🔵 With our first CB pick, we're taking Adonis Alexander 🔵 pic.twitter.com/ddevxHDLQP— New Orleans Breakers (@USFLBreakers) February 23, 2022
Great to see a Hokie get another shot at a professional career in football.
If you haven't been following the USFL draft, the overall format is pretty interesting. The draft will consist of 35 rounds over 2 days. The interesting part is that each round is dedicated to specific position groups. Here is a good draft guide.
Compensatory picks in particular are pretty interesting. Teams get to pass on a round for an additional pick in a different round. Teams also can take the compensatory pick before the round they pass on. There are some intriguing opportunities for strategy here. Here's a link to a better explanation: How Compensatory Picks Work in the USFL
It will be interesting to see if any other Hokies get drafted. I know opinions on spring football are decidedly mixed, but I think we can all agree that it is great for these guys to get additional shots at their careers of choice.
Comments
Awesome opportunity for Adonis, as I mentioned on the tweeter, I feel like for the USFL to have any success, their teams need to be located in non-NFL cities tho
The teams are city-based in name only, regular season games are all being played in Birmingham, and the playoffs will be in Canton, Ohio. They just named the teams after their original franchises.
The biggest hurdle for USFL is going to be the new XFL coming back with better owners and agreement with NFL.
right, I do find the USFL interesting though with the draft as well as a 10-Game season. Might provide some opportunities for guys to be seen by NFL Scouts. USFL and XFL should merge and create one Spring League in Partnership with NFL.
USFL Champ plays the XFL Champ, winner of that game replaces the last place NFL team for the following season, tanking becomes a thing of the past
Promotion / Relegation coming to America (MLS still says no)
I still do not understand the weird fetish some fans have with trying to get promotion and relegation into American sports. It will NEVER happen. There is no owner or athletic director out there that is going to risk losing their seat at the big boys table.
No, it means that instead of being a tax write off, owners have to put the work in to keep their teams at the big boy table.
It's not really a weird fetish to promote an objectively better system. In relegation leagues you never have teams "tanking for tua" or any of the bullshit that happens in the NFL once teams are out of the playoff race. I've never watched a soccer game where a team was trying to lose.
You may argue that it's only the bottom of the league and it doesn't matter, but if one team is tanking, that means another team is getting easier wins, and that affects the integrity of the entire league. The NFL has done nothing to combat this, even relatively simple fixes like implementing a draft pick lottery so first picks are not assured.
On the other hand it is kind of a weird fetish to die on a hill defending a worse system, just because changing it might put a billionaires play investment at stake.
I don't really care about relegation one way or the other but when the people making money control the system, those same people are never going to risk losing that control. In their eyes, there is no reason to change. These professional leagues and conferences are some of the most profitable enterprises in the world. Every week millions of people watch the games and throw money at them hand over fist. For all of the message board talk, nobody really has a big enough problem with the current system to force a change. If it is just "Wouldn't that be cool?" talk, great no big deal. But if anybody really thinks that promotion/relegation is going to happen in our lifetimes, well, that is just extremely naive.
I don't think anyone was defending it. Simply stating the obvious, why waste energy pining for a change that is never going to come?
For one, I don't think tanking is actually that big of an issue in the NFL. Part of that is due to the nature of the game itself, as well as the structure of the business/player contracts.
Its very difficult to get 53 guys to all try and lose just so that the owner that doesn't give a crap about them has a better shoot at drafting their potential replacement. Also, football is one of those games where if you are not trying hard when you step on that field, there are worse things that can happen than just losing your job. In basketball tanking is easy, for the opposite reasons. Not so much football. Like, if you watched any Jaguars games this season (and god help you why would you?)...they wern't not trying. They just were not any good. Any owner dumb enough to put his team at risk of being relegated in American sports would not not be smart enough to become an owner in the first place (Daniel Snyder would like a word?)
you don't think it's a big deal that teams are incentivized to try to lose games in a competitive league? That's an interesting perspective.
I'd also point out that the 53 guys on the team don't have to be in on it, as long as the people calling plays are. Since the people calling plays are employed at the sole discretion of the management who is incentivized to lose games, well, that seems ripe for corruption to me.
Also, there are definitely rich American owners of highly profitable soccer teams, who do so in spite of the chance of relegation. For instance, Fenway Sports Group owns Liverpool F.C.
No offense, but I can not imagine a more incorrect interpretation of what I said than what you just typed there.
Where did I say it wasn't a problem? I simply said that the people that are actually in the position to make those kinds of decisions have zero incentive to make that type of change to American professional sports leagues. Do you think Shahid Khan is going to vote on a adding relegation to the NFL, when the most likely outcome of such a vote would hurt his own franchise disproportionately in its current state? And this is a guy that also owns Fulham FC so he is familiar enough with the concept of relegation if he were so inclined to present it to the NFL. He's one of many owners/ownership groups of American teams that also hold international league clubs. And yet they have not brought up the idea here...I wonder why?
Same could be said for any other owner of an NFL franchise. Relegation would put zero dollars in their pockets, hence its a dead issue.
Tanking is a huge problem in a league like the NBA (and this is coming from a Sixers fan). What have the owners done, other than some token attempts at shaking the draft lottery up? Nothing.
So again, its a problem that will never be addressed because it makes no financial sense for the people that control the league to address it. The potential loss of revenue to any given franchise for a particular season(s) far outweighs any incentive for a few extra eyeballs tuning into a Week 17 game to see what team may or may not get demoted. Thats all I said.
