The Mild Promise Of Wild Dreams

Monday, in a slow NFL news day that featured a couple mid-level free agent signings, Matt Jones's jail sentence received top billing.

Jones was busted last year for possession of cocaine, found cutting up the stuff with a Foot Locker credit card in the backseat of a parked car. This year he failed a random substance test, per the terms of his rehab, because he was drinking beer with buddies while golfing.

Given the choice between a brief cool off in the pokey or another shot at rehab, Jones chose – at the urging of the judge and his mother – jail time.

After three mostly disappointing years, the cocaine bust threatened an end to Jones’s considerable on field promise. Slapped with a three game suspension, Jones responded with the best year of his career. While not fulfilling his promise, his play at least acknowledged that it’s still there.

Drinking a beer or three is no great crime. But in Roger Goodell’s NFL perception is everything. The Personal Conduct Policy outlines a series of guidelines which players are expected to follow. And any breach of that conduct leaves a fine line for the player to toe.

In all likelihood, Jones will receive another shot. But perhaps one that affords him little to no room for mistakes.

I couldn’t help thinking of another professional football news item from Monday buried by Jones’s jail sentence. While the talented if heartbreaking Jones continues to jeopardize his pro dreams, another set of dreamers is trying their own run on professional football, albeit in an unconventional manner.

Monday, the United Football League (UFL) announced a broadcast deal with the Versus channel for its “premiere” season beginning this October. Today, the UFL officially announced the head coaches for its four inaugural teams.

Jim Fassel will coach the team playing in Las Vegas. Denny Green the team in San Francisco. Ted Cottrell the team in New York. And Jim Haslett the team in Orlando.

A late infusion of investment saved the fledgling league. Prospective owners of teams in respective cities dropped out of the venture over the course of the last year. The most recognizable sports name Mark Cuban backed out, among others, claiming to be “too busy.”

All four teams are owned by the UFL. Whether the UFL looks to investors to buy teams or plans on selling interest publicly in the teams is unclear. In commissioner Michael Huyghue’s January blog entry on the UFL site he writes:

We will be offering an IPO structure where fans get to own a piece of their team. This isn't a cosmetic stock certificate but real shareholder equity. Our fans will be instrumental in selecting our team nicknames. On controversial decisions, like whether or not to bring Michael Vick into the UFL, we will rely on online fan-voting on our official website.

Letting fans pick the nicknames? There’s no way this could go wrong. (I already submitted “Bridge & Tunnel Crowd” for the New York team and “LOLcats” for the San Francisco team... I thought maybe “Zombie Hookers” for Las Vegas was a bit much.)

Consequently, the UFL is treating 2009 as an exhibition season of sorts, a trial run. The four teams will play each other twice in a six game schedule. Probing markets still considered for UFL teams, the Las Vegas is slated to play one home game in Los Angeles while the New York team one home game in Hartford, Connecticut. A championship game is tentatively scheduled for Thanksgiving weekend in Las Vegas.

What, I wonder, does the UFL hope to accomplish? And how does it expect to do so?

All prospective new professional leagues start from the basis that football is insanely popular in America and that the market can bear more competition because of this high-pitched popularity.

The demand for more pro football is the basis for the success of former professional leagues rivaling the NFL. But the game’s popularity has also played a seductive temptress to upstart leagues, beckoning them to grand ventures and collosal failures.

The AAFC in the 40s set up the first west coast team in San Francisco. The AAFC’s most popular and best team, the Browns, chased an NFL team out of town fleeing for the coast, the Rams from Cleveland to Los Angeles, specifically. After four contentious years, the AAFC and NFL merged in part, three of the AAFC’s seven teams were absorbed by the 10 NFL teams in 1950.

The AFL in the 60s arrived on the heels of the football boom ushered in by television. Television allowed easier access to the sport, creating greater demand in markets not served the the NFL’s 13 teams (expanded to 16 by the time of the merger). The eight original AFL teams (eventually 10) also benefited from a glut of professional-ready talent produced at the college level, allowing them to present a similar level, if in a more open-ended style, of competition as the NFL.

What worked for the AAFC and AFL didn’t for the USFL in the 80s and XFL in 01.

The USFL originally predicated its venture on year-round interest in pro football, starting as a spring league. Fluctuating attendance and decent television viewership led the league to attempt direct competition with the NFL in fall. That combined with sky-rocketing player contracts to secure the precious few top prospects led to the league’s demise.

The XFL’s failure resulted from straddling too many audiences while pleasing none. Owner Vince McMahon’s WWF approach irked staid football fans. The rule changes geared towards a more physical game led to low-scoring affairs, often tagged boring by mainstream audiences. And the risque trappings including stripper-like cheerleaders allowed sports commentators to dismiss the league’s credibility out of hand.

The UFL banks on too much talent crowding the sidelines in the pros, billing themselves as the place “where future stars come to play.” They envision themselves as a development league of sorts. It’s a current void once occupied by NFL Europe. But a void that could either be a financial boon or a blackhole.

With the UFL’s modest financial payscale, they won’t be able to spark a bidding war with the NFL like the AFL and USFL did. But they’ll need talent the NFL can’t or won’t play.

Enter the NFL’s crackdown on lawbreakers and misfits reflecting poorly on the league’s image. If the UFL is to make it, they might have to reap the discarded fruits of Roger Goodell's stringent Personal Conduct Policy.

The UFL is already opening its arms publicly to employing Michael Vick should he make it out of the halfway house. And with other talented players courting infamy like Pacman Jones and Matt Jones, UFL could provide a haven for players with considerable skill yet flamed out of the NFL not because they lack talent but because they ran afoul of the league’s high personal standards.

It begs the question if a few controversial stars and a collection of practice squad players and broken-down veterans will work toward the UFL’s long term success. The XFL crashed in part due to a perceived gleeful sidestepping of morality.

Will the UFL chase big, controversial names to build intrigue at the expense of providing that place where the future stars come out to play? Is the goal of an independent development league really a strong enough mission statement to weather the fluctations of a fledgling league is bound to encounter?

Should the UFL make it to its “premiere” season – a worthy question in these economic times – they could possibly face competition from a couple other nascent professional leagues. The AAFL potentially dead in the water is still scheduled to start play in Spring 2010. That’s the same target date for the New USFL.

Both leagues are furthering their competition from the NFL by placing themselves in Spring. But will likely target at the same level of talent that the UFL intends to mine.

Given the economics, it’s unlikely all three nascent leagues will even see the field. Perhaps even unlikely that one launches. But like every big venture before them, these leagues will have to toe a fine line of their own if they want a shot at being off and running.

A Matt Jones or Michael Vick might find moderate redemption in a league like the UFL... but it's worth asking what kind of future would they give the UFL?