Norman Einstein's
ISSUE 06 (11/09)
"A League Of Unknowns: the UFL Comes To New York"
by Cian O'Day
[Cian spends his days in photos and his nights advancing the cause of the Einsteins... well, most nights anyway. If you like the magazine, he would really like it if you joined our mailing list.]
Two teams of tykes are trotted out along the sidelines of Giants Stadium, arrayed in full football dress and padding. Each team is broken into three squads that suddenly bum rush the field and commence scrimmaging in three different directions. In all, a lot of small, silly football ensues.
A wee linebacker makes a touchdown saving tackle, jumps to his feet, and brashly signals "elimination" by crossing his arms across his belly then sweeping them dramatically outward, imitating the referee's incomplete signal. I laugh and wonder if anyone else noticed.
It is a cool October evening in the Meadowlands. Perfect football weather. But I'm not here to take in a Pee-Wee football game. This night, the United Football League (UFL) makes its New York debut. The New York Sentinels host the California Redwoods in the first of three UFL games to be played within the New York metro area.
Fall football is a bass drum pounding out a key rhythm to American life, something deep, thudding with power. The six-figure salaries of Texas high school coaches. The eight-man teams traversing vast lonely expanses of the West. The grudge-match bacchanales held weekly in the collegiate South. The momentary relevance pro squads bestow upon cities littering the rust belt.
It's all there whether you dance to that beat or not.
What difference then will one more note added to this deep music make? Specifically, will the fledgling UFL survive by beating in time to America's football march? Or will it fail by turning an already loud music into cacophony?
This October marked the UFL's inaugural month, four weeks of football finding itself amidst a spate of unknowns.
By Thanksgiving weekend the UFL's first season will be in the books. This is the ever tenuous midpoint for a league that already fought long odds to launch in a depressed economy. The odds only get longer from here to stay afloat. Does the UFL have a chance? I'm at Giants Stadium searching for an answer or a clue.
...
Four minutes into the first quarter. The California Redwoods have the ball at the New York Sentinels' 25 yard line. Second down. Two receivers wide, one to each side of the formation, one back in the backfield, two tight-end set. Redwoods quarterback Shane Boyd takes the snap. As the receivers take their defenders deep to the endzone, running back Cory Ross slips out of the backfield, past blitzing defenders. In the face of heavy pressure, Boyd lofts a touch pass over the defenders and into Ross's hands who bolts through the final twenty yards for a touchdown. With the extra point, the Redwoods take a 7-0 lead on their opening drive.
The Redwoods had no trouble marching down the field on the Sentinels defense. Not too much surprise in that. The UFL, while adhering to several well-known NFL rules, have offered a few tweaks to encourage high scoring games with more offense. Quarterbacks can ground the ball anywhere behind the line of scrimmage to avoid a sack without penalty. Both teams will possess the ball during an overtime period before sudden death rules apply therefore decreasing the likelihood a game ends on a field goal. And, for at least this first season, defenses can rush no more than five, specifically, the four down linemen and one linebacker.
Given the blitz rule, the heavy rush Boyd faced on the touchdown play, then, likely resulted from a mix-up on defense and should have been penalized. Perhaps not surprising either. Only a short time have these groups of players been lumped together in their teams. The sport of football isn't always pretty. But the players and coaches in the UFL lack the set routines that football is founded upon. Few sports require as much practice and specificity as football. And, the teams of the UFL, are putting it together on the fly.
An hour before kickoff, the Star-Spangled Banner rang out over the P.A. Only a handful of fans were in the stands or, with unfettered access, along the sidelines. A few stood at attention, looking back and forth for an American flag to honor. Most continued about their business, like the kickers and punters on the field progressing through their rituals, but with a murmur of unease.
The preemptive Star-Spangled Banner turned out to be a test-run. Yet it was indicative of the UFL's conundrum: trying too hard to get it right is bound to induce some head scratching moments... Like a blown play that surrenders a touchdown.
...
Five minutes into the first quarter. Sentinels quarterback Quinn Gray takes the snap then backpedals five steps into his drop. The Redwoods collapse the pocket around Gray's blindside. Gray scrambles to his right then launches a strike up field to receiver Koren Robinson breaking free on a corner route. The pass sails through Robinson's hands. Two plays later, the Sentinels punt the ball back to the Redwoods.
