Alliance of American Football Begins Inaugural Season

Every decade of two in American professional football, a new league will form to challenge the monopolistic domination of the National Football League.  The NFL dealt with the All-American Football Conference of the late 1940s by incorporating its most successful franchises and the American Football League of the 1960s by merging with it...and with the later World Football League and United States Football League by competitively crushing them.  Recently we've had Arena Football and the United Football League, both now defunct.  It's interesting that with all of the talent coming from college that there hasn't developed with American football the multi-tiered league system prevalent in countries where soccer is the dominant form of "football".  Now we have a new league, the Alliance of American Football, and we'll just have to see how long it can last.  Last night's CBS-televised game between the Orlando Apollos, coached by Steve Spurrier, and the Atlanta Legends...two of the league's eight teams divided into two divisions...was pretty well-played, all things considered.  In the AAF there are no extra point kicks after touchdowns: only two-point conversions.  And no kickoffs as well...the receiving offense starts from the 25-yard line.  Other rules are designed to further streamline and shorten the game and keep fan interest.  The fact that they waited until the weekend following the NFL's Super Bowl to start the season is probably the best idea: the AAF isn't directly competing with the NFL for TV time and attention, but instead slyly capitalizing on the end of the previous college and pro seasons to extend football for a couple more months.  The AAF regular season consists of ten games with the two top finishers in each division making the playoffs, the championship game to be played later in April.  And you won't be seeing oligarchic and often obnoxious owners like Robert Kraft or Jerry Jones in the stands...all teams are league-owned.  How this arrangement plays itself out should be one of the more interesting things about this new league.  I hope it succeeds...American football is clearly the most popular spectator sport in the United States and there is plenty of talent available to field quality teams, even if it isn't on the "premier league" level of the NFL.  If the AAF can do well with its eight teams and establish a sense of stability from year to year, they just might be able to establish themselves as a more permanent fixture in the American professional sports landscape.  And they should succeed as long as they get their games shown on broadcast television by major networks and/or cable channels like ESPN...