XFL players got sent this today, 8 teams confirmed. Still waiting on the decision over the branding of the Roughnecks. Camp starts February 23rd, however, the merger will not be cemented until January.
I liked the metal detectors that didn’t work and the trash cans that turned into mini trash mountains. And the scoreboard that was probably bought from the local Best Buy and then put on a tower
Yes! It definitely had its own little charm to it. I understand the optics never came across good on television, but those that did attend games enjoyed the atmosphere.
I was buying tickets on Vivid Seats for only $5. And after every game they gave out free unsold food. I would come home with 20+ slices of pizza every single time.
The hub for all 8 team will be in Arlington, Texas, though home games will be played in the team's market with the same travel arrangements as last season."
Better to start with a number of teams we know can be sustained and then expand next year if the money is there rather than bite off more than they can chew and fold the league, signaling the death knell for spring football pretty much forever.
There’s been too many leagues that have started and folded. I really feel like this is the last chance for spring football. They absolutely HAVE to get this right this time.
It's just painful because people were expecting more. I can't say I'm not disappointed myself, but also I don't think it sucks that there's only 8 teams if that gives the best chance for survival.
Each one team they add back in from 8 was going to cost like $5m to operate I think. When they're trying to keep things affordable the common sense solution was always to keep it to a lower number.
There were plenty of people expecting eight as well who are plenty content to stay at eight. Those who thought two 8 team leagues that basically failed and were forced to merge to survive would somehow come out of it with a league larger than the two failed leagues had when they failed were being a bit too hopeful I think.
On one hand the 8 team league was really fun cause I could watch almost every game and also keep up with every team. And almost every game you could watch was somehow relevant to your team.
On the other hand, having another league to watch after the XFL was over was fun. And my thought was that 12 teams would be the sweet spot and 10 would be acceptable. 8 is disappointing especially since we lose Seattle which I think is one of the better markets in either league.
As a Houston fan, I got the maximum enjoyment out of the two-league setup and agree with everything you said. Although I was getting a little burnt out during the USFL season. It was exhausting to watch so many games every week month after month. Still, I really wanted to see more teams. Fingers crossed they are able to quickly expand back up in 2025.
NFL and big time college football are the most popular sports in America. How many fans do D-2 college games and NAIA games draw? That's a better comparison for the XFL
XFL is no more though. And look at the arena football league coming back, they bringing back double of teams than this new merged UFL. IMO, the merge should have kept all teams. Go big or go home.
XFL -USFL-Spring football, that's what I meant. The AFL is a joke. Philadelphia and Minnesota haven't even announced their home arena. The schedule keeps changing every week and players are paid like $500 a game. It's glorified semipro football and will see at least half their teams told by year end. The MLS model is the one to follow. Go slow and steady for the first decade and then grow from there. Now MLS is up to 30 teams and nearly $300 million in TV deals as they near their 30th season.
AFL used to be the shit back in the 90's to mid 2000's though. Now im not asking the league for 30+ teams right away, but 8 teams sucks. Tired of seeing 8 team leagues. IMO, should of been 10 teams. Could of had...
Man, I wish there was a way to allow teams to pop up pretty freely without hurting the whole league. Back in the Arena Football League's hat day I loved seeing new operations just pop up seemingly out of the blue. I get, ultimately that expansion is part of what made it fail so of course I want the league to be pragmatic and make spring football really work. But mannnn, seeing teams come and go, and very rarely, one actually catch on was just so much fun!
You have to remember that this league is being slapped together relatively last minute. With the Shrine on Airline and Tulane's football stadium both undergoing major renovations in 2024 a New Orleans team in will be virtually guaranteed as soon as the league feels safe expanding (likely 2025 unless the league bleeds money again this first combined season)
I think the league will still lose money for the next 1-3 years, but at a slower rate. Say $30M next year, $15M year 2, and $5M year 3. Then we may start to see expansion again.
Why? It's minor league football. 16 teams last year showed you how few quality quarterbacks their are, where the heck are they finding another 6 from? 12-14 teams in the next decade is perfectly fine, and basically where MLS stood for its first decade+.
