Adamson: Give United Football League a chance

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Now that I'm smack-dab in the middle of the Carolina Panthers and Atlanta Falcons -- big-time pro football teams within easy driving distance -- my fascination with fledgling gridiron leagues has waned.
Oh, I have a shrine to the World Football League in the Fan Cave of my house and look back wistfully on the glory days of the United States Football League, but when you're in NFL country you begin to realize that other leagues don't measure up.
Still, I love an underdog, and in 2009 it's the United Football League's turn to try and do the improbable, if not impossible.
It's easy to dismiss any challenger to the National Football League, especially in the current economic climate. Yet even though it faces the longest of odds, I want it to succeed.
Why?
As I've said before, I can't get too much football. I've already got June 17 marked on my calendar -- it's when the Canadian Football League begins preseason play.
And more pro football means more jobs for more people. In this day and age, we all need to root for any honest new business.
The UFL has big money people behind it, has already signed up "name" coaches like Dennis Green and Jim Fassel, and is willing to pay enough cash to get good, quality athletes.
The last pro football league to pop up was the XFL, which paid modest salaries to players who, for the most part, simply weren't good enough to excel in the NFL or CFL.
I'm guessing since the UFL is going to stock its rosters with late NFL training camp cuts and a few lower round draft picks, it's brand of ball will be pretty good.
Obviously it won't be NFL caliber, but if the games are competitive it doesn't have to be.
The UFL is starting out with what officials are calling a "premiere season."
Translation: It couldn't line up enough investors to go all out this fall.
Teams in New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Orlando will play a mini-season beginning in October. Los Angeles, Hartford and Sacramento are potential expansion cities and are slated to host a couple of games.
The plan is to have six or eight teams by 2010.
Frankly I never even thought the league would get off the ground, but it has already secured a TV contract with Versus and is expected to start naming players in the next few weeks.
Games will be played on Thursdays and Fridays with a national game of the week set for Thursday nights.
History suggests the UFL will likely be a one-and-done league -- an organization that will be little more than a trivia question in a few years.
But like the other upstarts that came before, I'll be rooting for it -- hoping it can prove fans with an appetite for pro football can enjoy leftovers as well as the main course.

(Contact Scott Adamson of the Anderson Independent-Mail in Anderson, S.C., at adamsons(at)independentmail.com.)
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