And American owners are hated. Kroenke to Glazer and everyone in between are despised. Then they tried to start a super league with the other richest clubs in the world. Hell of an insult to the fans who support the structure, because soccer is for everyone.
Except in the US, where I spent nearly $500 for my 5 yr old daughter to sit in the middle of the field and cry cause it's too hot and she didn't want to run. And don't think this isn't happening in other US sports. Youth sports is a big money industry.
They decided that the clubs, in an industry with relegation, were worthwhile investments worth the risk.
That's very different from having a team in an industry without relegation, and choosing to introduce the risk.
Honestly, I think the #1 pick should go to the team with the best record that did not make the playoffs, 2nd pick to the 2nd best, etc...give 'em a reason to try
Something that de-incentivizes coming in dead last would definitely be good, even if it is just moving to a lottery system like the NBA uses where the worst team has the best chance to get the #1 pick but isn't guaranteed would be better than the current system.
oh man could you imagine the chargers getting the #1 pick????????????????????
This is wrong. Regulation systems are not better. They are greed driven as much, or more so, than what you see in NFL. The big clubs in Premeire League will never not be the big dogs, never. You may get a team here or there that is regulated down or up but it almost never matters to the big clubs. Money like everywhere ensures success, and the only method to improve your position in the League is money.
Using my team, Mancity, as an example. It was a middling to suck as team for a long time. Then real money arrived and it's at the top. But regulation was almost never a concern.
Regulation is simply the illusion of fair play from the days, long ago, when it actually worked.
Do you mean relegation hasn't been a concern once the current ownership group came in? They were relegated as recently as 2001.
They've actually been regulated 11 times in their history, and that's the point. It mattered not. Money talks just as strongly in a Regulation System as much as it does in NFL or any other pro league.
I mean of course financial investment is required to be successful at the highest level. And the clubs/teams with the most money will generally be the highest quality. Manchester United have been a bumbling mess for nearly a decade, but have so much money that they can buy talent to at least stay top 8. The reason I like the promotion/relegation system is that it allows a team that decides to invest to move up and benefit from being ambitious (Brentford) while the system punishes the average team that has an owner with no ambition (like Newcastle United a few years back).
And side note - is your phone autocorrecting relegation to regulation every time you type it?
🤣 didn't even notice that. thanks.
in principle I agree with you. In practice it's a corrupt, broken system. The big clubs have such powerful youth soccer programs that it ensures they cherry pick the best talent from future club teams that may have chance to move up if that talent stayed home. At this point it's smoke and mirrors to keep the little guy down.
Haha no problem I was just very confused 😂
And I agree that the financial side of soccer is completely broken. But, I don't think that's the fault of a promotion/relegation league system. I mean we see spending get out of control in baseball and all professional teams stay in the same league.
The only real fix that I see is to do the finances like in American systems with caps on spending/salaries. I think that mixed with promotion/relegation would be an ideal system that will sadly never happen.
I'm not sure you can Man City you're way to a championship in a league with a salary cap, though. They function to control different tiers in the league though. I don't know that anyone is saying promotion/relegation would level the playing field between the best teams, and the worst teams. Just that it incentivizes teams at the bottom to actually try, instead of just coasting, and racking up draft picks (or revenue sharing in baseball). They're solving different problems. Not that it matters, since there will never be relegation in major American sports.
For so many reasons -- franchises of a league vs clubs; incredibly large country and relatively poor infrastructure for supporting multiple tiers of professional leagues (and baseball only has the infrastructure due to the built-in feeder mechanism); institutional inertia among fans, leagues, players, etc. The system was never designed to support pro-rel, so it will never support pro-rel unless mostly everything is scrapped and reimagined and rebuilt -- and at this point why bother?
And, the most important thing is that the owners (who control the leagues) will never willingly vote to put their investment at risk. It's why you see MLS teams sold for multiples more than, say, Championship teams in England. MLS has guaranteed revenues.
the franchise model
Jacksonville never makes it to the NFL again
Depends on if we are playing the colts or not.
False (with a quasi /s). The biggest hurdle for the USFL is that the NFL still exists. As much as Americans claim we can't get enough football its just not true. I'll give the USFL one season, which is twice as long as the last football startup lasted.
Until the NFL goes away there will be limited to no success for ANY pro football league that tries to take a crack at breaking through.
In its defense, the last football league got killed by COVID. Their TV ratings and attendance were improving week by week.
Yep, people were really getting into the new XFL. The other one, can't remember the name, tried to spend too much too fast, and lost a lot.
UFL? Where Ahman Green played for Omaha.
AAF?
That's the one, had the Carolina Hurricanes owner pump money into it, but couldn't keep it afloat
Orlando Apollos anyone?
I totally forgot about that league!
I like the idea of spring football and there being an opportunity for guys who didn't quite make the NFL to get some burn and maybe get some opportunity.
I understand the desire to keep everything in one place and cut down on travel and some of the other stuff. I get that football and sport in general are heavily driven by TV money and streaming. HOWEVER. I think that something is lost without having big, invested crowds in stadiums for games. It takes away from the atmosphere, spectacle, and enjoyment of the games. When sports first came back during covid with no crowds, everybody was so desperate for something besides Tiger King and Last Dance that it totally worked, even in front of empty crowds. But I notice when crowds are empty and it's a lot less likely that I'll get invested and stick around for it. Even with the recent olympics, I think the lack of live crowds was a huge detractor and was certainly a reason that I didn't watch nearly as much as I have in the past. The sterile venues absolutely take away part of the enjoyment for me.
SO it will be interesting to see if they can get locals in Bham and Canton involved and invested and put on a decent show in addition to decent football.