The USFL will be back for another season. Here’s how it will look to improve and grow in Year 2
The USFL has added to its roster sizes and plans to compete in multiple cities, in hopes of expanding the league.
Daryl Johnston, executive vice president of football operations, didn’t think the level of play in the early weeks of the United States Football League met his expectations.
The adjustments that followed, in Johnston’s eyes, have helped carry the USFL to its championship week, pitting the Philadelphia Stars and the Birmingham Stallions on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. The game will be played at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio.
“I think the big thing for us is how much further down the road are we going to be Week 1 of year two,” Johnston said. “And how can we make that starting point a little bit better.”
Johnston, who played in the NFL for nearly a decade, early on installed what has become known as the “Jeff Fisher rule.”
Fisher called a timeout after his team, the Michigan Panthers, scored a touchdown in a Week 4 matchup against the Tampa Bay Bandits – the reason being he changed his mind from kicking a 1-point field goal to attempting a 2-point conversion.
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The original USFL rulebook stated coaches cannot change their minds, even after calling a timeout. So, he proposed the rule change. League executives swiftly determined to allow coaches to have a change of heart.
A week later, the league expanded rosters by five players. Allotted game-day rosters jumped from 38 to 40. For comparison, the NFL allows 47 and college teams can dress up to 60 for games.
“Our rosters were so small we were asking to do so much practice,” Johnston said. “When you’re doing your offensive drills, are you really going full speed? Can you even go full speed?... I think that we see the results of the inability for our teams to practice at full speed and once we expanded rosters, it directly correlated to an uptick.”
At the outset of the season, the USFL also decided it would be best to keep games under three hours, which wasn’t happening the first few weeks.
League executives agreed to let the clock run after incompletions in the first and third quarters. Three of the next four games met the new threshold.
Evolving the league as it goes is part of what will help keep the USFL afloat. Stars coach Bart Andrus pointed out in a conversation with the Inquirer that Sunday’s championship will mark the first major spring football league to complete a season since the XFL in 2001.
The Alliance of American Football suspended operations in 2019 and the reboot of the XFL in 2020 was suspended due to COVID.
Ben Fischer, of Sports Business Journal, collected data on TV ratings for the USFL in comparison to its failed counterparts.
For 36 of its 40 games (excluding Peacock-only broadcasts), the USFL’s average TV audience was 715,000 viewers across Fox, NBC, USA and FS1. The AAF averaged only 556,000 in 2019 while the XFL got up to 1.9 million.
“What they’ve done here is build a sustainable business model,” Andrus said. “I didn’t even really see that in the XFL during the 2020 season. I just kept saying to myself this isn’t sustainable. They were top heavy in administration and had big salaries for a lot of guys.”
Johnston confirmed the report by SBJ’s John Ourand that the USFL intends to return for at least a second season. There is hope of expansion from the league’s Birmingham, Ala. bubble – practicing in four locations and playing at two – to having teams eventually be stationed in their respective cities.
“I think the biggest thing, and we’ve made this known to the players from day one, is it’s all about them,” Johnston said. “This league will be driven by the quality of football that’s played. We’ve been player-oriented since day one and making sure we’re addressing their needs.”
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