Alliance, XFL could be a threat to college football and amateurism
With the AAF off to a strong start, the league, and the forthcoming XFL, could threaten college football’s status quo by appealing to its top stars.
The Alliance of American Football kicked off its inaugural season this past weekend, and outperformed any reasonable expectations in its debut. On Saturday night, Steve Spurrier’s Orlando Apollos defeated the Atlanta Legends 40-6 on CBS to kick off the league, with early returns from its TV ratings showing a big success.
The AAF outdrew the NBA’s Friday night lineup, with lots of fans tuning in to watch the new spring football league that perfectly takes place during the long offseason of both college and professional football.
The product on the field was far from great, but there is some star power in the league, headlined by former Alabama Doak Walker winner Trent Richardson, who scored a pair of touchdowns in the Birmingham Iron’s first game on Sunday.
The AAF’s strong debut, and the forthcoming rebooting of the XFL in 2020, leads to the fascinating potential of a minor league system for the NFL. The XFL has no interest in being that farm system, while the AAF is hoping it will eventually be the NFL’s minor league, whether officially or not. It’s currently a league full of second chances for guys who were overlooked or outright couldn’t cut it at the highest level.
As of now, the AAF will implement the same eligibility rules as the NFL: you must be three years removed from high school to compete in the league. But what if the powers-that-be for the Alliance, led by former NFL GM Bill Polian, decided to tweak those rules and allow players fresh out of high school, or maybe with one year of college under their belts, to join the league?
The AAF currently gives their players the same three-year contracts, worth $250,000. They are all staggered at $70,000 in year one, $80,000 in year two, and $100,000 in year three. There’s plenty of high school athletes coming from tough financial situations with dreams of making the NFL to support their family who would view a quarter-million over three years as a life-changing amount of money. The increased star-power of some of high school’s brightest stars would boost revenue with more interest in the league, ultimately leading to a spike in player’s salaries, potentially to the point of even adding a zero to the end.
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The three-year contract would allow those players to then jump to the NFL, which will always be King no matter the efforts of the AAF or XFL, now three-years removed from high school but with $250,000 in their pockets and valuable experience gained from professional coaches and GM’s who know what it takes to make it in the NFL. If those players go to college, regardless of your thoughts on alleged extra benefits that are undoubtedly being handed out at every major program, the NCAA does not allow those players to get a game check; the NCAA won’t even allow players to monetize their likeness and make money off of their own names.
College football boosts star players’ images more than either of the new professional leagues could, at least for now, meaning top high school players might find it tough to become household names in one of those leagues without having played college football first.
But what if the AAF or XFL’s rules allowed players to join after one-year of college? How much would Clemson rising sophomore QB Trevor Lawrence stand to make right now in endorsement deals if he was allowed to profit off of his name and image? The wunderkind quarterback just led Clemson to a National Championship as a true freshman, and he already has NFL coaches and scouts drooling over his potential.
What about Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa? If either of those players, arguably college football’s two biggest stars, chose to make the leap to professional football early instead of continuing their educations and college football careers, both would be instant millionaires from endorsement deals right away with companies lining up in droves to ink them to contracts. The money they’d make from playing football would just be icing on the cake.
Instead, both quarterbacks, who are widely expected to be the No. 1 overall picks in the next two drafts, will play football for free again next year. For Lawrence, he’ll have two more years of free football before he’s allowed to profit from being one of the best at his particular craft in the entire world.
Imagine the ratings a Tua vs. Lawrence professional football game would bring to the new leagues? Imagine how many people would have turned out to Legion Field on Sunday to watch Tua quarterback the Birmingham Iron; the AAF would have certainly been able to land better T.V. deals in their inaugural season, without question.
College basketball has faced these same questions, with players more and more taking their futures into their own hands and bucking the system. It’s not as big of an issue in hoops, however, because the NBA allows players to make the jump to the league one year removed from high school instead of three, and the injury risks in basketball are far less severe than football.
Even still, players like Terrance Ferguson, Brandon Jennings, and LaMelo Ball have chosen to go overseas to play basketball professionally instead of letting a corrupt institution profit off of them without a dime going in their pocket in return.
