Major League Football, will you watch?

The Game Room
1

Major League Football is the most recent incarnation attempt at a professional spring football league. It is the brain child of Wes Chandler, NFL wide receiver in the 80’s. Play is supposed to start in April, and all games will be broadcast on the Sinclair Broadcasting network (CW and MyNetwork channels).

http://www.mlfbmedia.com/

League initially will consist of 8 league owned teams and will play a 10 game regular season. Each team will have a 53 man roster. Players will earn $3,000 per game, for games won, and $2,000 per game, otherwise.

The locations of the 8 teams has not been finalized, and are currently identified by the head coaches:

Dave Campo
Charlie Collins
Ted Cottrell
Robert Ford
Wayne ‘Buddy’ Geis
Galen Hall
Larry Kirksey
Chris Miller

Key players that have been drafted for each of the 8 teams are:

Seems like a plausible model, but predicated on players only receiving an average of $25,000 each, and the possibility of catching the eyes of NFL scouts.

Not sure I’ll watch.

2

I won’t watch, baseball and NHL playoffs have all my attention then.

3

I’ll be game, I’m all for football however I can get it.

I loved NFL Europe back in the day and enjoy arena football. This will fill the gap nicely.

4

Here’s the problem: all of the college-eligible talent is still in college, and everyone else with even marginal professional-grade football talent is in the NFL. It’s not like the NBA where there’s only 360 - 450 active players at any given time; at 53 players per team, plus 5 practice squad guys, there are well over 1800 active NFL players. That pretty much sucks up all of the viable talent available. Even at the NFL level, the dropoff in quality between the starting-caliber players and the second and thirds stringers can be pretty enormous.

Over time, if a league managed to overcome the enormous hurdles of establishing a stable infrastructure, fanbase, and profitability, the talent problem could change if NFL-quality players coming out of college had an attractive alternative to the NFL, but frankly I don’t see that happening. Any startup league is going to be fielding full teams of college scrubs and NFL castoffs, and playing them against each other for a very long time before that happens.
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5

DCnDC, I share your concern about the quality of the product. Looking at the list of the franchise draft picks in the OP, play may more resemble the senior bowl, which I’ve never watched more than a few highlights of.

6

This league is going to have the same problems that the WFL, USFL, WLAF/NFL Europa, and XFL had; except for college intrasquad scrimmages, very few people are interested in football in the spring.

You might as well create a league consisting of 32 top-level video gamers playing the latest version of Madden. In fact, I wonder what sort of TV ratings a league like that would get (is there still a G4 channel, or something like it?).

7

There is a show on nfl network where people play Madden

8

Those listed in the OP are the biggest names in the league? Some higher profile former NFL flame outs would be more interesting. I’m thinking of guys like Terrell Owens, maybe even Ray Rice as it does not appear an NFL team will give him another shot. They’d have to be hurting for money or really desperate to get a scout’s attention.

In any case, I won’t actively seek out this product. But if I’m flipping through the guide and see there’s a game on, I’ll give it a look.

9

I had forgotten about Dan LeFevour. He had been a pretty big deal around here, with many predicting great success. Appears they were wrong.

10

I think it as the potential to be pretty good. I mean, consider that college football is very entertaining, and what, 5% of FCBS college players actually make the NFL? There’s tons of players who are almost but not quite good enough for the NFL who could make a decent living doing this. It’s a much leveler playing field on both sides of the ball.

11

I think the only way a spring league works if the NFL uses it as a minor league to develop talent, and players could actually get “called up” to an associated NFL team.
If not, then it is really just like opening a restaurant on the site of several previous failed restaurants.

12

I don’t see how this will fare any better than the other failed attempts listed above.

Create a product that you can’t find anywhere else, then maybe people will tune in. How about Old Time Foot Ball? Play 1880s-style foot ball, with old school rules and uniforms and scoring. Then you’ll have players adapting to a different style of play, who might end up being uniquely qualified to play in this league, rather than cast-offs, rejects and wannabes. Now *that *I would watch in the spring.

13

It’s worse than that. The Senior Bowl is for players most likely to be drafted, and looking at this page you can see that roughly 85%+ of the players in the Senior Bowl in the last decade get drafted, more than 10% of them in the first round.

Of the 8 players listed in the OP, 6 of them went undrafted or are projected to go undrafted, and of the 2 that were drafted into the NFL, Joe Adams recorded 1 reception for 7 yards and 1 rush for 4 yards in 3 years before he was out of the NFL, and Dan LeFevour never played a regular season snap.

14

I have always thought there is a place for spring football considering how popular it is. But when you look at how many of them have failed over the last 40 years, clearly thete isn’t. Nowadays football fans want to talk about the draft.

15

Oh man, Johnny Manziel will finally find a place to play ball this year!

16

As long as his city has some good bars and police cells to sleep it off.

17

That could actually be a major coup if they could pull it off. Get Manziel, bring in Tebow, try like hell to get RG3 in the mix, and that could generate some real buzz. I doubt any of that is going to happen, save for Tebow, but worth a shot. I hear Jeff George still thinks he can play…

18

I still think he might be a better option than Landry Jones!

19

Here’s a serious question. Why even have “home cities”? Why not just have four games each week at one-shot locations – particularly places that don’t have NFL teams like San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Memphis, St. Louis, etc. Instead of lackluster crowds of maybe 3,000, you’d have “events” that might get 15,000 fans.

20

I’d watch if Wes himself played, regardless of his age. He was a terrific WR, probably the most acrobatic I’ve ever seen.