Even if one of these leagues gets a foothold in to the U.S. market, and with the possibility of absorbing one or more of the teams from the other folding leagues, there will be be more compition for players, which could only hurt the CFL
From what I've read, it seems that the USFL has the best chance of succeeding. However, because of the past attempts of others, it will be a 'wait and see' attitude
New football leagues in the best of times are suspect, but now in a full fledged recession, I say slim and none and slim left the building a while ago.
Don’t know why some are still fretting over yet more (soon to be failure) leagues starting up in the states. Heck the NFL announced some layoffs in this bad economy. Been there…done that! AAFL? Won’t fly. UFL? same premise as AAFL, thus?..Won’t fly. And…USFL? Seriously!
Besides, the way things are going down here these leagues just might be banking on failure so they can get their hands on some ‘bailout money’
From what I've read, the AAFL and the New USFL will either cancel each other out, or merge at some point...there is a market for Spring Football in the US; as Vince McMahon found out with his XFL: whatever success that league had was not because he made it more like the WWE, it was simply because it was football, period. As long as these leagues don't try to outspend each other - or the NFL- they should do okay: there are plenty enough Americans like myself that simply don't care about other sports all that much, and would welcome more (non-traditional season) football...and the Arena League does not fill that need, as it is not (IMHO) as conducive to television as regular football is; it's fun in person, but too much like basketball when it's on the tube.
The UFL, playing on Friday Nights, is likely to just piss off a lot of people-especially in regions where High School Football is popular...and while H.S.FB isn't as big here in Wisconsin as it is in Texas, the idea that there would be something out there trying to draw people away from their local High School game just annoys the heck out of me; I hope they fail...besides, Fall belongs to the NFL and the NCAA; this new league will be perceived as trying to compete with the "Big Boys," even if that is not their intention; much the same as the CFL was mistakenly perceived during their brief sojourn south.
United National GRIDIRON League? Are they afraid of offending some Soccersnobs? Unless they're planning major expansion in Europe, it's called FOOTBALL in North America, dammit!
The AAFL was first proposed back in the early 90's with the Gliberman's as one of the potential owners. Game plan is the same and likely the result will be the same.
I have some news about this UNGL. They WERE calling themselves the UNFL but for some reason the NFL didn’t want to be associated with them even though they claim to be a “feeder” league. The other interesting thing about this league is that out of the eight teams only one is north of the Mason Dixon line and it’s located right in my hometown of Massillon Ohio. I just saw it in the paper two days ago. Here’s the link to their site.
http://www.ungleague.com/index.php
It’s the Brainchild of former Bills running back Joe Cribbs and ex CFL player Marvin Tomlin.
We'll see when the UNGL camps open up next week how solid things are. Been in email discussions with a few players that were drafted and they are taking a wait and see approach. The league also has a tie in with a fairly large scouting service which is one of the methods they contacted willing players to fill the teams. Could be a nice, easy way to build the game tape library for a few players.
I actually like that they are calling it a GRIDIRON league.
A universal term like that could be more inviting to a worldwide audience.
The WLAF/NFL EUROPE may have had a bigger audience if they didn’t call their sport “American Football”.
It probably either confused or just annoyed many international sportsfans.
How would you embrace something called “Japanese Hockey” ??
(and let’s just say it hypothetically looked like some bizarre mix of Lacrosse and Pop Idol)
Even if the sport seemed to be worth checking out –
the fact that it was called HOCKEY would be quite obnoxious, don’t you think?
The NFLE did have a dedicated following in its German cities.
It’s a shame they couldn’t have kept something in place there.
C’mon –
You didn’t find the idea of a Montreal Machine vs. Frankfurt Galaxy matchup even a little bit interesting?
I would have thought that calling it “American Football” in the title was to appease “international” sports fans, seeing how so many (not all, I didn’t say all; or even a majority)Europeans get in a snit over the fact that we would even dare -with our North American arrogance- to use the word “football” by itself to describe anything other than Soccer. Maybe they would have been more receptive to “The World League of Not ‘Proper’ Football?”
Hi,
As european, the end of the NFLE was a really bad news but the problem was the league and not the coverage by televisions, ...
With a too big presense of German teams, the NFLE was totally cutted by the rest of Europe! If you want to create an european championship of football, create teams around Europe to have supports everywhere...
In Europe, you have some great "national" championships (England, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, ...). Follow the link http://www.toppsfootballcollector.be/fr/liens/ to find some european football teams...
The "level of play" of many teams is not really high but some great teams (Galaxy Frankfurt - Admirals Amsterdam - Dragoons Barcelona, ...) is similar to the CFL.
What have killed the NFLE? No expansion and no real coverage. To compare, that's similiar questions about the CFL expansion.