The Alliance of American Football joined the list of pro football leagues in the United States, past and present, trying to carve out a spot in the football market without competing directly with the National Football League.
This weekend, AAF teams played their first-ever regular season games, one week after the NFL’s season ended. A novel concept, their two Saturday night games on CBS did OK in the ratings, averaging 2.9 million viewers apiece in a 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. time slot on the East Coast. They outperformed the NBA on ABC with 2.52 million viewers. However, even with some early attention directed toward the league, odds are the AAF, and the XFL, which starts up in 2020, for that matter, will not last.
There is not really any way around it: Although the AAF’s competition level is definitely good, it’s still second-rate to the NFL. Looking at the rosters, the majority of the players have brief NFL experience, but there is a reason why they are playing in the AAF and not the NFL. It is hard to see why fans would invest loads of their resources to an inferior product, without the traditions and connections of college football, even if it is decent.
Sure, the AAF is in some of the bigger markets that don’t have NFL teams such as Las Vegas, San Antonio, Memphis, Birmingham, and others, but it is hard to see what exactly sets it apart from other leagues that have not panned out in the past.
Kickoffs and extra point kicks are nonexistent, which is different, but the big names to keep fans drawn in for a long time just aren’t there.
Some may know the names of quarterbacks such as Josh Johnson, who started three games for the Washington Redskins this past season, 2016 New York Jets second-round pick Christian Hackenberg, former Tennessee Titans starter Zach Mettenberger, and former Texas A&M standout Trevor Knight, among others. But are those really the kinds of guys who are going to get people to be excited to watch the league on a weekly basis? It’s not like they have former Heisman Trophy winners Johnny Manziel, Tim Tebow, Heisman runner-up Vince Young, or even former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, if they wanted to go down that road, who they possibly could have attracted with the right contracts. However, the Guardian estimates the league combined only has $102 million in salary commitment combined between eight teams, far less than a single NFL team at $191 million apiece, so that star power might not come.
The issue is the AAF, and any leagues like it, do not serve any massively under-served market. It’s not like sports just go away after the NFL’s season ends. The NBA and NHL are still competing. Major League Baseball season is coming soon enough with spring training fast approaching. NASCAR and the PGA still exist. March Madness is exceptionally popular as well.
The AAF is not offering fans anything unique. It’s not 12-man football with three downs and a wider field like the Canadian Football League, and it’s not the air-raiding Arena Football League, where there are numerous rule differences between it and traditional football.
Pro football leagues offering an inferior product to the NFL have been tried before without much success. The USFL (1984-1986) and UFL (2009-2012) put together respectable, albeit second-rate, products in comparison to the NFL and lasted four seasons apiece. The first XFL, not the one that will make its debut in 2020, fizzled out after one season (2001) despite its opening weekend receiving a 9.5 in the Nielsen TV ratings; the XFL’s failures themselves should explain why Vince McMahon probably should not run another football league, even though he is going to try it again anyway.
Although the American Football League, founded in 1960, ended successfully with an AFL-NFL merger, that was done at a time where the NFL only had 16 teams. Now, there are 32 and there are more options to watch sports on television than there were 50 years ago.
That said, trying a business model that normally fails does not seem like a great strategy for the AAF, new XFL, or any other league that is to come in the future. Football in the spring, summer, and late winter may be an appealing prospect, but making it work in the long-run is a completely separate issue.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
