Introducing the Action Football League
I'm not letting the USFL have all the fun.
Earlier this week, a new football league was announced.
Something like this seems to happen every few years, with slight variations on a theme: in an attempt to cash in on the overwhelming popularity of football in this country, some optimistic group launches a new brand that’ll shake things up and fill a football-light vacuum with even more football. Whether it be the original USFL, the original XFL, the Association of American Football, the rebooted XFL, or now the rebooted USFL, the shape of each new league is roughly the same: spring football, played in a mixture of second-tier cities with available stadiums. Rosters filled with players familiar from their college days who couldn’t quite make it in the NFL. Occasional novel tweaks to the rule book. Flashy uniforms. Fan-friendly pricing.
All of them fail.
There’s a certain nostalgic appeal to this latest attempt, a re-launch of the most successful NFL-challenging league to date, the United States Football League. The original USFL e…