Are You Ready For Some UFL Football?!?

Ever heard of the United Football League?

The United Football League (or "UFL" for short) is an upstart American football-playing sports league currently based out of four American cities: New York City, Tampa, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. Their goal – at least according to them – is to provide the US with another venue for "hard-core football", although some commentators believe that the UFL's motive is to take advantage of the NFL's expected union lockout in 2011. Others, such as a few of my friends, believe that the UFL's main purpose is to serve as a minor "feeder" league of sorts for the NFL, similar to what NFL Europe (later "NFL Europa") used to do a while back before going defunct. Surprisingly, they've actually been able to hire some actual talent for their teams. Las Vegas's team, for example, is coached by former Giants coach and Super Bowl loser Jim Fassel. However, for the most part, the UFL's rosters are made up of NFL castoffs and ne'er do wells, as current players include J. P. Losman at quarterback (Las Vegas), Koren Robinson at wide receiver (New York), and Todd Sauerbrun at punter (Florida), possibly the only punter in NFL history to get reprimanded by his team for being overweight.

Either way, the UFL has already succeeded at doing something that other upstart leagues such as the All-American Football League have failed to do in recent years: actually take the field. I'll give them that.

They also have a legitimate broadcast team; I'll also give them that. They currently have a deal to broadcast on Comcast's Versus network for half of their games on Thursday and Wednesday nights (it varies from week to week), with HDNet doing the broadcasting (or "bradcasting", as one of Versus's announcers called it) on Saturday nights. Versus also holds the rights to the UFL's Friday afternoon championship game in late November, to be held over the Thanksgiving days off for most people. Versus's commentators include former UFL/CFL/NFL/(insert letter here)FL extraordinaire Doug Flutie in the booth and former scrambling quarterback Kordell Stewart on the sidelines. I don't know what HDNet's broadcasts are like, as a dispute between them and Time Warner prevents me from seeing those games.

Because "alternative" sports leagues such as the UFL have always been one of my billion minor interests, I was rather enthusiastic about October 8's kickoff game between Las Vegas's team, the Locomotives, and California's team, the Redwoods, tuning into Versus on my HDTV at kickoff time. What follows is my experience with the UFL's inaugural game, as well as what I think the future holds for them.

At about 7:53 PM on Thursday, October 8, I eagerly flipped to Versus's high-definition channel to watch the UFL's kickoff game, much to the chagrin and smirks of most of my friends. After managing to sit through seven minutes of UFC fighting and associated highlights, I was treated to the UFL's pre-game broadcast, which featured Doug Flutie and Dave Sims essentially going on about how much the NFL blows.

After fifteen or so minutes of the game's booth and sideline commentators discussing how the league and game would work that night, they cut to the opening kickoff.

The game itself was quite entertaining, especially the cut-ins that featured snippets from colorful California coach Dennis Green. Every time the players did something for the first time in the game (penalties, field goals, touchdowns, et al.), the commentators immediately seized upon it, noting that it was the first (x) in UFL history and that they'd be sending off the football involved in the historic event to professional football's Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. This was a bit annoying, but eventually stopped as time went on and things stopped being historic UFL firsts.

Las Vegas scored the first points of the night on a field goal, but went on a 7-14 run to find themselves losing to California at halftime, 14-10. Highlights of the first half included "star" Las Vegas quarterback J. P. Losman, the inability of either running back to hold on to the ball for an extended period of time, and Las Vegas kicking an actually-impressive fifty-three-yard field goal, only to follow it up with a penalty-inducing out-of-bounds kickoff.

The UFL did not have much in the way of halftime commentary, adding to the impression of mine that this was a low-budget game with fancy presentation. The league was heavily sponsored by Men's Wearhouse and some foreign-sounding mineral water that purported to promote "health and wellness", both of whom had large amounts of commercials on during the game's various commercial breaks.

The second half featured California spectacularly blowing the game in a way that only Dennis Green could've done, losing 30-17 after jumping out to a 14-3 lead at one point in the first half. The game ended slightly over three hours after it began, with a Las Vegas quarterback kneel sealing their first win of the season.

After that, the game wrapped up rather quickly, with no post-game show to speak of. The commentators took one last moment to remark that this was the UFL's historic first game before signing off.

I actually managed to sit through the entirety of the UFL's first broadcast (albeit with a laptop and food), meaning that this may have been the first time I'd ever sat through a full television broadcast of a football game. Hell, I rarely sit through the entirety of *any* sports game if I'm not actually in attendance.

However, the fact that I sat through the whole game should not be taken as an indicator of my interest. I considered going to bed with nine minutes to go in the fourth quarter of what was still very much of a game at the time, eventually choosing to watch the remainder of the game because I actually wasn't all that tired.

In addition, the presentation left some things to be desired. Doug Flutie's commentary seemed to revolve around him being Doug Flutie, the same going for Kordell Stewart. The fans were not very into the game, making the stadium (which was at 36% capacity, according to one Associated Press report) rather quiet for a football game. All in all, the atmosphere seemed more like that of a high school football game or an unpopular NFL team's preseason home opener than the inaugural game of a professional sports league. There was also a fairly large disparity between the number of people that I saw in attendance on TV and what was stated online; I've been told by people who went to the Locomotives and Tuskers games that there were really ~10,000 people in attendance at each one, and that the dismal-looking numbers could easily be explained away by "Versus and HDNet's poor camera angles". I guess nobody knows for sure.

Whatever the crowd, the actual game was relatively entertaining. Many of the players looked like they were legitimately having a good time, and the game had a decidedly more authentic feel to it than most NFL games do. This may be a good thing for the UFL, but it probably won't be if their ticket sales and/or attendance remain anemic.

There's also the uniforms and logos. Could the UFL please hire someone to design better uniforms for their four teams? I'm not even an artist, and I'm still fairly certain that I could've designed uniforms for the Redwoods and Locomotives that would've made it easier to tell the difference between the two. In addition, the referee's outfits could use a little tweaking, as their pink polo-shirt ensembles led even the game's commentators to quip that they looked ready to head out to a golf game.

All in all, I'm not entirely sure if the UFL will last more than a few seasons, if that. They've got some coaching and (limited) playing talent, yes, but you can only go so far without ample ticket sales. If the UFL continues to draw the same crowds that were found in the first two games – even assuming that the supposed figures of 10,000-15,000 weren't fabricated – then they'll likely hemorrhage money and go the way of the USFL and Arena Football League before it.

Until that day comes, I'm still going to catch all the UFL on Versus broadcasts that I can. If nothing else, it'll continue to be intriguing, especially with crowds that look like this:

Seriously.

Got any questions, corrections, or other concerns about my take on the UFL? Send an email to captainnosebleed (at) electronicrenaissance (dot) com, and your comments could end up in the next edition of Captain's Mailbox.

You can also discuss this topic at its associated forum topic.