Are you basically restricted to High School, College or NFL? Is there any middle ground, similar to the lower divisions in Association Football in most countries?
Not in any significant way, setting aside youth leagues of course. But the idea that one is “restricted” to only watching high school, college and pros is a strange concept. I understand that high school sports aren’t really interesting for most fans, but college football is everywhere. You can’t swing a dead cat on a Saturday in the fall without hitting a game.
The Canadian Football League (CFL) might be considered a “middle ground.” But otherwise, no, there are no semi-pro leagues.
ETA: About half the players in the CFL are from the US.
They have tried to have “lower division” leagues, like the XFL. They have all been colossal failures though.
There are and have been a variety of semi-pro leagues. They don’t last long, it’s a tough and expensive sport. Arena Football lasted a few years, and currently there is the women’s Legends Football League (formerly Lingerie Football League). These offshoots are weak forms of the game and have a hard time holding an audience. The USFL, WFL, and XFL were attempts to compete with the NFL that failed.
There are thousands of High School football teams and hundreds of college football teams, that’s plenty of opportunity to watch football if the NFL isn’t enough.
There are a number of Indoor Football Leagues, those might be considered “middle ground”.
Arena football is still around, and they have a TV contract - http://www.arenafootball.com/sports/a-footbl/sched/afl-a-footbl-sched.html
There are many semi-pro football leagues, all pretty small - http://www.semiprofootball.org/
Arena football is still around and if you get a chance, I highly recommend going to a game. It’s a lot of fun, lots of action.
And then there are small time semi-pro leagues, both indoor arena style football and regular American football. I have friends who coach and play for a team in the X-League, which is a semi-pro 4 on 4 indoor league. That’s starting to stray pretty far from NFL level football, but the games are fun to watch.
In many parts of the US, high school football can be just as popular (and lucrative) as many semi-pro leagues. Top-tier high school football coaches can earn six-figure salaries and the schools generate quite a bit of revenue from merchandise and concessions (of course most or all of that revenue goes straight back into the football program). In many small towns, it’s literally the only game in town.
I worked as scoreboard operator this spring for the Chicago Blitz, a semi-pro team in a minor indoor football league (AIF). The games were pretty exciting, though the presence of one or two talented players on a team would make a huge difference in the level of competitiveness of the games (i.e., an above-average quarterback, or a good defensive back, is all it might take for a game to be a blowout). The games I worked were probably drawing 300 to 500 attendees. It’s definitely a shoestring operation, and the league makeup tends to fluctuate quite a bit – the Blitz won their last regular-season game by forfeit, because the Atlanta team folded in mid-season.
A friend of mine works as statistician for several high school and semi-pro teams, including the Blitz, as well as the Racine Raiders, an outdoor semi-pro team.
I never understood why they tried to run stuff like the XFL against the NFL and College Football in the fall. That seemed so obviously doomed to failure I can’t even understand why they’d try. If they ran that shit from March through June they’d totally get a sustainable level of viewers. There are people who want football all year long but Arena ball won’t scratch that itch.
The USFL played a spring/summer season for 3 years in the 80s and enjoyed some success (and even won an anti-trust suit against the NFL). Their 4th session was to be played in the fall, head-to-head against the NFL, but the league folded before the season began.
The XFL actually started their season after the Super Bowl. So it ran from early February to the end of April. The NCAA men’s basketball tournament ended up being their biggest competitor.
This is false.
There are many other football leagues, both amateur and semi-pro all over Canada and the US.
Right in your backyard, there are teams that play in the Ontario Varsity Football League, the Canadian Junior Football League, and the Quebec Junior Football League produce players that go on to pro careers. There is also the National Capital Amateur Football Association.
The Ottawa Invaders are a semi-pro team in the Northern Football Conference which is also another “middle ground” for players.
So to answer the OP, no , you are not restricted to High School, College, and NFL for live competitive football.
You may also remember the semi-pro Ottawa Demon Deacons or the Ottawa Bootleggers (1988-1992) played in Empire Football League which is still operating.
What’s absolutely missing is a lower tier of the sport that is affiliated with the highest professional tier; US sports leagues (other than baseball) just don’t do that.
The Arena Football League is the closest thing you’ll find, but it’s very much a regional entity nowadays. The teams are largely though not exclusively in Florida and on the West Coast, where there is less interest in baseball and basketball.
It’s important to note that the AFL plays a different game under different rules. There are fewer players on the field at a time (eight rather than 11), and the field is only 50 yards long instead of 100 (and roughly half as wide, too.) There are also some more esoteric rule changes, like limited substitutions between offensive and defensive play and allowing some forward movement before the ball is in play.
Actually, as has been stated, both the USFL and the XFL ran in the spring. The USFL tried to move to the fall, but couldn’t get any of the TV networks, all of which had deals with the NFL, interested; part of its lawsuit against the NFL (where it was awarded $3 plus legal fees) was an attempt to require that the NFL break one of its TV contracts so that network would have to choose between the USFL and no football. There was also a World Football League in the mid-1970s, which I think played in the summer; it ended in the middle of its second season.
IIRC, at least one USFL owner joined the league under the impression that eventually it would play in the fall, and I have a feeling a number of owners joined not to compete against the NFL but to have their teams join the NFL the way the AFL did.
These leagues learned a lesson - despite what you claim, it turns out that not very many people are interested in watching football outside of the fall (and the few that do care only about major colleges’ “spring games.”)
A few years ago, there was a semi-pro team that practiced at the junior high school by my house. The players were small and not very fast, and none of the people who played quarterback was capable. I think they could have held their own against a top high school football team, but even a mediocre college team would have beaten them.
Actually the NFL is currently the only major US Sports League that doesn’t do that. Baseball has the most developed minor league system, but the NHL has formal affiliation agreements with the AHL and ECHL, and the NBA now has its own developmental league (the D-League.)
NFL is like the 800 lb gorilla now. But remember the AFL was able to survive vs. the NFL and they merged. And of course we had the ABA and WHL which also merged into the NBA and NHL.
I think now the leagues have so much money it’s much harder to start a 2nd league and compete .
Also the WFL was around in the 70s. They were probably the only league that had a team move during a season. A team moved from NYC to Charlotte.
I can’t believe everyone has overlooked the Legends Football League. 