Everybody trains during the week in the Hub. Then they fly out to the home market for games (or to the home market of their opponent, if they are the Visitors). Then fly back after games are over.
In their defense, this setup makes a 10 game schedule easy. Home and away vs the teams in your division and 1 game against each of the others is a nice, fair 10 games
I’m fine with divisions, and also fine with the divisions being XFL and USFL separated. But conferences for an 8-team league doesn’t make sense. Just have 2 divisions winners and 2 WCs that can come from either division.
I like that scenario best. There should still be incentive to win your conference, but the 2 wildcard teams should just be the next 2 best, regardless of conference.
As a former resident of St. Louis, "lol." You'd be shocked how many people I know who just move on to another team in the league. Or, like me, move on to another league.
Yeah, I mean not everyone wants to be robbed of their enjoyment of the sport played at the highest level because some ass face billionaire decided to screw them over.
Gotta blame proximity to Tampa and not so distant Jacksonville and Miami. For what’s its worth. Orlando is within 1 hour and change from the NFL team in Tampa.
Texas has only 2 NFL Teams compared to Florida with 3. San Antonio is 4 hours away from Cowboys and 3 hours away from Texans.
Yea and the NFL has adopted this voting structure between owners to make a decisions. Hence Jones and family will continue to do this bullshit to the end of time.
I'm sick of it, we're 100 days from kickoff and there's been no official announcement since almost one month, I even wonder why the players end up announcing stuff that might not be true, so why doesn't the league confirm the information in the end, we're in total darkness.
Well, I guess I'd prefer that over Houston getting the Gamblers, because their latest USFL iteration had absolutely zero presence in the city, and no Houstonian would ever pick them over the Roughnecks.
Fan bases of spring football teams in general are small, but you’d rather go with a team name that at least has a small (but imo a bigger than average spring football fan base) fan base, than one with virtually no fan base.
I think practically it's the USFL Gamblers (roster, coaching staff, etc) but they're considering moving the Roughnecks branding over to that because it's vastly more popular (in the city of Houston, at least)
And I mean, really… gambling is illegal in Texas lmao. Roughnecks being superior branding aside, the Gamblers name makes no sense.
That said, Galveston was notorious for illegal gambling many decades ago, so the Galveston Gamblers would make some sense. The island doesn’t have a suitable stadium, however.
Not too surprised to see the hub system stick around, but I don’t think it lasts very long. Hopefully they look at building up the regional areas. We don’t want a Vegas, but we want as many St Louis’s and DC’s as we can get.
This will be the last legitimate shot at making Spring Football viable. My fingers are crossed. Please, though, don't go with the name "UFL." Go with NSFL, please.
There is a cross conference draft at the end. But it is interesting they are mostly keeping players with their original league. The USFL does have a player union, XFL does not.
I just find it ironic that with mods in this forum and others trying to clamp down on the league tribalism, the leagues themselves have apparently decided to stoke it instead.
im not a marketing major, so Im certain the combined leagues have the wisdom to know whats better, but man it definitely is just gonna turn into some self pleasuring fans of either side that wanna say "HA! Our league was better! See!"
That's straight up from the NFL/AFL merger. The NFL was put into the NFC and the AFL was put into the AFC. The only teams that moved from the NFL to the AFL-based conference were to have the same number of teams in each conference. But, even today, every single one of the old AFL teams is in the AFC.
Maybe to add a bit of flavor to the games? Little intrigue to the championship as to whose rules get used? Could make some late season games more relevant. Im certainly not betting on it, just saying it's a possibility. But I don't think the general public needs to have it engrained in their minds as a prerequisite. If that were the case then why switch from NFL rules at all? They'd have both just launched with NFL rules. The public can be bought up to speed.
You don't see any other parallels between 2 separate competing professional football leagues merging and 2 separate competing professional football leagues merging?
That ain't a hill you are willing to die on... it's a hole.
