AAFL - Anyone Heard of This New Football League?
 

We had a discussion about that other league hoping to challenge the NFL, but I had not heard of this one until I read this article this morning. This seems like a more solid and realistic idea for a league, IMO.


Article published Jun 27, 2007

New football team may play at FSU
By Steve Ellis
DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER


More than Florida State scrimmages may be played in Doak Campbell Stadium next spring. The All-American Football League, which seeks to place professional teams in college towns, has approached Florida State officials about having a team play in the stadium.

Only players with a four-year college degree could participate and each would be paid $100,000 according to FSU Director of Athletics Dave Hart. The 10-game regular season is expected to run from late April into early June. A four-team playoff and July championship game would follow. Five or six games would be played at Doak Campbell Stadium. The league, which plans to field eight teams, originally wanted to debut in 2007 and now is hoping for a spring 2008 start.

"We have made a commitment in principle," Hart said. "If and when this should become a formal entity, we wanted every consideration to be a participant."

The agreement would include a $3 million guarantee. The league would cover game-related expenses and repair any damage to the field.

Former ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan, one of the league's board members, first approached Hart three years ago. Representatives of the league, including board chairman Cedric Dempsey, former NCAA president, met with Hart, FSU President T.K. Wetherell and others in Tallahassee about the possibility more than a year ago. Hart said he was contacted recently by Marcus Katz, financial backer of the league and a former Georgia football player.

According to the AAFL Web site, it has signed option contracts with the University of Tennessee, Purdue and North Carolina State and has a contract with Legion Field in Birmingham. The University of Florida has received a letter of agreement. Many players would come from FSU and area schools.

The first tryouts are in the Citrus Bowl in Orlando next week.

I'm guessing nobody has heard of this.

I've heard of it some. There's been minor discussion on the State board since State seems to be interested in the project and letting the AAFL use Carter-Finley. Some degree of irritation mostly related to the fact that it would be expected that ex-Carolina players would be playing for the team and thus, C-F would be their "home" field.

Can't be any worse than the dear departed Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks of the We-LAFf.

I'm surprised, since we have a bunch of die-hard college football fans and this league appears to be setting up shop in college towns.

If it flops, it'll flop mightily. Can you imagine what even 10K fans would look like in Tennessee's stadium? It would make the WNBA look like Michael Jordan at the Georgia Dome.

I've heard of it. The league's commissioner, Jason White, told me the draft would be October 29.

Probably something like graduation day?

My memory could be completely wrong in trying to recall the name of the loon on the Maximum Football board, but this isn't the same Jason "Great" White who wanted to drive around a van full of computers and charge people to play MF was it?

Never seen an outdoor graduation of that magnitude. In Florida (at least FSU and UF), graduation is held at the basketball arenas. No one wants to be outside in May in Florida.

Umm....we need one of *those* smilies.


From Wiki:

"The league was unveiled at a press conference in New York City on July 26, 2006. Its commissioner is Cedric Dempsey, former executive director of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Prior to that, Dempsey was the longtime athletic director at the University of Arizona. The rest of the league's Board of Directors is an extremely impressive list of sports and private industry individuals."

Very nice. Very, very nice.

"

Does that mean you can bring your pets to the games?

I imagine the beer tent would go over well with a college crowd and a bunch of recently-graduated football players.

Yes, and in case the stadium deals don't work, the league is planning on bringing in recreational vehicles left over from The Price is Right.

$100k player salaries sounds a little optomistic for a league like this. Unless the rosters have 15 guys each and they play both ways.

AAFL just had their inaugural draft. The first overall pick was...OG Zarah Yisreal out of Troy? The third overall pick was QB Eric Crouch?!?!?!?

I guess I'll be rooting for Alabama since they were the only team to draft a Miner...LB Alex Obomese in the fifth round, who almost made the Cowboys roster this year.

Edit: Forgot the PDF link to the draft results...

http://www.allamericanfootballleague...d_by_Round.pdf

Former University of Tennessee and New Orleans VooDoo QB Andy Kelly is coaching the Tennessee team. I'm looking forward to see how he does.

David Koral first round pick eh? In High School he once threw over for over 700 yards in a game.

Poor Tee Martin, never lived up to playing in Peyton's shadow.

So the Florida team picked Eric Kresser in the 1st round and Chris Leak in the 6th? Personally, I think I may have reversed those picks.

I'd take Yisrael in a heartbeat. The guy is 6030 tall! I don't care if that's feet, inches, or centimeters -- hell, even if that's millimeters, he's a freaking giant!

Okay, this has potential.

