A group of sports minded entrepreneurs, funded to the gills and eager to break into the world of bigtime sports, announces they’re launching a new football league. The league will play in the spring shortly after the Super Bowl, will provide opportunities for players to continue playing the game they love, and will provide fans with a fun, exciting brand of football in contrast to the stodgy, boring old NFL (No Fun League).
If it sounds familiar, it’s not just a case of déjà vu. We’ve been down this road a handful of times and the results are usually the same. The new league begins its first season with loads of interest, great crowds, and a metric butt load of media coverage. Then by week three, no one gives a you-know-what. Before you know it, teams are struggling to get 6,000 fans to show up for free kazoo night at the Enormodome.
“We know all the others failed, but this time it’s different,” they say. “You’ll see.”
Actually, this time, it might really be different.
Enter the Alliance of American Football (AAF), the newest professional football league on the scene. With hopes of capturing the hearts of American football crazies and filling the long, dismal gap of time between the Super Bowl in February and kickoff in late summer, the AAF will begin its inaugural season on February 9— one week after the Super Bowl.
The league was co-founded by Charlie Ebersol, the son of sports television legend Dick Ebersol and a talented television executive in his own right, and Bill Polian, a Pro Football Hall of Famer with four decades of front office NFL experience. Even with the battlefield that is professional football littered with the corpses of failed efforts, these two men decided it was a good time to launch a new professional football league.
Beginning with eight teams located in San Diego, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, San Antonio, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta and Orlando, the AAF raised hopeful eyebrows among potential fans when Steve Spurrier was announced as the head coach of the Orlando Apollos. Other big names followed, such as Mike Martz (San Diego Fleet), Dennis Erickson (Salt Lake Stallions), and Rick Neuheisel (Arizona Hotshots), giving the league some early credibility.
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