Not the NFL or the XFL but the AAF.
“After talking to [league co-founder and CEO] Charlie Ebersol, I knew the Alliance of American Football was right for San Antonio, and that San Antonio was right for the Alliance,” said Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who participated in talks with the league prior to the announcement.
The AAF was unveiled in March as a complement to the NFL with its season kicking off in early February next year six days after the Super Bowl and finishing in April with a championship around the time of the NFL draft. It aims to put a quality product on the field made up of former college players and pros trying to make it back to the NFL and coached by names fans will recognize.
League officials, including Ebersol, a television and film producer, will be in town Thursday to announce the local general manager and head coach. San Antonio was the eighth and final city to be unveiled as a charter member of the new league joining Atlanta; Birmingham, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; Orlando, Florida; Phoenix; Salt Lake Cit; and San Diego.
Coaches such as Steve Spurrier in Orlando, Mike Singletary in Memphis, Rick Neuheisel in Phoenix, and Mike Martz in San Diego give the league credibility. Add to that a television contract with CBS and the league already appears to be on more stable footing than other professional football league startups of the past.
“Spring football forever has been thought of as a money grab,” Ebersol said during a Facebook Live event after announcing the league in March. “It has been thought of as somebody just going in and building a business very quickly and making money right out of the gate because people love football.
“But what we tried to build here was something bigger. We tried to put together a team, an alliance of people that were committed to what we could do if we actually started from scratch with a professional sports league.”
The AAF is funded by private investors but there are no individual owners for each team. It is what the league’s name suggests – an alliance aimed at building a strong product in each city.
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The AAF founders have been working for more than a year to identify the cities in which they wanted to place the first eight teams. They also have been laying the groundwork for the league in talking with potential coaches, general managers, and considering ways in which they might want to make their brand of football different from the NFL.
Some of those differences will include no kickoffs, no extra points, no television timeouts, and a 30-second play clock instead of the 40-second clock in the NFL. The differences are rooted in player safety and shortening the length of games.
The San Antonio franchise will play its games at the Alamodome. The AAF was mentioned in that recent XFL story I blogged about, which was the first I had heard of it. Sounds like they have some interesting ideas, with this league maybe kind of serving the same function as the NBA G League does for that sport. The recent record of non-NFL pro football leagues is not great, but this one has a pretty good pedigree, so we’ll see. (Then again, so did the WLAF.) And since you’re wondering, yes, Charlie Ebersole is Dick Ebersole’s son.