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Alliance of American Football Thoughts
Feb. 12th, 2019 03:51 pmAnyone who knows me personally knows that I have been disenchanted with the National Football League the last couple of years. From the double standards of the hypocrites who cover the sport and the favoritism involved in their coverage (hint, hint) along with the problems regarding concussions and player safety, I have not bothered to sit down an entire Sunday to watch a whole slate of NFL games which I would have done in the past without hesitation (BTW my problems with the NFL have nothing to do with people kneeling upsetting a certain orange a-hole).
When I heard about the Alliance of American Football starting up my fear would be this would just be a league sprouted up because the National Anthem protests (Per Wikipedia getting investment money from Peter Thiel didn’t exactly help change my mind initially). I’ve seen start-up leagues sprout up in the past with the OG XFL (Can’t believe I’m calling it that with it coming back), the UFL and the Fall Experimental Football League or FXFL. Seriously why the heck did they call that league the FXFL just call it the FFXL to avoid having the same initials as the XFL.
You all know what happened to the OG XFL crashing and burning after a year and losing tons of money for Dick Ebersol in the process. The UFL had a lot of promise with a national TV contract on Versus and HDNet along with former NFL coaches like Dennis Green and Jim Fassel involved along with ex-NFLers like Jeff Garcia, Ahmed Green, Daunte Culpepper, Simeon Rice, etc; however the league went all in on the hopes that the NFL Lockout in 2011 would be long term leading to people discovering the league and that all went kaput. It didn’t also help that the league had problems paying their players and coaches.
The FXFL was pretty much DOA considering they had teams fold before each of their two seasons started, I mean who the heck would want to seriously commit to a league with only three teams with one of them being a travel team? I almost figured with seeing those leagues die, I questioned if we’d ever see a serious start-up developmental league like NFL Europe again.
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I was pleasantly surprised watching the AAF in it’s first week. I enjoy some of the rules they’ve put in to make it different like no kickoffs and getting rid of the extra point after a touchdown forcing teams to always go for two. It makes the game more exciting and less predictable like every NFL game has become nowadays.
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If there’s one thing I want to see in this league is a balance between good offense and defense. One of the problems people had with the XFL that I remember was that the games were criticized for being bad. Rewatching some of those games on YouTube it’s easy to see why, I watched a game between the LA Xtreme and Las Vegas Outlaws from the third week where the final score was 12-9 with all the scoring being on field goals. If there was a big play in that game, it couldn’t have been for more than 15 yards.
Despite the first game in the AAF between San Antonio and San Diego’s being a 15-6 final score with only one touchdown there were plenty of exciting plays in the game that I never got bored when watching it. Also, I appreciated that the one big sack in the game on the San Diego QB wasn’t immediately called for a 15-yard penalty for simply breathing on a QB.
There are some things that I think can be improved with the product, but those are minor issues simply related to me being a stats geek like having box scores more readily available or a fantasy game to get casuals invested in the product, but I can forgive them for now.
I don’t know if the league will last but if the first week is any indication, they’ll have me as a viewer for the rest of the season, especially if Christian Hackenberg continues to stink it up for Memphis.
When I heard about the Alliance of American Football starting up my fear would be this would just be a league sprouted up because the National Anthem protests (Per Wikipedia getting investment money from Peter Thiel didn’t exactly help change my mind initially). I’ve seen start-up leagues sprout up in the past with the OG XFL (Can’t believe I’m calling it that with it coming back), the UFL and the Fall Experimental Football League or FXFL. Seriously why the heck did they call that league the FXFL just call it the FFXL to avoid having the same initials as the XFL.
You all know what happened to the OG XFL crashing and burning after a year and losing tons of money for Dick Ebersol in the process. The UFL had a lot of promise with a national TV contract on Versus and HDNet along with former NFL coaches like Dennis Green and Jim Fassel involved along with ex-NFLers like Jeff Garcia, Ahmed Green, Daunte Culpepper, Simeon Rice, etc; however the league went all in on the hopes that the NFL Lockout in 2011 would be long term leading to people discovering the league and that all went kaput. It didn’t also help that the league had problems paying their players and coaches.
The FXFL was pretty much DOA considering they had teams fold before each of their two seasons started, I mean who the heck would want to seriously commit to a league with only three teams with one of them being a travel team? I almost figured with seeing those leagues die, I questioned if we’d ever see a serious start-up developmental league like NFL Europe again.
I was pleasantly surprised watching the AAF in it’s first week. I enjoy some of the rules they’ve put in to make it different like no kickoffs and getting rid of the extra point after a touchdown forcing teams to always go for two. It makes the game more exciting and less predictable like every NFL game has become nowadays.
If there’s one thing I want to see in this league is a balance between good offense and defense. One of the problems people had with the XFL that I remember was that the games were criticized for being bad. Rewatching some of those games on YouTube it’s easy to see why, I watched a game between the LA Xtreme and Las Vegas Outlaws from the third week where the final score was 12-9 with all the scoring being on field goals. If there was a big play in that game, it couldn’t have been for more than 15 yards.
Despite the first game in the AAF between San Antonio and San Diego’s being a 15-6 final score with only one touchdown there were plenty of exciting plays in the game that I never got bored when watching it. Also, I appreciated that the one big sack in the game on the San Diego QB wasn’t immediately called for a 15-yard penalty for simply breathing on a QB.
There are some things that I think can be improved with the product, but those are minor issues simply related to me being a stats geek like having box scores more readily available or a fantasy game to get casuals invested in the product, but I can forgive them for now.
I don’t know if the league will last but if the first week is any indication, they’ll have me as a viewer for the rest of the season, especially if Christian Hackenberg continues to stink it up for Memphis.