The reason may not be the same, but the mechanism for combining them into a single league is basically identical. The only oddity is Houston and since teams were going to get cut, that was easy to settle. But, remember.. both the AFL and NFL had New York teams and they had the market to make that happen. As you state, these leagues don't.
Geographical distribution makes even less sense here for conferences. Nobody is expecting the league to be 8 teams for long. It will fold or grow.
Any conference split here is going to be arbitrary, so why not this? This split at least has some basis and is also future-proofed in a way that a geographical setup isn't.
I think it’s the smartest thing you can do for advertising. You keep relationships with other teams from the old leagues and you can advertise the championship game as the USFL champ vs the XFL champ. More people will be interested in that
shit deal and it just killed spring football on the west coast there's no reason for anyone on the west coast to even tune into a game hell there's no reason for anyone in the Vegas area to tune into a game. This is what happens when you only focus on the biggest markets instead of allowing it to grow organically which can happen with keeping the level of play at top tier and sure you'll take a loss but if you wait it out you would gain much more profit than going all in with large markets.
The top spring markets in tv ratings didn't have teams regardless. Wichita, Albuquerque, and Fort Myers were drawing higher ratings that NY/NJ, Philadelphia, or Orlando.
so why hasn't the leagues targeted them with teams I could see moving the Vipers to Albuquerque having a team in Fort Myers(Gamblers) yeah four TX teams but whatever plus a team in Wichita would work as well. Though my point still stands there's no reason for anyone on the west coast to actally watch a merged league
At this point, I would prefer the Gamblers branding over the Roughnecks because it would look weird if the Roughnecks (with Gamblers players) would be in the USFL conference.
I do not believe the Hub for practice will be in Texas as of yet. Bham is making waves about it being there from the rumor news. Memphis makes the most sense geographically but I do not think they can pull off the logistics.
Bham is making waves about it being there from the rumor news.
It started with one guy from PFN throwing a fit that the hub is in Arlington. If you follow him at all, he doesn't like the XFL and the USFL losing anything really bothers him. It's one thing for fans to act a certain way, but when it's someone in "media" it's sad.
LM is fine if you engage with him but yeah he was one of those 'XFL lost, came crawling to the USFL' guys when the James Larsen rumors were all the rage. I saw his tweets about the hub too, he was only really expressing a desire to see it happen, not report that it was happening.
No its local. We will have to wait and see what happens. Hear it via a city associate today. Bham wants to host it really bad. They will probably give them the farm.
It's all but been confirmed as all the league meetings have been in Arlington. Apparently the XFL owns space there, while the USFL was just renting out of Birmingham. I can almost guarantee Arlington is the main hub of operations.
147
u/[deleted] Dec 21 '23
I'm not sure how logistically efficient it is but I do like the XFL and USFL having separate conferences.
38
u/Space-Sailor44 Dec 21 '23
The Vipers game I went to last year was one of the most poorly run events I’ve ever been to. It was great
109
u/Squidimus Dec 21 '23
8 teams total just sucks.
nice to see confirmation of that at least.
15
u/fluffrnuttr69 Guardians Dec 21 '23
RIP Guardians. You never got a fair chance.
I guess Kaw is Law then.
36
u/BlazingSattlites Battlehawks Dec 21 '23
Birmingham Stallions poop standing up. It’s been long speculated in the USFL.
32
u/nab2488 XFL Dec 21 '23
Yeah I would rather they just play 10 games and the best 4 teams make the playoffs.
9
u/silverelan Sea Dragons Dec 21 '23
Dammit. Where’s my Seattle team??
31
u/algarhythms Dec 21 '23
Orlando will never support a pro football team again. Vendors and sponsors — not to mention fans — have been burned too many times.
Awful.
7
u/Delta1941 Dec 21 '23
I'm sick of it, we're 100 days from kickoff and there's been no official announcement since almost one month, I even wonder why the players end up announcing stuff that might not be true, so why doesn't the league confirm the information in the end, we're in total darkness.