For NFL veterans like Koren Robinson, the UFL offers a chance to play yourself back into the league. That's what the UFL bills itself as, a potential feeder system for NFL talent. The NFL scrapped NFL Europa, their last stab at a development league because of the escalating costs and tepid European interest in second-tier American football.
The flipside for the players that sign on for the UFL is decisively playing yourself out of the NFL. As the pass slips through Robinson's hands, someone in the press box next to me mutters, "That's a pass you have to catch."
It's a harsh reality that's far from the only contradiction the UFL must confront. Really, at the league's core is a contradiction which could become a problem, but doesn't have to. On the one hand, the UFL, its commissioner, its coaches, and its players have gone to great lengths to underline, bold, highlight, and encase in asterisks that the league does not intend to challenge the NFL. On the other hand, though refusing to challenge the NFL directly, the UFL hopes to attract a fanbase with a lesser product and little way of substantial change.
How does the UFL justify this indirect approach? The defense is in basic economics. Supply and demand. America cannot get enough football, so says the league. The demand for quality football is too great for the NFL and the NCAA. Conversely, the NCAA produces too many skilled tradesmen of the sport, the NFL offers too few available jobs. The readily available surplus of talent makes supplying quality football relatively easy.
Do the masses really demand more football? That the NFL is insanely popular and insanely profitable is absolutely true. The claim, however, that this demand upon the NFL overflows to other professional leagues requires an additional leap of logic. It certainly could be true. Or it could be that like the de facto monopoly that the NFL has on the national level of pro football, the NFL exerts a monopoly on the sporting conscious of this nation.
The classic way to undermine a monopoly? Go cheap. This the UFL is committed to doing. Ticket prices range from $10-20 on the low end. A real deal for the sport, fledgling league or not. But those bargain prices mean little without fans' knowledge of and access to the league's games.
And then there's the matter of the game itself once the fans show up.
...
Two minutes, 31 seconds before the half. The Redwoods go to their two minute offense, shotgun formation, receivers spread wide, one back flanking Shane Boyd in the backfield. Traversing 61 yards, the Redwoods scoring drive requires just seven plays. Of the seven plays, six are draws: three run by back Cory Ross, three including the touchdown run by Boyd. The touchdown leaves the Sentinels down 17-3 with less than 30 seconds left on the clock before half.
The UFL does not lack for unknowns. What is clear? Its New York team, the Sentinels, are terrible.
The Sentinels have already dropped one game to the Redwoods, the California team's only win. Both teams lost and in spectacular fashion to the league's most explosive and complete team, the Florida Tuskers.
This New York debut functions as a de facto elimination game. The loser of this game has virtually no chance to reach the first league championship. Thanksgiving weekend, the UFL will hold its championship between the top two teams in the four-team league. That contest will be played in Las Vegas and broadcast on the Versus channel, two places normally void of professional football, a fact the UFL hopes will fuel some ground support for its brand of football.
New York is a different story.
If the UFL hoped to take New York by storm, they could hardly have stumbled into worse conditions. Its New York franchise is likely the worst in the league. Fans of the local Jets and Giants have come to expect two things of their respective clubs: a solid running game and a tough defense. The Sentinels do neither particularly well.
To make matters worse, the first New York game coincides with the second game of the World Series. The city's most beloved sports team, the Yankees, host the Philadelphia Phillies in the Bronx and on television sets all over the metro area and throughout New Jersey.
The Sentinels find themselves in the unenviable task of fighting both for legitimacy within their sport and for air time on the sporting scene.
With eight minutes left in the fourth quarter, a UFL staffer takes the press box intercom and announces to the assembled media the "official" attendance.
Ten thousand three hundred eighteen.
The announcement is greeted with quiet jeers and disbelieving notes rung from the back of skeptical throats. The press box's eagle eye perch above the stands renders a clear view of the sparsely populated stands below. If the assembled numbered two thousand, take me to the hospital to treat shock. Throughout the game, little spats of hyperactive children bound to this time and space by familial duty periodically break free, chasing each other through the sea of empty seats.
