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The Spring Football Formula

We’re three weeks into the USFL’s reboot season and it’s time to take a deeper look into the the league and what it needs to adjust to make it a successful league. The excitement was high for the first weekend over the Easter holiday weekend but momentum has stalled since then as ratings has dropped in a crowded spring sports season. I haven’t seen any games so I won’t be commenting on the quality of the play on the field, but more from a trends standpoint.

Since the AFL/NFL merger there’s been scores of professional leagues that have tried to capitalize on America’s thirst for football. Some have had successes, while most have flopped. The original USFL was the gold standard – it had several years of success and a cult-like following, but it ultimately failed in the end. The next most successful league was a complete change to the game – the Arena Football League. That version of the AFL managed to have the most longevity, but it was capturing on a niche group of fans rather than trying to grab your typical football fan. This iteration of the USFL is trying to rebuild and capture the renewed excitement the XFL started a few years ago and create a successful spring league.

There’s a few factors that have to come in to play to drive a successful football league outside of the traditional avenues – the NFL and College leagues. To have a spring league you have to accept that the quality of play will be a solid step bellow those two. So the league has to be an alternate path for players to go to the NFL. The next thing that the league needs to do is schedule their season at a time with low competition in the sports world. You’ll also need to have network tv and streaming deals – because if the games are hard to find, people will just look elsewhere for their entertainment. Finally, you need to build a local fanbase.

When you’ve got as much money in College and Professional football as there is now days – especially with NIL paying college players, you’re not going to get the top talent joining an upstart league like the USFL. So the pitch can’t be about quality football – though the quality does need to be good, at least at the level of a top 50 college team. When you’re selling the game to fans you can’t sell it on quality. You’ll have to sell it on heart. It’s people playing for another shot at greatness. Players playing for the love of the game. Anything that can connect with fans beyond a high level clean game. I’m not sure that the USFL has done this – I think the XFL did manage to do this. The XFL took their WWE hype machine and put it into football to make fans connect with the players and the heart they have for the game. Right now the USFL is trying to draw off nostalgia – which only will draw fans for a few weeks. At some point you need to connect fans with current players – and the ultimate dream they’re trying to achieve.

The USFL is missing the mark on their first task to create a successful league. But their biggest mistake thus far is their choice on the time of year they decided to have their games. The sports calendar is a busy one. There’s only a handful of gaps in the year that you can really build a new league – for any sport, much less one that is traditionally played in the fall. I’ve touched on these lulls in the sports calendar – and clearly the USFL bosses didn’t feel like following with that formula. They went with a bold decision to have their season line up with the Masters, MLB’s first month, and the start of the NBA and NHL playoffs. Needless to say they chose a time that’s far too crowded. The time of year when fans are craving football the most is when the season ends – right after the Super Bowl. Basically what the XFL did. Keep the season short enough to fit in the mid-February to the end of April timeframe and that’s when you’ll get the best chance for football fans to engage in the game. If they can find a way to work around the excitement of the NFL draft for the playoff games all the better. Right now though USFL games are getting buried with more established and traditional leagues for market share.

The one area the USFL is being most successful at though is the network tv deals. The networks learned from the relative success of the XFL that they have nothing to lose on filling up some time on an upstart football league. Sure the ratings are down, but Fox and NBC are realizing that having a lower rated football game is still better than the alternatives. Plus, they both have avenues to throw the games on alternate networks – Peacock for NBC and FS1 for Fox. Having the games relegated to Peacock though over NBC might hurt the USFL more than if their games were on FS1. So while they did better with this one, they still need to improve.

The area though that the USFL is doing the worst is the local fanbase. The reason the Arena Football League lasted as long as it did was because it built a group of die-hard fans in each city. They focused on the local growth first. The USFL isn’t even focusing on the local growth – it’s hosting every game in Birmingham. Yet for some reason they decided to give each team a name of a place they “should” grow a fanbase. There’s no way there will be a hoard of New Jersey Generals fans without any games happening in New Jersey. If you want to have a hub city to host the games you’ll have to take tips from the Big 3 Basketball tournament and tie teams to the players rather than a city.

While the USFL is failing at this step more than other leagues, most of the failed leagues messed this step up in another way. For whatever reason leagues think they have to play in major markets to be successful. But the problem is when there’s a new team in New York or LA there’s just too much competition for entertainment, but also for sports in general. Both cities have two basketball team, two baseball teams, two hockey teams, and two soccer teams – and that’s just for the major sports. But when you place a team in Birmingham or similar cities without any major sports teams there’s a better chance to draw in fans. The best strategy though is to go where the NFL just left – this worked for the XFL and even for the CFL when they tried to expand into the United States in the 90s. The most attended teams for those leagues were St Louis and Baltimore respectively. The point is, focus on places that want you – not where you want to be one day. The USFL only has 8 teams, they would have been better off placing teams in St Louis, San Antonio, Birmingham, Orlando, Portland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, and San Diego than having a major market presence.

While I’m always hopeful that one of these spring leagues will turn into a success, I’m not optimistic in the USFL’s chances. They’ve gone agains the main blueprint that helps minor and upstart leagues succeed. I’m also convinced that there needs to be a minor league for the NFL – it’s the only league that doesn’t have one since the NBA added the G League nearly 20 years ago. The USFL wouldn’t need to be associated with the NFL at first, but smart teams would look into using it as a way to develop late draft picks into potential roll players or even starters. The USFL is trying to capture on the excitement of their 80s version. Unfortunately though there’s just too much money in the NFL now so they won’t be able to pay players away from their well established counterpart. They’ll need to adjust drastically to ensure their longterm success. Otherwise they’ll join the graveyard along with the XFL (twice), the AAF, the UFL, and the original USFL.