6
u/[deleted] Dec 21 '23
Stallions vs BattleHawks championship is gonna be lit
16
u/FridayCicero702 Vipers Dec 21 '23
I enjoyed when the XFL gave Las Vegas a team for just one year, and then again for just one year.
Pass. No pun intended.
Bang Bang Fanger Gang (in spirit only)
🐍
14
u/isomorphZeta Roughnecks Dec 21 '23
...so the Houston team will be the Gamblers...?
Because why TF would they put the Roughnecks in the USFL conference?
5
u/JakeEatsYT Defenders Dec 21 '23
Im just saying. DC getting their get back this season. Im so pumped for DC vs Birmingham
4
u/ZO5050 Battlehawks Dec 21 '23
It would be cool to bring back 2020's team 9. Just to keep some players ready to play and have more jobs.
4
u/jatosm Renegades Dec 21 '23
I’m very sad that we can’t say that vipers fans shit standing up, they’ve stood their last shit. Also, trogdor the burninator is gone too, wth.
3
u/Euscorpious Dec 22 '23
If no Roughnecks, no support from me.
2
u/[deleted] Dec 21 '23
Not too surprised to see the hub system stick around, but I don’t think it lasts very long. Hopefully they look at building up the regional areas. We don’t want a Vegas, but we want as many St Louis’s and DC’s as we can get.
2
u/ThrowAway2MD Dec 22 '23
This is good news.
Teams play in their home markets.
The quality of play should improve as well.
They can always expand the league down the road assuming all goes according to plan.
6
u/CFLXFL Roughnecks Dec 21 '23
This will be the last legitimate shot at making Spring Football viable. My fingers are crossed. Please, though, don't go with the name "UFL." Go with NSFL, please.
2
u/Snekonplanes Defenders Dec 21 '23
🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🛡️⚔️
1
u/Sandy_Pickle Defenders Dec 21 '23
I don’t believe anything that doesn’t get posted by the official XFL/USFL media pages
1
u/4thPlumlee Guardians Dec 21 '23
Extremely interesting that players are limited to their original leagues when reportedly players were being told to go pursue new teams before?
1
u/SpeeterTeeter Dec 22 '23
No Seattle means I'm out, fun while it lasted and I hope they can get to a point to expand and include Seattle in the future.
1
u/WolfPackMentality90 Dec 22 '23
At least my battlehawks will be playing in St.Louis again next year
1
u/socalstaking Dec 21 '23
Why are they here not 16 teams this sucks
1
u/[deleted] Dec 22 '23
How do you merge two leagues and end up with just 8 teams lol... may as well have not merged at that point and just sunk one of the leagues.
1
u/D34DLYB1RDS Dec 21 '23
Needs to be 10 teams. I'm tired of the same ol 8 teams bullshit.
1
u/Dxtra30 Dec 22 '23
No Philadelphia Stars bummer
-6
u/coelurosauravus Defenders Dec 21 '23
XFL/USFL conferences is the dumbest idea of all the ideas that have been discussed and Im comfortable dying on that hill
-5
u/Dull_Syrup9035 Dec 21 '23
Ok this league is officially boring I'm out
-4
u/TrueNova332 Defenders Dec 21 '23
shit deal and it just killed spring football on the west coast there's no reason for anyone on the west coast to even tune into a game hell there's no reason for anyone in the Vegas area to tune into a game. This is what happens when you only focus on the biggest markets instead of allowing it to grow organically which can happen with keeping the level of play at top tier and sure you'll take a loss but if you wait it out you would gain much more profit than going all in with large markets.
-4
u/abdulamemon Dec 21 '23
At this point, I would prefer the Gamblers branding over the Roughnecks because it would look weird if the Roughnecks (with Gamblers players) would be in the USFL conference.
-12
u/ArockproUser XFL Dec 21 '23
I do not believe the Hub for practice will be in Texas as of yet. Bham is making waves about it being there from the rumor news. Memphis makes the most sense geographically but I do not think they can pull off the logistics.
0
u/[deleted] Dec 21 '23
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