Is the league more than just a one week curiosity?
FOX Sports, the people behind the newest spring football league, the United States Football League, will find out this weekend if what really is nothing more than four reality football TV shows a weekend has legs. The USFL on various FOX and NBC platforms featured many empty seats in the four Birmingham, Alabama games. A reason that happened could have been due to the fact that two of the games were played on Easter Sunday and bad weather. The league got about three million people who were interested in watching the product on various platforms which seem to be in line with the viewership of the previous two attempts at getting professional spring football established, the 2019 Alliance of American Football and the 2020 version of the XFL. The AAF and XFL went out of business but the two leagues played games in various cities around the United States. It is not clear if the USFL survives if the league owned franchises will actually play in the cities the teams allegedly represent.
The USFL seems to be a TV show in the reality TV genre except the outcomes may be legitimate as it appears the producers of the program are not doing any scripting or creative editing of the product. In this vein, FOX Sports and the people running the USFL need better storylines than a player being cut because he wanted pizza instead of chicken salad. It is unclear how much the city of Birmingham has invested in attracting FOX Sports to set up the USFL TV production in the city but Birmingham can always claim “look at the exposure we are getting”. The USFL will give players and some coaches and others a chance to show NFL people that they might have some talent to work in the National Football League.
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Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