For the UFL and the Sentinels, their first shot at the New York buffet is slim pickings.
Perhaps the knowledge of the uphill battle looms somewhere in the back of their minds and fuels the Sentinels offense heading into the half. Quinn Gray completes three quick passes in about 20 seconds, setting his team up for a 45 yard field goal, drilled good, cutting the Sentinels' deficit to 17-6, a glimmer of hope on a chilly New Jersey night.
...
Three minutes, 25 seconds into the third quarter. Redwoods running back John David Washington is lined up deep behind Shane Boyd. At the snap, Washington jab steps right before running left, a basic counter play, taking the handoff from Boyd. Behind a solid push from his blockers, Washington finds a crease and powers ahead for six yards. On the sidelines, John David Washington's father, Denzel, watches.
Before the game, as each team's kickers and punters languidly cycle through their pregame rituals, Denzel Washington stalks by me. He wears an expression designed to ward off casual acknowledgement. I oblige by not locking eye contact, capitulating with a little smile.
Denzel makes his way down to the field, playfully asking the security guard if it's all right to descend from the stands. I can't imagine many areas in this country barred to Denzel, and I doubt he can either.
I make my way up to the press box, a tower stuck to the side of Giants Stadium. The security guard asks another journalist and myself to produce our credentials. We do. The guard relaxes and hits the elevator button. His tone shifts from the ceremonial to the conversational.
"Did you see Denzel down on the field?" the guard asks.
"I did," I say. "He blew right by me."
"Do you know which team his son plays for?"
"Oh, that's why he's here," I say. I examine the depth chart in the official program.
"John David Washington?" I say. "Says here he's a back on the California team. According to the depth chart, he's a back-up."
The journalist drops his gaze from the ceiling with a smile and says, without missing beat, "They all are."
Up in the press lounge, a chatty caterer heaps my plate with chicken and pasta. Lamenting the passing of Giants Stadium, scheduled to be imploded before next football season, the caterer rattles off a list of famous personalities she's come close to while working at the Stadium, her eyes wide with mixture of pride and wonder.
Nothing quite captures the imagination like stars. Despite the UFL's tagline -- "Where future stars come to play!" -- the league is casting about for faces to represent the league. And despite early overtures to Michael Vick, the league still lacks a truly signature star. The Philadelphia Eagles hesitated only slightly before snapping him up, tarnished image or no.
So far, the UFL's best quarterback is the Tuskers' Brooks Bollinger. The last time I saw Bollinger play was 2007 at Lambeau Field. In Vikings white and purple, against a then very good Packers defense selling out to stop Adrian Peterson, Bollinger bore the burden of the offense on his shoulders and buckled under the pressure. The Vikings lost... big time. A shutout to be exact: 34-0.
Max, a student from Hofstra, site of the Sentinels next New York game, covering the game for the university's student paper, sits next to me in the press box. He offers an intriguing theory when it comes to the UFL and its stars. Max believes the UFL is attempting to present the coaches as the faces of the league. Considering the UFL's model includes a high-turnover of players, the "future stars" if you will, the system as imagined resembles college football. In Max's estimation, the UFL is rightly looking to copy the cults of coaches that the college level boasts in spades.
One look at the media guide confirms this. Each team's opening page is a photo of the respective team's head coach, either pointing nobly or mid-yell, all looking very authoritative.
All four UFL head coaches have deep ties with the NFL world. Jim Fassell, Jim Haslett, and Denny Green were all head men with notable successes. Ted Cottrell, for his part, was a defensive coordinator with three different NFL teams. It's these ties that the UFL hopes foster an unofficial connection between the UFL and NFL. But it's also these ties that could see these coaches jump ship back to the NFL should a good paying job be offered.
The base salary for UFL players is reported to be $35,000. How much the coaches make isn't as widely known, though it's no doubt substantially less than what their NFL counterparts make. College programs have kept successful coaches by being competitive, and sometimes exceeding, NFL salaries. Whether that's a bidding war the UFL can entertain remains to be seen.
