Can a new football league work with USFL and World Football being marginal against NFL? How could it compete?

It would be difficult to establish a second major professional football league in the United States.

Lately I've been reading Michael MacCambridge's book "America's Game" which is kind of a history of pro football, and the NFL since the NFL has always been the U.S.'s dominate pro football league. However his book does also discuss other alternate leagues that have arisen during the NFL's history: the All-American Football Conference; the American Football League; the World Football League; and the United States Football League, and tells what MacCambridge thinks went right and what went wrong with those leagues. So what follows is a combination of his opinions and some of my own too:

To start a successful new professional football league you would need:

1. A group of wealthy owners, who were ambitious for the longterm, but not too ambitious for the first five years. (It might be hard to find a group of wealthy men like this, because most wealthy men are extremely ambitious.)

- The AAFC, in the 1940s, was brought down because the Cleveland Browns owner was wealthier than the other owners. The Cleveland Browns coach was way, way more competitive than the other coaches, not leaving any stone unturned in an effort to win. And the Browns were even allowed to bend certain rules, like sneaking around the league roster limit. Result, the Browns won all three AAFC Championships, putting the league which was percieved as uncompetitive, out of business.

- In the 1970s, the WFL was undermined by a maverick owner who started signing NFL players, and trying to compete with the NFL at the NLF's level right away. Originally the WFL's owners had agreed to start slow, remain small, and remain in alternative markets to the NFL.

- In the 1980s, the USFL originally looked promising, playing in the Spring. But they were brought down by a group of owners who wanted to move the games to the Fall; and apparently thought that they could force a merger with the NFL by moving their games to the Fall, and filing an anti-trust lawsuit.

2. A strong league commishioner who can reign in the owners personalities, and keep a fair, competitive league.

- Better more stable commishioners helped the NFL fend off the AAFC, the AFL, the WFL, and the USFL. All of those leagues suffered, somewhat, from bullheaded, maverick owners to didn't want to do what was best for the league as a whole. The NFL, particularly when Pete Rozelle was commishioner, had a strong commishioner who could keep his owners in line working for the good of the league.

3. A broadcast agreement with one or more major television networks.

- This may be hard, particularly since the NFL is currently giving a 'cookie' to each of the major broadcast companies. But most of the NFL's money comes from television broadcast rights; and any league that expects to compete is going to have to find a fairly substantial broadcasting contract.

4. Home game blackouts for each team in it's own market.

- This is the only way to insure a good turn out at the home stadium. If fans can watch it on TV, they often won't come to the stadium.

5. While the Spring schedule would allow some New League franchises to be placed in NFL towns, the New League would be wise to seek to place as many teams as possible in markets that don't currently have pro football like:

Los Angeles

Las Vegas

San Antonio

Memphis

Orlando

Birmingham

for instance.

6. Promote fan loyalty by making it easy for a team to keep its current players, if they can afford to resign them, and want to.

- Here's one the NFL is poor at, in recent history, after the advent the salary cap. I think that if anything the player movement and unstable rosters have hurt fan loyalty.

Looking at historical examples, we saw that the AFL was able to compete with the NFL and forced a merger. That, however, was a different time. Since then the NFL has become huge and there's no way a league can compete head to head.

The USFL was able to be successful because they competed in the off-season. They had people that were willing to throw big money at players (although they supposedly had a salary cap) and were able to get some big names, while not competing directly. The decision to go against the NFL in the fall may have happened after the league was doomed anyways, but it made certain the league was done.

The World Football League, also had marginal success in different markets. Again, it wasn't really competing head to head.

The Arena League continues to exist, basically because it doesn't compete directly with the NFL and even has some blessing from the NFL. They are also offering a somewhat different product, but still football.

The XFL tried to come up with something too different and failed.

In order to compete, a new league will only suceed if they don't play in the fall, and they offer something slightly different from what the NFL is doing. The NFL is too huge now for any upstart leagues to give them pressure.

Football is far and beyond the most popular sport in the United States, so the market for another league is certainly there. However, the NFL is also, in my humble opinion, the strongest Professional sports league in the world. The new league must avoid past failures that have hurt the leagues you mentioned. There are many problems I see, but I will just detail a few.

1) Scheduling and football conflicts

Most parts of the country spend their Friday nights watching High school football religiously, so Cuban's plan to have Friday Fall games is not a brilliant idea. I already watch football all day on Saturday and Sundays, so unless the league plans on showing games on Tuesday or Wednesday, no one will tune in. The double edged sword is that if games are on Tuesday and Wednesday, no one will come. The only place for it has to be the spring, where Sundays offer up the joys of bowling and men drivng in circles.

