When they announced St. Louis will host the UFL championship game, they probably figured the Battlehawks would be there and they would have a guaranteed 40K+ attendance full of KAW IS THE LAW signs. That didn't happen. Instead, it will be the Brahmas facing the Stallions fucking up the UFL's plans on getting a sellout crowd in a (former) NFL stadium. Tickets still start off at $10 and it looks like there are plenty of good seats available for under $100 so that's good if you don't care about either team but want to support the league. I'm gonna go ahead and pick Birmingham to 3-peat and talk about the previous United Football League (2009-2012).
THE BIG GAME
Birmingham Stallions 17
San Antonio Brahmas 15
The 2009 season only had 4 teams: the New York Sentinels, Las Vegas Locomotives, Florida Tuskers, and the California Redwoods. For some stupid ass branding reason, all the teams had lime green and light blue in their color scheme which made for some ugly ass uniforms.
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| The referees wore red shirts, the yardage markers were lime green and the challenge flags were blue! YUCK! |
The Tuskers made it to the championship game (this is the only one available on YouTube in full) with a 6-0 record while the Locos finished the regular season at 4-2. It was the Jim Bowl with Haslett coaching the Tuskers while Fassel coached the Locomotives. The game started off fine, then the QBs played like shit until the 4th quarter where you couldn't stop them from scoring. At the end, Las Vegas ended Florida's perfect season when Graham Gano kicked a field goal in OT (so THIS is where the NFL got their bullshit overtime rules). I appreciated that Versus (RIP) aired the game uncensored so you could hear the players and coaches cursing into the field mics.
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| Tuskers WR Marcus Maxwell bent the uprights dunking the ball. If it was the No Fun League, he would've been beaten with a crowbar, fined $1,000,000 and forced to issue a public apology for disrespecting the game. |
Thankfully for the 2010 season they ditched the branding bullshit as the teams had their own color schemes and the referees wore the traditional B&W stripes. It's never a good sign when multiple teams get relocated after 1 season but that's what happened when the New York Sentinels became the Hartford Colonials and the California Redwoods turned into the Sacramento Mountain Lions. The Locos and Tuskers were spared but Florida lost their coach plus the UFL added the Omaha Nighthawks as an expansion team. Since the championship game isn't available in full, here's the highlights from the UFL's old YouTube channel. It was a rematch from last year as Vegas went back-to-back but with Chase Clement at QB this time.
Due to the reckless spending in the previous season, 2011 was the beginning of the end as both the Tuskers and Hartford Colonials were shut down. They did add another team to get it back up to 4 with the Virginia Destroyers though. Financial difficulties forced them to cancel part of the season and immediately play their championship game between the Destroyers and Locos. Virginia denied Vegas the chance to 3-peat in what would be the last UFL postseason in a long time. Judging by that amateur highlight video, they was already broke at that point.
The lack of money finally caught up with them in 2012 as they weren't paying players. They kept the same teams from last season, but fans saw the writing on the walls and stopped coming out for games. They finally decided to just cut their losses and shutdown leaving the Locos as the lone undefeated team in the final season. Multiple lawsuits by players and coaches happened as they tried to get back the money they were owed. That's a regular thing for these leagues TBH.
So, to sum things up, the previous United Football League was like creating teams with free agents and benchwarmers in Madden 12. I actually like that since these other leagues put a cap as to how much NFL experience you can have before you get booted out of the league. A spring league full of veteran NFL castoffs playing by old NFL rules would be neat if it was ran by people who knew what the fuck they was doing. Someone like a Josh Rosen would benefit from playing in the Outlaw Football League considering he's too old to play in these other leagues and doesn't have the resume to overlook that like an A.J. McCarron. And since it's unlikely these guys would play in the NFL again, they would build a connection with fans for years.
LAST WEEK: 1-1
OVERALL: 30-12
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