The AAF was exciting, fun, shabby, and is now unsurprisingly leaving us

The AAF is suspending operations, which is only a little surprising.

For two glorious weeks, we talked about the Alliance of American Football.

The startup league was the methadone to our football addiction, doled out days after an underwhelming Super Bowl and delivering the big hits, interesting rule changes, and shoddy play we’ve come to expect from a fledging gridiron organization. A handful of former fantasy waiver-wire scroll-bys and practice squad regulars were enough to capture our imagination for a chunk of the month-long dead zone from the end of the NFL’s season to the beginning of NCAA basketball’s major conference tournaments. It was an imperfect speed bump for weekend viewers tearing through the pages of their television listings.

And now, barring a significant change of heart (or maybe a second unexpected investor willing to buy into a product with more red flags than a Soviet warship), it’s gone. Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon, the man who once planned to put $250 million into the league, has called it quits after allegedly sinking $70 million of payroll into the premiere season. The league planned to suspend operations Tuesday, effectively sounding the death knell for teams like the Salt Lake Stallions and Arizona Hotshots with its action.

The AAF failed where the USFL, XFL, WLAF, and UFL all died before it. Charlie Ebersol’s latest step in his father’s footsteps hoped small innovations could mask the scent of the graveyard underneath the league’s foundation. A pro league where Christian Hackenberg could sling interceptions as a starter before being replaced by Johnny Manziel was always going to be popular for snarky tweets and low-effort small talk, but it never as a viable product.

This was all very familiar, and the AAF’s death was seemingly inevitable

It had been nearly two decades since a startup football league had captured the attention of fans, but the AAF followed a well-worn path toward failure. Like the XFL’s 2001 debut before it, the league garnered headlines and better-than-expected ratings by stepping into a vacuum of sports coverage and exceeding the low standards attached to any non-NFL, non-NCAA gridiron product. The growth of social media made it look like an organization without a staid home network — the AAF was broadcast on CBS, CBS Sports, TNT, TBS, and the NFL Network along with internet streams — might have a chance to outlive its expectations.

Few were immune to the hype. SB Nation bought into it too, calling the four major rule changes from the NFL to AAF “genius.” And they kinda were! Portions of each, with the exception of the “no extra points” addition, were debated at the NFL’s annual meeting at the end of March. It wasn’t just fans who were paying attention, but folks in high places on the other end of the pro football spectrum.

But innovation wasn’t enough to cover the fact that this was minor league football with none of the connection or fanaticism college football could bring. The league’s top quarterback, Garrett Gilbert, was still a man who’s thrown three career NFL passes. Other familiar names like Hackenberg and Trent Richardson only had the opportunity to show why they’d failed to live up to once-lofty draft statuses. Casual fans didn’t stick around.

Similar to the original XFL, whose ratings declined by half, then half again after just three weeks of broadcasts, the novelty of spring football and lack of brand recognition wasn’t enough to keep many fans on board. The lack of network continuity didn’t help either; games bounced from channel to channel and a lot of fans didn’t follow them, though they did watch more AAF games than comparable second tier offerings from NCAA basketball, the NBA, and NHL. The ratings weren’t bad — better than expected, really— but weren’t eye-opening either.

More damningly, the league’s social media mentions dried up, proving its mid-February peak wholly unsustainable. This is how the league’s Google searches have trended over the past year. After maxing out the week of Feb. 9-16, its popularity plummets — only rebounding slightly when news of a possible closure crops up at the end of March.

There were opportunities to reverse that on the horizon. Johnny Manziel’s arrival from a failed stint in the Canadian Football League gave the club a flawed but recognizable name to advertise. His presence helped bump league ratings on TNT despite going up against a loaded weekend of college basketball (even if he only threw three passes).

A national broadcast spot in the lead-up to Saturday’s Final Four games would likely have created a significant ratings and awareness boost. So too would a league championship game set to immediately follow the final day of the 2019 NFL Draft. Either would have been showcases to potential investors and even the NFL itself. It appears neither will happen, thanks to orders from the top.

Mismanagement was a fatal blow for an already-wounded league

For Dundon, there was only one solution as money flew out the door and another startup spring league — Vince McMahon’s well-funded XFL reboot— loomed less than a year away: get the NFL on board. This, well, bold strategy failed. Getting NFL players, even practice squad guys, to sign up for more football is not only a sore subject, but also one disallowed by the NFLPA’s current collective bargaining agreement (CBA). With that CBA up for debate starting this month, it appeared Dundon’s threats of shutting the league down were only a poorly executed bluff. Instead, they were just the prologue to an execution.