2) The Donald Trump Effect

Is Cuban just trying to force the NFL to give him a professional franchise? The downfall of the USFL in part was the arrogance of its main owner. Just because David took down Goliath once, it doesn't mean that he could do it again. The NFL is powerful, and right now unless you are in LA has no need to expand its US market. Does Cuban want to compete or join? Becuase the latter isn't an option, and will most likely result in a nice $3 check in his mailbox.

3) B-Movie players

The USFL had the advantage of throwing money at the players it took from the NFL. Herschel Walker, Jim Kelly, and Reggie White were future Hall-of-Famers, (in hindsight, Reggie and Jim were) and the USFL took them and could market good football because these were the best players. In Cuban's plan, they would be picking off guys that went lower than the first round. So average players and maybe an occasional superstar, which is the formual for another pro league in the United States...Major League Soccer. You don't draw fans with B talent, and you don't pay better players without fans.

4) The XFL

There also has to be a decision as to whether or not it is a "professional" football league. The XFL drew out the village idiots (myself included) for the first game, and then the more football savvy ones realized this isn't football. The rules suck, they use a colored football, and Vince McMahon is satnding on the sidelines. They would have to legitimze the league, let's market it as the Diet NFL. Same great taste, no egos. Make it family friendly, cheap, and utilize non-NFL markets that love football. (Omaha, Louisville, San Antonio, and similar smaller markets with football passion)

My idea would be to sell it as a Developmental league for 4th round to undrafted picks and players who are recovering from injury and teams don't want to risk it. Take players on loan from the NFL and then send them back when desired, so it becomes like European soccer. Rabid fans can be found in smaller cities, and are more likely to watch a sport than the people of New York who has two teams already. Staying small is the best way to avoid the NFL's big guns and to maximize profit while giving a good product to fans.

Right now it is only in the planning stages and nothing is definite. The way Mark Cuban has explained it...The league will have 8 teams. They will play on Friday night, a night typically dominated by high school football. They will look to sign players who were drafted below the second round and free agent players. They would also look to sign players cut after training camp and preseason. He also explains that with the salary cap issues in the NFL the new league can afford to pay more money to those types of players. Whether this new league will be successful, or even get off the ground, is anyones guess. We have see from previous examples, (XFL, WFL and USFL) that they almost always do not, the one notable example being the AFL which was able to merge with the NFL.

It depends on how long the owners can take a loss. The only thing that can help is they are putting these teams in cities that don't have NFL teams. That will create some fan base, but it also depends on the quality of the players that go there. They have to convince premium players to come to their league instead of the NFL. We are talking 40 million dollars to a number one pick. and no less than 20 for the last pick in the first round of the draft. It will be a hard sell, since the NFL season will be going on at the same time as the UFL. Like I said, the big question is can they get quality players to come to this league. If they pull a bunch of college rejects that couldn't make it in the NFL, they will fail, i.e. the XFL. I know a great stadium in Pontiac, MI that isn't being used, maybe they'll put a team there, so I don't have to watch the Lions every Sunday.

As long as it gets considered real football and not minor league. If the scores are reported. If the league is competitive, the best players will play in th US and not Europe in the spring time. The XFL failed because of the rule changes and how the media treated it. The XFL should have changed the punt rules and the fair catch rules. The forward motion did nothing, and the bump and run and PAT run or pass from the one made it a defensive dominated game. The rule requiring the ball to be ran out of the end zone on returns made it interesting, but more defensive dominated. The majority of people that watch the NFL are not true football fans. The people that are most likely to watch this new league will most likely be people involved with the game players, coaches, and students of the game. That is who ended up watching the XFL. The new league would be awesome, but it would interfere with Arena Football and cause its attendance and viewers to go down.

"There are few people happy with the dispute between the NFL and major cable companies in regards to the new 'NFL Network' cable channel. Last year, several big games could not be seen by millions of viewers because the NFL and major cable companies like 'Time Warner' and 'Comcast' could not agree on where to put this network and how much money is paid to the NFL by each cable subscriber. This week, the 'moment of truth' is at hand as millions of Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers fans will be unable to see these two great teams play next Thursday night because of this ongoing dispute. Both the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers will be going into Thursday nights game with an unbelievable 10-1 win/loss record and every NFL fan wants to witness this game on live television. However, most of the United States will not see this football game and the greed of both the NFL and major cable companies are equally to blame." It's an outrage. Eventually it will be like pay-per view boxing. We don't pay enough? The NFL doesn't make enough? I don't want a dish-it goes out every time it rains/snows in my area-already tried that. Here in Milwaukee I'll get to see tonight's game and up in Green Bay, too, but Madison and everywhere else is screwed unless they have the dish or go to a sports bar. C'mon kids...get in the car....too bad about school tomorrow.... Speaking of Madison... NOBODY in the state can watch the Badgers play anymore unless they have a dish....it's a sad state of affairs........

I dont think that it can. Personally I feel the NFL's fan base is too strong at this point. I see this ending like the XFL

it wouldn't.