There's an article on their site dated November 27 saying that Chris Leak is going to play for Team Florida. I'm guessing draft position means very little, since teams picked players from their own region anyway.

I realize that, but I'd think that for PR purposes, you'd want to trumpet Chris Leak as your 1st round pick.

Bobby Blizzard! He ended up being my starting TE in a single-player FOF career for 10+ years when I used an imported draft one year.

Good to see Peter Warrick andRod Smart there too. ;)

Did these guys have to agree to play beforehand or something?

It looks like there were a few tryouts, so I'm assuming that attending those was sort of an agreement to play.

Wasn't Chris Leak drafted?

I mean, in the NFL?

One NDSU grad who was picked. This should be at least worth following.

I don't see any Canadian University people.

I've never even heard of Canadian University.

Wow. For the first 14 posts I thought that this thread was a drawn-out Max Football joke.

i'll cheer for Arkansas and maybe take in a game if the wifey lets me fly down from buffalo

:p I mean people from Canadian universities.

Nice to see Texas Tech QBs now have a place to go. Team Texas has two of them, Kingsbury and Symons. Eric Crouch will probably be the starter though.

I believe base pay is 50k with a little extra if player is doing pr work for the team. Max players per team is 42 plus 4 TS

And Shane Matthews is the head coach of Team Florida, and will have the Run n' Gun offense. Niiiiice! :D

I really don't understand why Texas took Crouch, especially in the first round. John Jenkins will be the team's coach, so I'm assuming he'll be using the run 'n shoot, which would seem far more appropriate for the Techsters.

How old is Crouch now, anyway? I'm guessing that at this point, he's not really an option QB.

hell yea, Chad Owens, Lawrence Wilson, and Abe Elimimian - Hawaii represent!

I can't wait to recreate this league in Maximum Football!

HAHA
I had neveer heard of this league until I ran into Woody Dantzler in
a store last week. He told me he was going to be playing for a team in Tennesse in some league.

I kinda discounted it, then come here and see this and sure enough...

Ill follow...loosely

I heard 2 days ago from a customer @ work that Andy Kelly (of indoor fame and a UTenn grad) that he is going to coach the Tennessee team.

eh.. I signed up for the Team Texas newsletter. I'll follow them for a while.

I can not believe Peter Warrick graduated after his shop lifting incident.

The VooDoo and the Arena Football League in general will miss his leadership, but yeah, I'm hoping that Andy does a really good job down there in the AAFL.

Looks like a OPU to me.

Fixed.

I'm wondering if the NFL is hoping this will become a homegrown minor league. The NFL is allowing them to use NFL refs, so it seems pretty clear they don't view this league as competition.

It's a summer league with no NFLE around now, it has a structured salary system, it's no problem for the NFL I am guessing. Anything that is below them and helps develop possible new talent is a good thing for the NFL I would think.

Anyone see any specific info about televising these games? On their website, so far I've found only this:

"The League is exploring the possibility of broadcasting games through a private network that might eliminate TV timeouts for commercial purposes. Although the League expects all or some League games will appear on commercial TV, fans that purchase "memberships" in their teams might have the option of accessing all games on the League‘s private network."

and

"The League intends that each League team will sell memberships to its fans and supporters. Members may be entitled to renewable season tickets in preferred locations, preferred parking, and other "insider" benefits. The League also hopes to provide Members access to high-definition private broadcasts of League games."


So no mention of possible "commercial TV" partners, but it sounds like they'd basically try to sell you a membership that would give you access to televised games? Are they basically looking at the DirecTV/NFL deal as the format for a membership to the league? I assume this type of membership would be different than those who live near the teams and would get season tickets. It's not like Joe Schmoe in Nebraska is going to want to pay for tickets to games he can't go to just to be able to watch the games on TV.

Without a large commercial TV audience, this league will never be anything more than a limited, local entertainment product. Although maybe that's all they are looking for - basically a AAA football product that is embraced by the states they are in, with a national following gravy.

I think this is exactly what they're going for. I'm still not sure if it will really work, but I don't think national exposure is something that they're focusing on right now. As far as getting started, this league seems to be doing everything right, in my opinion. They're getting guys to play and coach in the stadiums where they were popular, and I believe that they've found a way to attract fans in those areas. Most importantly, they're doing this without an on-field gimmick. As far as I know, there are no drastic rule changes, no screwing with the size of the field, no odd substitution rules (think back to how NFL Europa required each team to have a non-American on the field at all times). It's just football with names that are familiar to the local fans.

I can't say that I'll really follow this league, but I think it has a good foundation. They just have to avoid screwing it up somehow.

I think Isiah Thomas is the commissioner.