Reports suggest he was the only member of the league’s brain trust in favor of the shutdown. AAF founders Ebersol and Bill Polian instead sat on a prudent (but still unproven) formula to limp along for three seasons as an independent league before partnering with the NFL as a feeder system despite lacking the money (or public NFL agreement) to do so. With the XFL coming soon, they rushed to market in order to get the jump on McMahon and sway investors away from the other amateur football venture.

That worked when they found a billionaire sports owner willing to invest, and then failed spectacularly when it became apparent Dundon had no interest in bleeding money into a patient gameplan with no guarantee of even modest success. It took him less than two months to decide the risk was nowhere near the reward and scuttle his plans after spending $70 million of his proposed quarter-billion investment, saving the $20 million it would have cost to finish out the season. In return, he’ll reportedly walk away with the rights to a still-in-development live-action gambling app that was supposed to turn AAF games into a play-by-play array of prop bets but instead lingered in development trials without ever making it to the public.

Polian didn’t hesitate to place the blame for the shutdown at Dundon’s feet.

“I am extremely disappointed to learn Tom Dundon has decided to suspend all football operations of the Alliance of American Football,” Polian said in a statement. “When Mr. Dundon took over, it was the belief of my co-founder, Charlie Ebersol, and myself that we would finish the season, pay our creditors, and make the necessary adjustments to move forward in a manner that made economic sense for all.

”The momentum generated by our players, coaches and football staff had us well positioned for future success. Regrettably, we will not have that opportunity.”

Polian and Ebersol were desperate for the cash infusion that could keep their dream alive — rumors of their venture being financially stable were evidently overblown — and in return ceded control of their venture to someone who failed to share their vision. Now he’s primed to strip the AAF for parts, and there may not be anything they can do to stop him. Pending new investment, the league is done for.

Now the NFL gets the chance to pick the bones

The USFL, the most successful startup pro football league since the NFL welcomed the AFL into its ranks, died in 1985 after three seasons of failing to topple the gridiron’s monolith. When it folded, players like Jim Kelly and Reggie White carried the league’s banner to the NFL, while cities that had proved accommodating for football crowds like Jacksonville and Baltimore eventually earned their own pro franchises.

When the WLAF’s American franchises were shuttered after its 1992 season, a stronger push into Europe kept the league’s developmental arm alive for a decade-plus. It provided a proving ground for players like Jon Kitna, Jake Delhomme, and Brent Grimes while helping set a rudimentary foundation for the overseas games played today. The XFL’s sputtering firework of a season pushed Tommy Maddox and several others back into the NFL in 2002 and gave the league innovations like the Skycam and in-game interviews.

It’s not clear exactly what the NFL will glean from football’s latest spring failure. The rule changes discussed in March’s league meeting in Arizona could be the scope that points out what the NFL could target.

Extra points aren’t going anywhere, but a rule that allows an alternative to increasingly unsuccessful onside kicks (only 7.5 percent were converted last season) by giving clubs a de facto fourth-and-long from deep in their own territory following a touchdown or field goal could be a welcome change. The SkyJudge, an eighth official who observes the game and regulates calls via overhead camera, was another issue that earned debate in Phoenix. While each reform was ultimately tabled in favor of a significant replay challenge overhaul, they could crop up again soon — as early as May’s Spring Meeting.

Players will follow as well, though it seems pretty unlikely we’ll get any starting quarterbacks out of an AAF group whose name recognition exceeded their talent on the field.

And if training camp doesn’t work out this summer, there’s always the XFL, who will be just as thirsty for players in 2020 as the AAF was in 2019.

This wasn’t an unpredicted outcome. The residents of Birmingham, Alabama — people who have seen the USFL’s Stallions, WLAF’s Fire, and XFL’s Thunderbolts — could have told Dundon and the rest of the AAF executive staff that. Same goes in Orlando (home of the Renegades, Thunder, UFL’s Tuskers, and Rage), the one can’t-miss stop for spring football leagues that seemingly exist solely to miss.

The AAF existed with little margin for error, and any advantage the league got from a hot start, national broadcasts, and the NFL’s tacit endorsement thanks to its place on the NFL Network was quickly undone by a lack of funding and, later, the lack of a singular vision. While fans began to turn away from the product, the springtime football league was still viable, if unexciting, television programming. But professional football requires a massive upfront investment and heaps of patience to build the familiarity and loyalty that can carry a league when its gimmicks run dry.

That’s the lesson McMahon will have to adhere to when his XFL reboot takes off, lest he add another name — or at least a couple new dates — to the spring football graveyard.