Do You Remember . . . The Alliance of American Football (AAF) League?

A few weeks ago our local news station did a brief story about a new football league that was about to premier called the Alliance of American Football (AAF).

The concept of the AAF basically being a lower-level developmental league of professional football with all of the hard hitting action of the pros seemed promising.  It’s similar to how baseball and hockey have lower professional levels to help train new players and rehabilitate upper-level players coming off an injury or surgery.  In this case, it’s one more chance for undrafted and former NFL players (and coaches) to prove their abilities without resorting to the Canadian Football League, the Arena Football League, or playing football in Europe.

Unlike the developmental leagues for baseball and hockey, the AAF plays in an entirely different season than the NFL.  Here we are in late February and the AAF is already in its third week of the inaugural season.  Normally this time of year is dominated by coverage of NBA and college basketball, and if you live up north, ice hockey as well.

And apparently it’s still that way.

Here in Atlanta we have an Alliance football team (the Atlanta Legends and their 0-3 record), and despite their losing record, there’s virtually no news coverage of the team.  This is a major city that cherishes its football, from high school to college to the NFL.  It didn’t matter if the Falcons had a bad season.  Each week there was still plenty of news coverage of the team, whether you liked it or not.  Friday nights in the fall had highlights of high school football teams, and Saturdays were dominated by college football.

But as far as the Atlanta Legends are concerned, there’s been virtually no news coverage of the football team.  Our local Fox 5 news station briefly talked about them three weeks ago when the season was about to begin, but there’s been silence since that point.  Then again, our city’s professional hockey team (the ECHL Atlanta Gladiators) doesn’t get any coverage either, so it’s not really that much of a surprise.

The question now is simple:  Will the Alliance of American Football survive and play again next year?

For starters, without good TV and news coverage, you’re going to have a very difficult time building a fan base.  People aren’t going to purchase team merchandise and go to the games if they don’t know anything about the team, the players, their record, or even when they’re playing their games.  Without a steady stream of revenue, it’s hard to convince the league to not only continue for another season, but to grow and expand as well.

I noticed that our local CBS station aired the first game for the Atlanta Legends, but so far that’s been it.  It seems like all the other games have been broadcast on the NFL Network.  That’s rather inconvenient for those of us who use TV antennas, or people with just a basic cable service.  Just today I learned that the Alliance of American Football’s website (https://aaf.com/) is doing live streams of the games for free, and right now I’m able to watch San Antonio play against San Diego.

Another point is that there are only eight teams in the AAF, and almost all of them are in the southern half of the country.  Are people living in northern cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago and Seattle going to want to tune in and cheer teams that are nowhere near their city?  Football is still football, but those fans aren’t going to be as passionate about the new league since their geographic area was basically omitted.  I was shocked that the AAF didn’t put at least a team or two up north to help balance the distribution of teams.

One last point is that the Alliance began playing a week after the Super Bowl.  At that point in the year it’s safe to say that most people are fully saturated from watching tons of college football and NFL games from late August through January.  And as the college level keeps growing with its playoff system, those games keep getting more intense and, thus, even more coverage as well.  By the time the Super Bowl takes place, most people just want to take a step back and breathe and give football a rest.

I like the concept of the Alliance of American Football, and I’d like to see it succeed despite the somewhat unusual name of the league and the rather hideous team name and logo for the Atlanta Legends.  The games are played a little faster, I like the forced two-point conversion after scoring a touchdown, and they’ve also eliminated kickoffs, which the NFL already ruined with the rule changes.  It’s also great seeing the legendary college coach Steve Spurrier back on the sidelines and coaching a Floridian team again.  (And the Orlando Apollos are 3-0 right now.  How about that for the “head ball coach?”)

But will the league survive?  I don’t know at this point.  Since it seems like nobody is talking about or paying attention to it, it almost feels like it’s going to be a one-and-done sort of deal, or it’ll just drift away into the land of forgotten football, just like the CFL, European league, and arena football.

If they want the Alliance of American Football to grow and for people to take it seriously, I recommend three changes:

1 – Heavily promote the teams and give good TV coverage for the games.

2 – Expand and place at least two teams further north, preferably in smaller cities to attract fans from multiple markets.

3 – Play during a different time of year, perhaps April through June, covering late spring and early summer.