Also true. When the Predators randomly shut their operations down it came out that the AFL was failing and in the process was screwing over their teams for this, that and the other thing.
Ironically enough the Preds are back now in another random-ass football league.
An announcement on the AFL is supposed to be made today at 5 where it’s assumed they’re going to announce the league is folding. Spurrier is apparently pretty mad about it, telling the Orlando Sentinel they were promised the league could run for three years without making money.
Soooo I guess that makes the Apollos the default champs? Woo hoo! Champs baby!
Beyond that, doing that, they could have cooperated with the NFL, if they were willing, to have had the championship game right before the NFL preseason starts, setting up the AAF as a sort of appetizer for the NFL season. Plus, it would have set up the players well to be in good shape prior to training camp (assuming they weren’t too beat up).
Exactly. The last thing I want is more football after having endless college bowl games, college national championship, NFL playoffs, and then the Super Bowl.
Even in the major American sports leagues, in the modern (post-WWII) era, there have been teams which have fallen apart financially, in fairly spectacular (and embarrassing) fashion.
In 1952, the NFL awarded an expansion franchise to Dallas, the Texans. After losing a bunch of money, the owners turned the franchise back to the NFL halfway through the season, and the team played its last two “home” games on the road (one in Akron, one in Detroit). At the end of the season, the league dissolved the team, though many of its assets (and players) went to another expansion team for 1953 – the Baltimore Colts.
In 1969, MLB expanded to Seattle, with the Pilots. The Pilots weren’t ready to play in 1969; their start date got moved up because of pressure from Kansas City (the other expansion team) to start play earlier. They played in a run-down minor-league stadium, the owner refused to put money into the team, and after one season, the team was sold and moved to Milwaukee.
Not only that it had CBS tv support, a media that seemed to support it, and an alleged backing from the NFL. So to not even finish a season makes it a bigger joke than even the WFL season 2.
Minor league football will only work if each team sponsors a Farm Team in its market for fans who can’t afford NFL tickets. Sadly there’s really very little incentive for them to do so.
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You know, I would think there has to be more to this than is out right now. The league had the players, structure and, most importantly the TV deals to make it a success. The people running the show had to have accounted for low attendance…but why wouldn’t you start the league with enough money to make it through a first season if not a single person attended the game? That way, any attendance is cherry.
Doudon will get a lot of heat for this for basically buying the app and then killing the league, but I think the GMs (Polian and Ebersol) claimed there was A LOT more money in the league than there actually was. Hell, at this rate, I’ll give the XFL a fighting chance to survive if only because Vince can look at this league and use it as a worst case scenario.
I suspect you’re right. The fact that they were apparently in danger of not making payroll after their first week struck me as more than a little hinky (as did their claim that the hiccup was due to processing issues with the payroll company, not lack of cash), when coupled with bringing in Dundon (and $250 million) at the very last minute.
In the end, it winds up feeling very much like Dundon effectively engineered a hostile takeover and liquidation of the league. I’m not sure if the premature shutdown of the league represented “we’re out of cash, we’re bankrupt” (which is what is usually the case when minor-league teams or leagues suddenly go out of business), so much as Dundon deciding that he’d gotten what he wanted out of it, and seeing no reason to continue throwing money at it.
Their first mistake was allowing him to come in and give him control of the whole league. I am not a business man, but you don’t give that much control to a random investor midway through your season.
