Apparently, winning doesn’t mean a whole heckuvalot in the United Football League. Earlier this year, and expansion franchise was awarded to Virginia Beach, Va., area. The team had its coach and president, Joe Moglia, chairman of TD Ameritrade and a former college coordinator who last coached football in the 1980s. It had a name, the Virginia Destroyers. And it had a home field, the Virginia Beach Sportsplex (seating capacity: 10,000). The expansion team was scheduled to begin play in 2011. All that needed was an expansion draft, right?
Not so quickly. This is, after all, the United Football League—where a crowd of 15,000 is lauded as enormous and which, it seems, does its best to redefine the term “rinky dink” at every turn. Keep in mind that when the Hartford Colonials opened their 2010 season at Rentschler Field against the Sacramento Mountain Lions and drew 14,384 fans, it represented the largest regular-season attendance in league history at that time.
Yow-zah.
But we digress. All the ducks were in order for Virginia to enter the league as an expansion franchise next year. Until, that is, the Florida Tuskers ceased operations yesterday in the time it took Randy Edsall to leave his team high and dry in the Arizona desert and hop on the next plane to Baltimore.
This whole Orlando folding thing seemed so strange. After all, the Tuskers were model members in the UFL paradigm: mid-to-major size market with no NFL competition. And let us not forget, NFL legend Joe Theismann was brought in as an owner amid great fanfare during this past season, and the Tuskers went on to appear in their second straight UFL Championship Game where they were defeated by the Las Vegas Locos for the second straight year.
But as successful as they were on the field, the Tuskers were as unsuccessful at the gate, coming in dead last in the league in attendance. Perhaps it was because they played in the archaic Gator Bowl. Or perhaps it was because with the Tampa Bay Bucs, the Miami Dolphins and three powerhouse NCAA programs within driving distance, no one really gave a hoot.
Probably the later.
So the Tuskers loaded up the truck and headed north where, instead of an expansion team, the eager fans in Virginia (a term we use loosely—but hey, look at their option: the Redskins) will have an “established” team. And let’s face it. If the Tuskers-turned-Destroyers can’t sell most of their 10,000 tickets for four measly games (that’s the UFL season), well, it’s a surefire one-and-out in Virginie.
"Orlando was a great market, but the big driver was the size of the venues available to us," said UFL commissioner David Huyghue. "We need appropriately sized stadium venues as much as we need non-NFL markets in order to be successful. Virginia offers us the ideal scenario, while such an option does not exist in Orlando.”
While Theismann is out as owner—moving over to be a “consultant” with the league (whatever that means)—head coach Jay Gruden and GM Doug Williams are moving north with the Tuskers-turned-Destroyers.
“I am looking forward to working with Doug again, and feel that we will start from a very strong position of having an established team and a great platform from which to launch the Destroyers,” said Gruden. “Doug and I already have a good relationship and will work well together.”
Then again, published reports have Gruden moving to the NFL as an assistant coach, perhaps as soon as this weekend.
And where does that leave Joe Moglia. Well, with no room left in the Inn up in Virginia, the UFL just slid him over to Omaha to replace Jeff Jagodzinski, who was dismissed as head coach of the Nighthawks earlier this month.
Confused yet? Well, then try this one on for size: Mark Cuban, the flamboyant owner of the Dallas Mavericks, jumped aboard the UFL Express last year when he floated the fledgling league a $5 million loan to help with operation expenses and what-not. At the time, his rhetoric was extremely upbeat about the UFL’s chances.
But after two deadlines came and went without Cuban getting a plug nickel back from the UFL, his relationship with the league is derailed, which is interesting since Cuban's HDNet is one of the UFL's primary national telecast outlets. (Versus is the other.) So now Cuban is headed to court in an effort to recover his dinero.
Bush league? That’s your call. But if you can look past the stumbling and bumbling in the front offices, the UFL has started to develop into a last-stop for veterans looking for one more chance in the limelight, and, more importantly, a developmental league for future talent. This past week the league announced that 25 players have signed NFL Futures contracts (which just NFL leagalese for locking them into contracts for next season). That list includes Ryan Perrilloux, the mercurial reserve quarterback for the Colonials who has been inked for next season by the New York Giants.
So while the UFL may seem, at times, to be a comedy of errors, in the long run, it may have a fair to midland chance of making it.
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