The USFL Didn’t Announce Itself Very Well
I’m a football guy. I make football comics multiple times a week. I talk football online. My social media feeds are dedicated to football. My suggestions on my social media pages are all sports related. I watch football youtube videos. I check reddit, twitter, ESPN, the Athletic, The Ringer, Defector, you name it, every work day, just reading news about football, for my own knowledge and for inspiration. The algorithms know this about me. I even get ads and follow suggestions for teams I hate.
I barely saw anything USFL related. I had no idea it started this past weekend. Hell, I even went out of my way to make a comic two weeks ago about a USFL player. I never saw much of anything outside sporadic twitter mentions from mutual followers talking about it. This was the opening weekend of the revival and I saw nothing until it was too late on Saturday. I had read about the opening week at some point but the date didn’t stick in my head and I figured when it got close I’d watch it. But the opening week came and went on a day where I had nothing going on and could have easily watched it. This was my experience at least. I’m sure some folks saw more than I did, or deliberately paid more attention than I did and therefore saw it, but I saw so little football information I was shocked when I realized I missed it.
The AAF and XFL didn’t have this issue for me. I saw plenty of marketing and chatter online about those two when they started up, the AAF especially. Maybe the USFL is running on even smaller budgets than either of those. But for spring league, getting those eyes opening weekend matters. That’s going to be the biggest weekend you get in this position. This is when hype should be the strongest, before we all watch the league and remember spring football isn’t the best football and veer off if we have better shit to do. Why didn’t I see any hype? Why did I see no ads? Instagram is a pile of shit these days with every 2/3 posts being a fucking ad (thanks, Zuckerberg, you lizard man) and tons of “suggested” posts yet I never got anything. Twitter throws me nothing but sports suggestions and my trending topics are always football, even for mundane shit (Baker Mayfield is trending for me right now, with no clear reason why). The USFL never showed up on my feeds. I’m literally a mark for this garbage and I’m not seeing anything? Did any of you have this issue? Am I the only one who realized too late that football was on because I didn’t even know it was happening?
Kind of a detour for this final paragraph but this strikes me as a bad opening date to begin with. Right now everyone is in draft hype mode or draft exhaustion mode. I feel like a summer league, starting it in May after the draft happens and we are all left scattered in the wind till August, is a better move. Or do it earlier in April/March when the draft isn’t as close. Feels like this is doomed to failure already.
The best time for spring football is to start the week/two weeks after the Super Bowl. That’s when the Arena League was most successful; same goes for XFL & AAF.
Either then or in May/June when the NBA/NHL playoffs are wrapping up and there’s literally nothing else to watch besides midseason baseball that no one in their right mind actually cares about.
I like midseason baseball!
…I may not be in my right mind though
That depends on the availability of indoor stadiums somewhat. Arena League could play their games in a hockey / basketball sized venue, which gave them more options.
If he wasn’t busy trying to stay out of prison, maybe Donald Trump involvement would have gotten the USFL revival more publicity?
Yes, because if the recent Republican endorsements have shown anything, it shows that Donand John Trump, Sr. is an honest and loyal person that knows how to pick the winner.
Considering how the charges have trouble sticking.
This USFL is not affiliated with that USFL. They just recycled the names.
This USFL is not affiliated with that USFL; they just recycled some names.
This post is not affiliated with that post; I just recycled some words.
The USFL was heavily advertised… on Fox networks… which owns the league (broadcast partner NBC also did some promos, but not nearly as many as Fox did, I saw nearly nothing elsewhere). I’m going to guess the league is running quite a bit leaner than the XFL or AAF, given it’s decision to put every team in Birmingham for the season (and talking about continuing this practice next season). Even so, Easter weekend was an odd time to open the season, but I’m guessing that is when it worked best for Fox’s schedule.
Lack of big names won’t help either.
That’s the big issue. The AAF had Jonny Manziel and Trent Richardson, both of whom are big name (terrible) players that gave the league an instant storyline. The AAF was actually doing pretty well until it was sabotaged by an investor who wanted to steal their gambling technology.
1. During all league games in one location back-to-back is a terrible idea. The Birmingham market wouldn’t be interested in spending money for teams not from them, also even if they are, they would get tired after the 2nd or 3rd game, especially if the 2nd is a blowout.
2. Any success would require a 2nd season. If the USFL did research, hopefully they’d plan for no fans so they’re focused on ratings and raising the demand so if there is a 2nd season, the fans from the home cities would show up.
One location will cut down a ton of cost for these teams on travel. Ticket sales are small time compared to the tv deal, which they got a pretty good one. Also consider that this league had planning stages firmly in the pandemic when there was a ton of uncertainty, and opted for a “bubble” so they don’t get killed off like the XFL did is cases spike or the newest variant drops.
Also not everyone is going to be a Bama fan in Alabama. It is close enough that Im sure there is fans from Florida(tampa), New Orleans and Houston.
Makes me wonder how the marketing for the old USFL was like and how much longer it could have lasted had certain someone not run it to the ground.
I saw minimal USFL advertising and I watch an FS2-broadcast Major League Rugby match just about every week (which doesn’t have a whole lot of outside sponsors; also, you should check it out as most of the games are free on their own app).
Not having it on the holiest day of the Christian calendar would certainly have helped.
It was raised from the dead. Duh!
Not debuting on the holiest day of the Christian calendar certainly would have helped.
Sorta torn on that, holidays are good sport event days since families are gathered and adults are bored when the conversation falters. Thanksgiving comes to mind. I would have watched football with my family in my usual Easter Sunday situation as a kid
The then-Indians won the 1997 ALCS on Yom Kippur. It was one of the more memorable ones in my lifetime. Not that they could control that, but trust me. Everyone was watching.
Heck, didn’t realize it was easter, either….
I forgot that Fan Controlled Football started this weekend too!
I have the FOX Sports app downloaded on my phone and I was constantly getting updates that the USFL games were going on, but outside of that, nothing.
I caught part of the Houston-Michigan game just by random chance when I was flicking through the channels. It seemed ok? I didn’t watch for long. And I couldn’t figure out why they were in Birmingham.
Based on the 12 people in the stands, they didn’t spend any money trying to get people to buy tickets, either. I guess it’s going to live or die based on TV money.
I would blame attendance on that one because of weather, the game was delayed because of rain and I believe they offered different tickets to many fans. The opening night had like 17,500 people which was kinda cool to see
The first panel cracks me up, as i am all too familiar with rolling over in bed only to meet with a dog’s undercarriage.
Stupid doggos…