Late in the fourth quarter, Max's theory gets a test. A battle of wits between the Sentinels' Cottrell and the Redwoods' Green unfolds. On fourth down, down four points, with little time left on the clock, the Sentinels trot out their punt team. Generally confusion ensues as players lobby Cottrell to go for it. Cottrell burns a timeout. His offense huddles around him on the sidelines. During the timeout, the punt team runs back on the field. Green is forced to keep his punt return team on the field even though he suspects what is coming. After the clock is wound and a handful of seconds is run off, the Sentinels punt unit runs off the field and the offense back on. Green is forced to burn a timeout to get his regular defense back on the field.
For all Cottrell's outflanking of Green, on the fourth and six attempt to convert, Quinn Gray takes a horrible sack, giving possession back to the Redwoods.
Perhaps the cult will need a little more time to develop.
...
Halfway through the fourth quarter. Quinn Gray takes the snap and fakes a handoff to the running back, giving it instead to Koren Robinson on an end around. Redwoods nose tackle Jason Stewart bulldozes Sentinels center Steve Justice backwards, busting through the line, forcing Robinson deeper, allowing the pursuit to catch up and make the tackle for loss.
While it might be easy to say the variants in talent make it difficult to know just how well or poorly played a game like this is, the fact is a handful of great plays have defined the night.
Quinn Gray threw for the Sentinels only touchdown with a near perfect play-action fake, freezing the entire linebacking corps, giving his tight end Christian Hopkins enough space in the flat for an easy pitch-and-catch score. The Redwoods defense has repeatedly sped off the edge to take an unsuspecting Gray down for loss or forced him into an errant throw. Shane Boyd's touchdown run was an ankle breaker at the goal line.
When I first arrived, I sought out my seat. Unable to find it right away, I accidentally wandered over to the scouting box. Lights dim, graveyard silent, scouts poured over their notes and evaluation sheets. I backed out before anyone noticed me.
It is for this small crowd that many on the field perform, not for those in the sparsely populated stands. The Sentinels' Simeon Rice, once a Pro Bowler, tries to prove he's not a has-been... struggling to get any pressure off the edge, perhaps confirming his NFL fate. Quinn Gray was momentarily a starter for the Jacksonville Jaguars, even won a couple of games, when David Garrard went down with injury. Even 40 year old Scott Player, punter, last of the single-bar facemask players in the NFL, is down on the field, trying to prove he's worthy of consideration and, yes, still sporting a single bar.
Koren Robinson, who's struggled most of the night, makes a fantastic behind the helmet catch, a la David Tyree, that's ruled incomplete by only a toe out-of-bounds, a play that might merit consideration in a scout's eyes.
After the game, I stepped in the elevator, the handful of scouts all piled in behind me. Two from the Philadelphia Eagles, one from the Dallas Cowboys, one bearing no team insignia I could see, and one from the CFL's Montreal Alouettes. We descend. They chat about accommodations at the nearby Marriott. Road talk. Careful not to give away any secrets to rivals but sympathetic to the nomadic life their job demands.
Whether the scouts saw any good to report back to their teams, I do not know. What I do know is that the future of the UFL depends as much on a full scouting box as it does full stands.
...
Two minutes, thirty seconds left in the game. The score is twenty for the Redwoods, thirteen for the Sentinels, a single touchdown separates. The Sentinels take possession following a Redwoods field goal and ensuing kickoff. Quinn Gray stands back awaiting the shotgun snap. The press box, for all its lazy chatter up until now, goes quiet. A game is on.
Yes, the Sentinels are mostly terrible. And, yes, the Redwoods are only a matter of degrees better. But give the home team a chance to send the game into overtime and many complaints wither under the bright lights of more immediate pressure... at least for a moment.
As I leave the Stadium I realize - despite the small crowd, despite the hiccups in presentation and play, despite the modest and potentially confusing aspirations - that I do not know if the UFL will succeed... but I feel that they *could* succeed. They have the makings of a signature team in Florida. The league's employees have been nothing but welcoming and helpful. And the players seem truly grateful for a chance to prove themselves one more time.
Of course, the UFL could just as easily fumble away their shot, like Quinn Gray on fourth and fifteen to end the Sentinels' comeback chances and seal the victory for the visting Redwoods.
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