The time arguably is right for more football, not during football season but during the seasons when football isn’t normally played. With The Spring League in place and the XFL returning in 2020 and the Alliance of American Football announced for 2019, there will be plenty of options, soon.
The question is this: Will there be plenty of fans?
The Alliance of American Football specifically will posture itself as a complement to the NFL. “We want the players to do well,” AAF co-founder Bill Polian said on SiriusXM NFL Radio. “Every Alliance contract is going to carry with it an ‘out’ for any player who has an opportunity at any time to go to the NFL. We recognize we’re not in competition with the NFL. We hope what we do augments what the NFL is doing.”
That augmentation comes from giving players (and coaches, executives, and officials) an opportunity to develop at a lower level.
“We firmly believe the next Kurt Warner and Adam Vinatieri is out there,” Polian said. “We just have to find them and give them a chance.”
Polian, referring to players who parlayed stints in developmental leagues into rousing NFL success, is right. The challenge becomes giving them a chance to develop in a way that generates profit. If, after all, the NFL could implement a developmental league in a way that made sense (i.e., that made money), it would.
And as to the goal of finding the next Kurt Warner or Adam Vinatieri (or Brad Johnson, who’s taking the snap in the photo accompanying this item), it’s admirable but, from the NFL’s perspective, not necessary. NFL rosters are a zero-sum proposition; for every player who can’t make it in the NFL initially and who develops to the point where he can, he takes a job currently held by another NFL player. Thus, the NFL has no incentive to develop players not currently good enough to make it in the NFL, since there’s already an overabundance of willing participants.
The various spring leagues also will have more than enough interested players. The question becomes whether they’ll have more than enough interested fans. Or, more accurately, enough fans to make enough money to justify the ongoing investment.
That’s the key. Even with the buzz created by the return of the XFL, the core question is this: Would you invest your own money in the XFL or any other alternative football league? For most, the answer falls somewhere between “no” and “hell no.”