The Alliance Of American Football Encounters Money Problems
Well the AAF was fun while it lasted. All 8 weeks of it.
As of yesterday the league has suspended all football operations. The games this week will not occur. The league hasn’t folded…yet…but I don’t know how anyone can take this as a sign that things are going to get better. The AAF lasted two months and I am eternally grateful and I will miss it. Lifelong Apollo fan here, just gutted they won’t get to officially hoist the…whatever trophy. Stoked to grab those 5 dollar starter jackets on clearance soon though. Hell yeah. Might grab a Memphis Manziel Jersey cuz why the hell not.
I am legit bummed out about it. While I didn’t expect the AAF to last, I certainly hoped it would. I’ve watched at least one game every weekend since it started. It wasn’t perfect football but as an alternate spring league offering some diet cola of my favorite sport, it seemed pretty solid. There were even storylines to follow. Johnny Manziel! The absolute clusterfuck that was the Memphis Express! Steve Spurrier out of nowhere to lead the dominate team in the league! Trent Richardson! There were players that were performing well enough that we might even see them in the NFL again one day, and it was a great way to play “I remember that guy”. They had fun rule differences that for the most part made the game better. I am still flabbergasted by how much I enjoyed the skyjudge and seeing the review process happen live. If nothing else, the AAF was worth it for this play alone.
In retrospect the warning signs were there in week 1. I remember being stunned at how legit everything felt. The presentation, the games, the quality of the product…all of it was far higher than I anticipated. I expected Arena Football 2.0, and arena football is trash. The AAF looked legit. Now it looks like they poured all their money into making that first week look legit and hoping it would catch enough fire to carry it all season.
I actually think the biggest failure might have been the broadcasts themselves. Week 1 showed me something very interesting. A professional production team really makes football more watchable than it might otherwise be. Week 1 felt like I was watching the NFL. The graphics, the commentary, all of CBS’s presentation was on par with the usual NFL game. After week 1 though, the games not only got much harder to find (as they were on about 5 different places), but much less inviting on watch. The quality of production dipped and while we were watching the same level of football (honestly better, it felt like the league play improved as the weeks went on), we were watching it worse, if we could find a place to watch it at all. I knew TV was vital to the sport’s success, but the stark contrast of the AAF in week 1 to week 7 despite a higher level of play really showed how important TV is to making this sport the juggernaut it is.
Which makes me honestly kind of more hopeful for the XFL? Vince “Swole Grandpa” McMahon understands the value of presentation if nothing else. I still doubt the XFL will matter, but if it can secure a good TV contract and stay consistent in presentation, it will likely do a better job retaining viewership and potentially gain interest. I hope it does. I was so hopeful for the Alliance because an alternate league would be so refreshing.
RIP AAF. At least we finally got Christian Hackenberg starting and it was as hilarious as I always imagined it would be.
Tom Dundon I’d a gutless bastard. Quote that.
Not with a horrible misspelling like that I won’t.
No coverage here, all I had was the app.
If I wanted to watch a few figures pegging it around a virtual map, I’d flip on the Overwatch League.
Honestly I hope some of the better guys in this league can find a team in the NFL even if its as a 3rd string guy thats still more money that they can make than if they were to either Go to Canada or Wait for the XFL next year
I put the blame on the terrible broadcast scheduling more than anything. For someone like me who wanted to watch the AAF, it was a mess trying to figure out where all the games were on any given week, I imagine it made things even worse for someone just wanting to flip on the TV and see some spring football.
Might be overexaggerating, it certainly was not the only issue that they had to deal with, but it certainly was the most irritating part for me.
Wow. This is a great comic. Seriously one of your best Dave!
Fuck Tom Dundon.
The prevailing theory is that he shut down the league to strip it of its tech assets.
Fuck him.
I’ve heard this too. Also the players and a lot of other people got hung out to dry.
I’ve heard this too. Also the players and a lot of other people got hung out to dry.
Thanks AAF also proved you were wrong about Hackenburg. He’s waaaaay worse than you predicted.
Dave’s assessment is spot on. With a professional sports league, viability through the first year or two is entirely dependent on the TV contract. That’s been true at least going back to the AFL. If the AAF had pushed CBS for more visible coverage, or tried to secure a relationship with a media group with more mid-tier outlets, like Fox or WarnerMedia, it would have more games on more available platforms and probably be viable as a legitimate minor league.
Man football is fun. I watched my 49ers win a ton of Super bowls through the years. I got season tickets to the SF Demons because they were cheap and it was fun to watch them play at Pac Bell park in the off season. They almost took the whole thing. And you had crazy shit that made it different. I also got to watch my Surge go from 3rd to World bowl winners the next year only to be disbanded. I loved me some QB helmet cam. To see 3 lineman working there way past the offensive line and eat a QB in full first person glory was cool. Fred Anderson brought us some Canadian footballers but it wasn’t quite the same. I hope they can pull it out because I like it a lot better than KISS ball.
Wow. Three teams deaded and the 49era. Feel for you, dude.
It’s a shame to see it die, as I actually enjoyed the AAF. It was a good stopgap in sports if nothing else.
I also felt it could’ve offered something to the league as a showcase of raw talent to be harnessed in the NFL later (if nothing else)
As a Jets fan it was bittersweet to see Hack play. It was depressing to see how bad a 2nd round pick was after all that time trainin, but it was reassuring that Bowles called it right by never starting that mess.
My personal favorite idiocy of this was when Dundon put the blame on the NFLPA for “not letting lower-tier NFL players participate”. First, as the NFLPA pointed out, there are all sorts of legal and Collective Bargaining implications involved in allowing something like that. Second, it’s not the NFLPA’s job to supply you with cheap or no-cost labor, dude.
Brilliant. Simply brilliant comic.
“Dave finds a creative way to work less hard”
Nice tag lol. I would support more comics in this vein as long as the lack of effort put in speaks of its point as eloquently as this one did. Heh.
Anyway, I’m pretty bummed to see it go. As a foreigner I couldn’t find broadcasts; it was either find live streams on Youtube in the dead of night, or nothing. Only watched one game(just to see Manziel throw an INT then concuss himself out of the game, ugh), but still, the idea of an alternate football league was attractive. If this thing made it to the playoffs I’m sure I would’ve tried more effort to watch it.
Bleh. Even the first iteration of the XFL managed one full season before going kaput. This is… an ignominious end to something which seemed so hopeful at the start.
I find myself having a bit more hope than this for the new XFL though, because hey, Vince has done this before, he’ll have learned his lessons from that old attempt, and since that attempt was already more successful than the AAF ever managed to be, surely we’ll get better results from it, won’t we? Not to mention the fact that Vince has had some more time to prepare, as well as being more financially independent than the AAF ever was.
At any rate, I leave you all with an interesting tidbit of information:
Remember Trent Richardson? Apparently he’s the leading scorer(and most likely all-time scorer for the record books, as things look to be) with 11 rushing TDs(plus 1 receiving TD). Despite that, it appears his tendency to avoid holes is still intact, as he still couldn’t manage 3.0 YPC overall.
Is there something we can do to make sure Manziel doesn’t sign on with the XFL? I don’t want his curse to destroy another second tier football league.
Honestly, I hope that Vince McMahon could buy what’s left of the AAF, fold it into the XFL, & go from there. That could make the XFL more interesting from the start.
Absence of Adequate Funding?
I love how San Antonio is like, “DAMNIT GIVE US A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM ALREADY!”
Even XFL lasted longer.
to be fair this is vince “quintessential fucking asshole” mcmahon were talking about