The newly rebooted USFL has some things going for it. But it’s got a few major hurdles to overcome if it wants to buck the trend of failure that other startup professional football leagues (not named the NFL) have endured.
Including its 1980s predecessor with the same name.
A good place to start might be never putting the Pittsburgh Maulers on primetime again. It’s fortunate that the Maulers haven’t risen to the level of importance yet where people in Pittsburgh actually care about the final score.
Woof! You thought the postgame shows were brutal after the Steelers tied the Lions last season? Imagine if that many people in Pittsburgh cared about the result after the Maulers lost 17-3 in their debut to Todd Haley’s Tampa Bay Bandits Monday night.
Yikes. I don’t think coach Kirby Wilson and company want me starting up my “Airing of Grievances” columns after their games just yet. In the wake of what I saw Monday night, I may still be writing.
The greater point is, I did watch. At least for the first week. And if your league can pry me away from other top notch viewing options like Pirates-Brewers and the National Corgi Races on ESPN2, you may be onto something.
Talk about catching something great completely by accident. I now give you the 2021 Corgi Races championship final#ESPN2#Corgis pic.twitter.com/OxJ3he9kKN
— Hank Scorpio (@WestsideNiner) April 19, 2022
For the record, I made money on that final. I had “Angus” to show. I should’ve bet him to win, though. You know what they say, bet big on the National Corgi Race, or go home.
But at least after the first weekend, it appears that the USFL is off to a good start. As Frank Schwab of Yahoo.com points out, the USFL’s first game on Saturday night raked in 2.95 million viewers. The New Jersey Generals-Birmingham Stallions game was simulcast on NBC and Fox. It drew 1.43 million sets of eyeballs on Fox and 1.52 million on NBC.
“That’s a big day for the new league, especially going up against the first weekend of the NBA playoffs,” said Schwab.
He added that those total viewer numbers are commensurate to the opening weekends for the reboot of the XFL in 2020 and the Alliance of American Football in 2019.
To that point, Schwab found a tweet from Fox executive Michael Mulvihill which compared those stats to other sporting events on Easter weekend.
Major market overnight ratings for Sat 4/16:
Nuggets-Warriors – 2.8
Raptors-Sixers – 2.1
Twolves-Grizzlies – 1.9USFL Generals-Stallions – 1.7
Jazz-Mavericks – 1.4
PGA 3rd Round – 1.2
UFC – 0.7
NASCAR Trucks – 0.6
NHL – 0.5— Michael Mulvihill (@mulvihill79) April 17, 2022
The issue that other start-up spring leagues have found is that after curiosity moves viewers to check in for the first week or two, people lose interest quickly. And this year, oh by the way, the NFL draft intersects during Week 3.
This edition of the USFL does have a few things going for it, namely $150 million from Fox which will be poured into league operations over three years.
The nostalgia factor of the old USFL team names and sharp uniforms help. Plus, people love to gamble. And with the proliferation of legalized online and in-game gambling, this edition of the USFL will have a built-in advantage no other rival league has ever had.
The business plan is smart, too. Having all the teams play in one location — a non-covid-related voluntary bubble model in Birmingham, Ala. — will keep costs down by limiting travel for the teams and the broadcasts.
If the USFL hits big, maybe that’ll encourage the “home” cities of the teams to actually adopt them once the league decides to branch out of the bubble. But for as much as that strategy might be a reason why the league can survive, it’ll also create the USFL’s biggest challenges.
For instance, beyond a handful of people who might still have a Mike Rozier jersey in their closet, any connection between Pittsburgh and these Maulers is as generic as if the team was named the Birmingham Maulers. The same could be said for the Michigan Panthers, New Orleans Breakers or Philadelphia Blobs.
Oh, wait. The Philadelphia team is still the Stars. Their mascot is just named “Blob.”
This is Blob.
Blob is a mascot. He’s a mascot for the Philadelphia Stars, Philly’s USFL team.
Blob looks like … a blob. Blob was named by Twitter. Twitter is weird.
Hi, Blob!https://t.co/NdhN3kvfY5— NBC10 Philadelphia (@NBCPhiladelphia) April 15, 2022
Blob? In Philly? It seems right, doesn’t it? But I digress.
The point is, if the league ever does relocate to home cities, right now the Maulers are just as likely to be the renewed Denver Gold or Oakland Invaders as they are the Pittsburgh Maulers if they can’t find a place to play in Western Pennsylvania and suitable lease/business arrangements.
More immediately, though, the biggest albatross the USFL is encountering is the lack of fans in the stands. Not necessarily from a ticket revenue standpoint. I’m sure they were expecting minimal sales — at best — for any game that doesn’t include the “hometown” Birmingham Stallions.
But the issue is how the nearly empty building looks — and sounds — on television. Why is anyone from Birmingham going to turn out to watch Pittsburgh versus Tampa USFL football? Even if tickets are going for only $10.
As a result, the games look unimportant and sound empty and boring. At least if they were being played in “home” cities, a few hundred (maybe a few thousand) people would be in the stands to add a little atmosphere, like the Arena League.
Credit the Fox crew for putting microphones on just about everyone imaginable. That helped. But when it’s still so quiet that viewers can hear the “whirrrr” of the field-camera drone, there is only so much that can be done. And the long stretches when the broadcasters didn’t talk and just let the on-field chatter take over, it backfired, sounding chaotic, disjointed and without context.
But, hey, what else are you gonna watch? The Pirates aren’t going to stay .500 forever, the Penguins’ playoff season may not last all that long and the corgi racing season is almost over.
We need options in Pittsburgh. So, let’s go Maulers! In the name of Glenn Carano, let’s get it together for Week 2, huh?
Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at [email protected] or via Twitter. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.
Categories:
Maulers | Sports | Steelers/NFL | Breakfast With Benz | Tim Benz Columns
