The USFL made its return last night.
For those who watched the game, what did you think? How was the level of play? Could the league last longer than one season?
Well, based on seeing this thread I went to their website to look at some clips of today’s game and … the stadium is empty. There are like 10 people in the stands - I’m not kidding.
At the bottom of the page was this statement about tickets: “Adult general admission tickets are $10, and each ticketed adult can receive up to three free tickets for children under the age of 15.”
So they are basically giving away tickets and the stands at this game are a complete ghost town. Must be really disheartening. I don’t know if last night’s game was any different.
The United States Football League? Wait, didn’t we do this already?. This ‘Eighties nostalgia is getting way out of hand, what with the Soviets Russians invading adjacent nations (and failing badly), nostalgia for terrible fashion choices, and now a revived sports league nobody asked for or cares about? What next, a Family Ties reboot with a Ukrainian refugees named the Kravchuks?
Stranger
Jeff Fisher is a head coach in the USFL.
That is all I have to say.
I watched about a quarter of the Generals/Stallions game last night. As is often the case with non-NFL pro games, the play was sometimes pretty good, sometimes pretty sloppy.
The stands weren’t empty, though I don’t know exactly how many people were there (or what the capacity is); then again, it was ostensibly a “home game” for the Stallions. (Despite the geographic names of the teams, all games this year are being played in Birmingham, Alabama.)
The broadcast is making a big deal out of being “closer to the action,” between the camera drones on/above the field, and having the coaches miked up. During the portion I watched, they focused on Generals coach Mike Riley; the announcers were silent for at least 5 minutes, and the only audio during that time was Riley, and other on-field sounds. And, honestly, it was kind of boring – most of what Riley was saying was play names and the like, but the viewer would have had no idea what those names actually meant.
So apparently the geographic names attached to the teams are fictional–the Michigan team, for example, will never set foot in Michigan. And the games will attract virtually zero attendance, except maybe when “Birmingham” plays. They’ve basically revived the 2020 NBA and NHL playoff bubbles, producing made-for-TV content in a neutral, empty stadium.
But I think we all saw enough of that for several lifetimes during the pandemic. I don’t see this as a winning formula.
The dogged insistence of some people to keep trying to make spring football leagues go is inspiring, in a way. It’s been one catastrophe after another, and yet they just keep plowing ahead, again and again, with these ill advised, hopeless efforts.
Either that or it’s some kind of “The Producers” type scam.
The funniest part is they couldn’t get the website usfl.com because it’s some news aggregator site or maybe something else, it’s entirely in Chinese or Japanese.
Indeed, it was both sad and depressing to see football in April. There’s enough other great sports right now; we don’t need football.
The XFL had it right I thought; it filled a gap between the end of football and start of baseball.
It was a shame that Covid hit in the middle of their inaugural season. Just bad luck. They’re supposedly starting again next year, run by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and his long-time partner (and ex-wife).
Both of those things can’t possibly be true, because Fisher is coaching Michigan and everyone knows Jeff Fisher is the coach to hire when you want to move your franchise to another city. Michigan seems to have solved that problem already.
No fans, no interest, no way it lasts 3 years. Hopefully they’ll sucker one certain former president into buying a franchise and that will be the final nail in the coffin.
Which is about nine more people than were in the stands for today’s Pirates-Nationals ballgame.
I’ll be mildly impressed if it lasts one.
I don’t exactly understand the point of the USFL thing. What are they trying to accomplish?
This is a question that has been many time and in many ways, my son. To find the answer you must look deep within yourself and find the empty place within your soul. Now, just imagine this emptiness filled with football, in the spring! Your joy will overflow and you will move closer to that perfect state of being.
Or it’s just a way to try and grab more money based on the assumption that there were millions of people and boatloads of money just waiting for spring football played by sub-par pro players.
The fact that this assumption has been proven wrong many, many times just proves that having lots of money doesn’t necessarily make one very smart outside of one’s core competencies. But sports networks hungry for (cheap) content will gladly encourage any sucker who wants to try.
The single city arrangement was only for this season. Next season all teams will play in their respective cities. And the ratings were in the 3 million range (two networks combined) which met expectations.
Yes and no.
It’s certainly true that all of the games are being played in Birmingham this year, and the geographic names are essentially meaningless for now. The league’s plan for next year, if they are successful this year, is to have half of their teams move to their designated markets for home games, and ultimately, they want all of their teams to actually be playing in their home markets.
Now, as has already been noted several times, the success rate for spring pro football leagues is really low, and starting their season in April, rather than February, pits them against the NBA and NHL playoffs, and the MLB regular season, instead of in a relatively quiet zone for sports.
So, I think the odds that the new USFL survives for more than a year or two is low. And, yeah, that will effectively mean that the Michigan Panthers will “never set foot in Michigan,” even if the league’s stated plan is that they eventually will.
One wonders if they’ve ever spoken to football fans. The way a lot of football fans get into the game, they need Spring and Summer to be relatively football free, or else you’d find a lot more divorces happening…
Also it seems there is this nice ‘seasons’ of the major American sports. Fall is for football and college football, coupled with the end of the baseball season. Winter is for the end of the football seasons and people shift their attention (somewhat) to basketball. Then you have March Madness, and the start of the baseball season and there you go.
The real test comes up this weekend.
The more recent attempts at a spring league hit or exceeded their ratings target for the first week only to see sharp declines in week 2 and beyond. I didn’t even remember Houston had a team nor that it had a game until 4 or 5 hours after it ended. April is solidly baseball time and/or maybe NBA
And even if they hit their undoubtedly low target numbers this week, it’s still an uphill climb. Folding after 3 seasons would be success beyond my expectations.
I was sure you were mistakenly thinking of the AAF but promptly discovered that I was the one misremembering. Hard to keep all these football leagues straight!
Upon quickly reviewing the XFL Wikipedia article I can’t stop wondering a) if they ever produced any Team 9 merch, and b) why I want to have some. A nice all-cotton crewneck sweatshirt, maybe.
It is hard.
If you had challenged me on that, I would have doubted myself and checked.
But I was reasonably sure, because I was a fan of the Seattle Dragons and bought some of their merch before the league shut down. Also, I get XFL updates through email. And I was legitimately bummed when they shut down, and cautiously optimistic when I got the email about The Rock starting it back up.
I barely watched the AAF.