Maybe failed football leagues provide tax benefits. Or maybe there are simply too many people who are delusional about the power of professional football.
Regardless, another spring football league is in the works, according to John Ourand of SportsBusiness Daily.
A trio of media executives -- Michael Lardner, Rex Lardner, and Robert Pollichino -- plan to launch the Spring League of American Football; “SLAF” (rule No. 1 for football league creation: come up with a better acronym) hopes to launch by 2018.
The league, if it ever launches, will have teams with players who have a geographic affiliation to the location of each franchise. The founders hope to have further announcements “later this year or early next year.”
Eventually, look for an announcement that the league will go the way of Kramer’s plan to convert his apartment to a series of levels.
Alternative leagues to the NFL simply don’t work. The UFL was the latest league that actually played games before failing. Every league since then -- the FXFL, the reincarnated USFL, and MLFB -- crapped out before ever kicking off.
There’s simply no appetite in American for pro football that isn’t NFL football. The Arena Football League has limited appeal, and the CFL is a curiosity at best in America. The NFL remains the king of all football leagues with no real alternative even on the radar screen. Instead, wannabe leagues will periodically register a blip or two, and then fail.
Eventually, that could change. The NFL’s obsession with making the game safer could create an opportunity for an Old School Football League (with a better acronym than “OSFL”) that plays the game like it used to be played, with kickoffs and big hits and a UFC-style embrace of the brutality inherent to the game.
UPDATE 12:53 p.m. ET: Apparently, the FXFL played games. Which is sort of like a tree falling in the woods with no other there to hear it make a sound.