USFL will be welcome addition to spring sports calendar
By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist
There is no contrast in the American sports calendar quite as stark as the one between the period that immediately precedes the Super Bowl and the one that promptly follows it.
From the most exciting time of the athletic year to the quietest, just like that. From the biggest game in sports to nothing much of anything beyond the Daytona 500 — though this year has the Winter Olympics.
And as football — pro and college — seems to get its hooks into the American psyche just a little deeper with each passing year, its absence is felt just a bit more each time the interminable offseason rolls around.
The United States Football League aims to do something about it.
The USFL, which operated on a spring/summer schedule between 1983 and '85, will try to do a few things upon its reincarnation.
While the majority of the rules will come from the NFL model, there will undoubtedly be innovation, essentially a prerequisite for spring football upstart operations that hope to make an impact.
But more than anything else, the best thing about the USFL is that it will provide football at a time when there is perhaps more hunger for it than ever before.
Former Oregon State, Nebraska and San Diego Chargers head coach Mike Riley, who will lead the New Jersey Generals franchise (the USFL has kept its original team names), appreciates the multiple goals the league is hoping to achieve.
"You are trying to develop players and develop teams and win a championship," Riley told me Wednesday. "And part of it is providing entertainment for football fans who are missing it in April, May and June.
"I am very excited about the future of spring football. The fans appreciate it. The opportunities for the players are there, and we are ready to get started. [Sports] has had the stop-and-go with COVID — I think there will be a great appetite for it. We just need the opportunity to keep building. The USFL has a great plan with a lot of good people making this thing go."
The USFL is now 100 days from its April 16 start date but will have key milestones, such as its draft on Feb. 22-23, following swiftly after the end of the NFL campaign.
On Thursday, the eight-team league announced four of its head coaches. In addition to Riley with the Generals, Kevin Sumlin will lead the Houston Gamblers, Todd Haley will coach the Tampa Bay Bandits, and Bart Andrus will head the Philadelphia Stars.
The teams will play a 10-week regular season to be followed by playoffs. For the first season, all teams will be based in one city.
The USFL’s organizers will, by necessity, be going in with their eyes open. As history has proven, any new football operation faces stern challenges that must be overcome quickly. The original USFL, which has no legal connection to the new entity, folded in the mid-1980s after attempting to take antitrust action against the NFL.
The revamped version of the XFL shut down in 2020, an early victim of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Alliance of American Football ran out of money and could not complete its only season in 2019.
"It is a question that has historically not been solved in terms of survival," Riley added. "What I see the USFL doing is getting a good foothold this year for making people familiar with the teams and with the play that’s happening right in front of them and growing from there.
"When … people can latch on to your teams, then you’ve got a chance to last for a long time."
There are strong reasons that a solid, stable, second-tier pro league is of overall value to the sport. Football players are able to keep themselves in fine physical shape if they are out of the NFL or on a practice squad, but it is difficult to make leaps of genuine technical improvement without real game action.
Riley expects several players to use the USFL as a springboard to gain the attention of NFL teams, following the example of players such as P.J. Walker, who used his success with the XFL’s Houston Roughnecks to secure a backup QB role with the Carolina Panthers.
Opportunity is what the USFL is all about.
For the league itself, with the chance to thrive at a time in the calendar with a sporting void, filling the downtime following March Madness and the Masters golf tournament.
For the players, who get a fresh shot to make their mark.
And for the sports fan, for whom the end of the NFL season has crept up with frightening speed and who is looking for something to fuel their passion.
Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.
