
So it was all the fault of some asshole who was doing illegal things?
Yeah. Makes sense.
Seems like it. If that guy hadn’t got busted, Dundon wouldn’t have been in charge, and things may have gone a different path completely.
That article still doesn’t explain why Dundon bought in, unless it was speculation or just a hobby and he didn’t feel the need to do any due diligence.
It was all going to fail about then anyway, the only question was how.
Here’s a follow-up article on SI.com, again by Conor Orr. It’s a series of anecdotes, which were shared with him by former AAF insiders, after the release of last week’s article.
The biggest takeaway I get from the new article is that the people who were on the groud – the coaching staffs, the front office people with the teams, and the players – all loved football, and were willing to make sacrifices to give the league a chance, but eventually discovered that they could no longer trust the league’s management.
That’s one of those stories that you’d think would be planted by a PR firm, or from Charlie Ebersol to make the fans/people sympathetic to the AAF’s plight. But for some reason I think these were genuine stories and quotes coming from a genuine place from Conor Orr.
So sad, man. I hope one player from the AAF makes it to the NFL to carry that banner
I found a web site that tracks which AAF players got signed to NFL teams:
There are a lot. By my count almost 50 players have signed with a team. I’m not counting the “expecting to sign” players.
I guess I should have specified, I meant “makes and plays on an NFL team”.
I want SOMETHING of the league to be a success…
Yes, it’ll remain to be seen who gets cut by the end of preseason, who is on the practice squad, who is just added to a roster for “depth”, etc.
The AAF MVP *may *stick with the Browns as the 3rd QB. Maybe.
not sure why anyone thought this would work even though they played in the spring. None of the other spring FB leagues made it.
They could have made the next week’s payroll. Dundon panicked!
By all accounts it WOULD have worked if dudebro hadn’t been a thief and not gotten seized by the feds.