The NBA’s G-League offers a unique possibility for up-and-coming prospects who would like to make the leap to professional basketball immediately out of high school. Syracuse signee Darius Bazley was initially going to take advantage of it, becoming the first highly-regarded prospect to spurn the NCAA for the G-League, but he ultimately decided to just sit the season out and work on his game ahead of the 2019 draft. The G-League runs into the problem of having tie-ins to particular franchises, and those franchises having no assurances of having a player on their roster just because they played a season on their developmental team. Those players would still enter the NBA Draft and be up for grabs, giving less of an incentive for those NBA teams to work on developing a player that would most likely never even play for them.
The AAF doesn’t currently have those issues, with none of their franchises being directly connected to an NFL team. It could still work as the developmental arm of the NFL, but unlike the NBA and MLB, it wouldn’t be a direct farm system. Instead, the AAF would develop players and then those players would move on to the NFL Draft after being three years removed from high school, with no conflict of interest. Those players also wouldn’t have to necessarily play three years in the AAF, with the league allowing players out of their contracts without penalty to join the NFL.
It will be several years down the road before the AAF flirts with any of this, but the XFL’s start-up in 2020 could be something to keep an eye on, if the league avoids being the disaster the first iteration was. The XFL has already stated that they will not be restricted by the same eligibility rules as the NFL, meaning they could offer a big, fat contract to Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence right out of the gate to make him the face of the league for a year before he leaps to the NFL.
College football could soon find itself at a crossroads as a result; all it would take is one big-time player, someone like Lawrence whose future is already assured, to make the leap and challenge the status quo.
What would college football’s next move be? The sport has come under attack more and more with its outdated rules about amateurism and it’s unwillingness to allow players to make even the slightest amount of money on their own names. Would one, or both, of these leagues making high-profile moves like this, cause the NCAA to decide to be more lax on its rules for players making money? Would they allow players to sign early endorsement deals or set up some kind of trust to be given to players upon their departures from school?
Probably not. The most likely scenario is that the NCAA would call the bluff of the players and let them walk to the AAF or XFL or any other spin-off professional football league. College football will be fine regardless; there’s still too many passionate fans out there who cheer for their name on the front of the jerseys regardless of the name on the backs, but the on-field product would suffer some as a result.
It would give the players more control, however, as those who feel like they are wasting time in college and don’t want to continue risking their long-term health without compensation for some phony sense of school pride, would have the option to jump to the professional ranks and at least make some money, more than they would make in college, even with the occasional bag-man paying the light bill.
College football is going to eventually have to change; it cannot exist as currently constructed forever, not with the rising concerns of player safety, and CTE continuing to take the lives of middle-aged former football players far too soon.
Football is a beautiful game, but it’s also archaic; an overly barbaric exercise of repeated collisions between grown men who have grown far too large to hit one another with such ferocity. Football was initially played by half-drunk, out-of-shape college students who would chug beers and smoke unfiltered cigarettes at halftime; it’s now become a modern-day gladiator sport with players pre-conditioned and trained from an early age to reach their athletic pinnacles.
Modern-day running backs are bigger now than offensive lineman were fifty years ago; humans continue to evolve, getting bigger, stronger, faster, making the game more and more dangerous with every added pound and every hundredth of a second taken off of 40-times. Hits are more violent now than they’ve ever been, concussions, despite technological innovations, continue to happen at an alarming rate.
Some will argue that a “free” education is more than enough compensation, but the fact remains that these kids continue to put their lives on the line for an institution that does not care about them. They’re all replaceable, with the next blue-chip just waiting in the wings to take their spot for the slightest misstep, particularly at the football factory programs that continue to churn out NFL talent year-after-year.
At least the AAF or the XFL would allow them the opportunity to make a profit. The shelf life for football players continues to get shorter, and valuable time is wasted playing in college for free.
I doubt it would be someone as high of a profile as Lawrence that would be the first guy to take the leap of faith and challenge the status quo, but it only takes one, and then others would follow as numerous dominoes would begin falling across the board.
Suddenly, the powerless would hold all the cards; a paradigm shift completely restructuring the landscape of college football and amateurism as we know it, with the NCAA’s power brokers and big-time boosters being left powerless as it watched college football’s brightest stars, one-by-one, trade in their stipends for a real paycheck with no concern of leaving a paper trail.
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The diseased, corrupt temple of the NCAA would be brought down on the heads of those who have long held all the chips and refused to share.
The AAF and XFL could ultimately be the NCAA’s reckoning; a reckoning that is long overdue.