Off to Canton for the playoffs.
The present-incarnation of the United States Football League is leaving the Birmingham, Alabama area for its three playoff games. This USFL will have a Pro Football Hall of Fame presence because the three playoff games will take place at the Canton, Ohio Hall of Fame’s stadium. This USFL has not really attracted much attention. There are not many people who bought tickets to USFL games in Birmingham but a good part of that may have been caused by the fact that every game was played in Birmingham. The league probably would have been better off playing games in Detroit, East Rutherford, New Jersey, Houston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Tampa. After all, the league is using the names of cities and states and teams that performed in the original USFL between 1983 and 1985 and should have connected with those metropolitan areas. But the USFL is nothing more than a TV show owned by a media company, FOX with some games shown on Comcast video platforms.
The league’s TV numbers started off on par with the defunct Alliance of American Football in 2019 and the defunct Vince McMahon backed XFL in 2020 but have fallen off since that point. The USFL is getting very little national attention and if there is a second season, the FOX owned league will be competing for the few spring football fans that are interested in a spring football league with the XFL which is partially owned by former wrestler and actor Dwayne Johnson, who is better known as The Rock. It appears as if the XFL plans to play games in cities around the United States. When the original USFL was launched, there seemed to be some interest in spring football but now the interest in spring football seems limited to the NFL Draft and that’s a USFL and XFL problem.
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Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
