Here’s a riddle. What do putting your finger in an electrical socket, going to a strip club with Adam “Pacman” Jones and starting a new professional football league have in common?
Answer: All are really bad ideas.
 Apparently forgetting the alphabet soup of failed football league attempts, Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban is considering the formation of an NFL competitor. |
In addition to electrocution and “making it rain” with Pacman, anyone toying with the idea of going against the almighty National Football League should think twice.
Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban, in a recent interview with the Associated Press, declared that he is part of a group considering the formation of a new professional football league.
“It’s a pretty simple concept,” Cuban said in an e-mail to the Associated Press. “We think there is more demand for pro football than supply.”
Cuban could not be more accurate that there is a bigger demand for football. But he couldn’t be more wrong to think anybody wants anything different from what the NFL is shelling out.
Cuban, a bartender turned dot.com billionaire, has reached much financial and sports success with the NBA’s Mavericks in addition to serving as chairman of HDNet, an HDTV cable network. Now he wants to turn his attention to the pigskin, specifically a Friday night league of eight teams.
“The NFL wants and needs competition,” Cuban wrote on blogmaverick.com. “They have grown so big and powerful that every move they make is scrutinized by local or federal officials. A competitor allows them to point to us and explain that their moves are for competitive reasons rather than the move of a monopoly.”
The problem is that a new eight-team Friday-night league wouldn’t be competition for the NFL. It wouldn’t be a thorn in their side. It wouldn’t even be a hangnail.
The NFL just does it better. Just ask the USFL, the XFL, the WFL, and the WLAF—not one had lasting power for even half a decade.
Spare me the patriotic music and the speeches of how this country is the land of opportunity and that if Dave Thomas hadn’t challenged the burger world with Wendy’s, we’d be stuck choosing between a Big Mac and a Quarter Pounder for the rest of our lives.
Trust me, I love challenging the norm. Unfortunately for Cuban, the NFL isn’t the norm.
The NFL has grown to beyond a multibillion-dollar business (projecting a revenue of $7.1 billion in 2007)—and it’s no longer just the focus of the fall season.
Ask yourself, do you have time for another football league? Could you load any more football into your college football Saturdays or NFL Sundays?
The simple answer is “no.” Need confirmation? Take a quick glance at the plummeting ratings of the Arena Football League despite a promotions push from ESPN.
The NFL, for now and by a long stretch, reigns king in a society where other sports are falling off people’s agendas, as evidenced recently by the miserable ratings in both the NBA and the NHL Championship Finals on ABC and NBC, respectively.
To reiterate, the NFL just does it better.
Wes McElroy hosts “The Final Round” on ESPN 840. Monday-Friday 4pm-6pm