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Are You Ready for Some (More) Football?
Back in the 1990s, Dick Ebersol helped form the short-lived XFL. Today, his son Charlie introduced the AAF. The Alliance of American Football kicks off in 11 months, with the first games on the Sunday after the 2019 Super Bowl. The games will be broadcast on CBS and a variety of digital platforms.
Why this might succeed where the XFL failed is the team the younger Ebersol has recruited. Legendary NFL executive Bill Polian; former players Troy Polamalu, Justin Tuck, Hines Ward, and Jared Allen; Peter Thiel and a large group of major investors; and, of course, Dick Ebersol, who created “Sunday Night Football.”
The league will have eight teams with the cities to be announced in the near future. Players will include undrafted collegians, former players returning to the sport, and free agents from other leagues. The AAF will also try to place players by region, so a receiver who gained fame on a Florida-based team will play for that state.
The play will be different from the NFL in several respects. No kickoffs — the ball starts on the 25-yard line — and no onside kicks. All extra points will be two-point attempts. Coaches get two video-review challenges.
Charlie Ebersol explained why he thinks the AAF will be a winner:
“Football is so dominant for six months of the year,” Ebersol says. “It even hides a number we focused on: millions of fans who stop watching the top five sports in America when football is off the air. Millions of football fans who don’t want to watch other sports.
“And there are 59 million who play fantasy sports, 29 million of them stopped when football ended.
“So what to do to really empower our fans? Fans are investors. They invest time and emotion and money … and what they get in return is the thrill of victory and agony of defeat. We wanted to empower the fans so they will be rewarded for being fans of their team, so fans have a real stake in the league.”
My tip? Avoid kneeling.
What are your thoughts — will you watch this new league?
Published in General
Their website says they’re a single-entity league, so they aren’t really any sort of alliance. Their parent company is an LLC, so it is a for-profit. For-profit single-entity leagues tend to never actually play, as they are formed in order to seek out venture capital that never materializes. I’m surprised to hear Founders Fund has a stake in it.
I’d much rather see someone try the franchising model again, as I can’t think of a single-entity league that grew into a major league.
Just doubling down on the stuff that’s killing the NFL. No kick-offs or on-sides kicks? They might’ve had me with no touchbacks or fair catches.
If these millionaires had any brains, they’d stop trying to start up new leagues for a dwindling sport and go full “jump the shark” mode with a singular event on the order of “Team Tebow vs Team Kaepernick”.
Still too dangerous. Ban tackling altogether. That will make it too easy to advance the ball, so ban carrying it as well, make the players kick the ball with their feet…