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With the buzz growing around the new AAFL, is the U.S. ready for yet another American football league? The All American Football League thinks so.
What is it?
Football by any other name. The AAFL is hoping to attract football fans who need an outlet for professional football in the NFL's offseason.
What's the attraction?
Besides a spring and early summer season, the AAFL is associating itself with colleges known for football to attract college football fans in their offseason. This is critical to its approach because it intends to recruit players from those colleges. The idea is that if you closely followed a player's college career and they are now playing for the AAFL, you will want to follow their professional career as well. Each college's alumni and local fanbase will be offered ticket packages and other perks.
Where will the teams be located?
So far, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Tennessee, and Texas.
Try-outs for Arkansas, Alabama, Florida and Michigan have already been held, and depending on your source, some players have already been signed to teams. A regular season and playoff schedule is already set, though again, depending on your source, not all the venues for games have been finalized. Among the sites that are expected to host at least one game are Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, FL, War Memorial Field in Little Rock, AR and Ford Field in Detroit, MI.
Is there anyone well-known associated with the league?
Though the league commissioner and operations executives are not hired yet, the chairman of the Board of Managers is Cedric Dempsey, a former NCAA president. There is also representation from former college presidents and university system chancellors as well as Jack Lengyel, better known as the character played by Matthew McConaughey in We Are Marshall.
Wait, isn't there already football in the NFL's offseason?
Arena League Football (AFL) runs from March to June. NFL Europa has folded. The Canadian Football League (CFL) runs roughly from late June through November.
Will it work?
A lot of leagues have come and gone. The problem is that it costs a lot to run and maintain a football league. There are player and executive salaries, stadium leases and television contracts just for starters. The AAFL is a for-profit league and if it cannot operate at a profit, it won't stay around for very long. It is worth noting that the AAFL will not benefit from concession sales the way some professional teams do to boost their profits because concessions at the games will be operated by and for the host stadium. For what it's worth, beer will not be available.
Another hurdle the league faces is keeping the costs to fans down. Ticket prices for pro sports are a big turnoff, and the AAFL will have to find a way to keep ticket prices affordable and attractive. Ticket prices have been announced to be around $13 and there will be a big push for locals to buy "memberships" which gives them special perks such as VIP parking and special screenings of out-of-town games.
The AAFL has said it will televise games nationally, but there's nationally televised coverage and then there's national television. Just ask the NHL who are effectively buried on Versus, a channel that most people have never heard of.
The league can get a huge boost if the quality of the game play is high. Then, it stands a good chance of making it past the first season.
The real question is whether or not the AAFL model can work by staying local, and whether it even needs the support of a national fanbase. And you might also be asking, why bother at all? Is there really a void in the world of American football that is served by a new league? The AAFL thinks so. If not, it will be just another football league that comes and goes in the blink of a season.
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