Ranking Start-Up Football Leagues (ft. Set the Edge)

start up football leagues never seem to go away throughout the game's history we have seen different leagues come and go some of me quite a name for themselves and have found success while others were a complete disaster for today's video I'm accompanied by fellow youtuber set the edge said the edge makes some of the best football content on YouTube if you like football history and in-depth analysis of the game he's your guy check them out when you get the chance we will be ranking leagues based on our overall success on a tier list he and I will take different tiers and discuss them accordingly set the edge we'll start us off with F tier and before we dive in this video is sponsored by Ray Khan personally I've come to love how convenient their wireless earbuds are just in everyday life I will work out with them and do things like yard work they have been such a pleasure to use what's great is they start at half the price of other premium wireless earbuds on the market and they sound just as good their latest model is their best one yet it has six hours of play time seamless bluetooth pairing more bass and a compact design that provides great noise cancellation an added bonus is they come in a variety of colors to help you find your perfect fit the company was co-founded by Ray J and you see celebrities like Snoop Dogg and jr. Smith rocking these click the link in the description below to get 15% off your order shout out to Ray Khan for the sponsor now let's dive into the video when it comes to the everlasting pursuit of starting a football league that can make money outside of the grasp of the NFL every single over-ambitious new CEO thinks they are going to finally be the ones to get things right kind of like a girl who refuses to leave her terrible boyfriend named Kyle because she knows in her heart that she's still able to change him but just like trying to get Kyle to apply to Arby's time and time again these Unsinkable ventures get absolutely nowhere close to the mark the leagues that are found down here are the complete bottom of the barrel operations that lasted only a matter of years complete with fatal flaws and a stunning over estimation of their own like for instance the world football league of 1974 their major selling point was that they were going to bring football to a worldwide stage but that's not all they brought to the table they offered up ideas like color-coded pants by position and this thing a device called the dick Iran which was intended to replace chain crews with just one guy in one device the lead did draw in some massive crowds early on probably a bunch of people that wanted to see the dick Arad live in action but like a lot of elements within the WFL that interest turned out to be a total hoax in reality teams lied about their ticket sales and funneled thousands of people into their stadiums for free completely ruining their credibility from the outset not to mention multiple teams had not even close to paid the mandatory franchise fee in full leaving them without many of the necessary resources to even keep players fed healthy and paid not just on time but paid at all it was terrible management one team the Detroit wheels regularly had to cancel their practices because the team could no longer afford to have their jerseys cleaned it became resoundingly clear the WFL was just not ready to handle the worldwide stage at sefar itself and as the overall financial losses scaled into the millions for every team involved the league would fold after a brutal season and a half stretch F tear our next journey into total collapse brings us to Vince McMahon's original version of the XFL back in 2001 a league that attempted to steal the spotlight of the NFL by transitioning directly into their season following the Super Bowl with a tougher style of play complete with bone crushing hits replacing coin tosses with straight 1v1 s at midfield and most of all absolutely no fair catches [Music] vince mcmahon's signature cockiness and prioritization of advertising and hype ultimately defined with the league brought to the table a lot of flash and very little substance behind it there were some interesting ideas at play for sure like the implementation of the sky cam allowing players to choose nicknames for the back of their jerseys revolutionising on-field access by placing mics on everyone and their mother it really provided a lens into what football entertainment could look like but the operative word in all of this is still football and that's exactly where the XFL fell flat on its face the league's teams were only given 30 days to take themselves from guys off the street to professional football players and that translated pretty poorly to say the least once fans immediately realized they were watching bad football players rather than superhumans who could take a round from a tank to the chest be worship plummeted to lows that they were just never able to recover from it was clear the XFL was in over its head and that one season was more than enough of an embarrassment to warrant never looking at it again that is until we'll get to that later but as far as the 2000 1 XFL is concerned they get an F for the XFL is gonna be the extra fun League now let's talk about 2009 to 2012 s United Football League an operation that entered the sports world with a whisper and left it with an even softer whisper in fact I'm confident the majority of you have not even heard of them without a doubt the main reason for that has to do with their decision to play football in the main fall season placing them in direct competition with some pretty popular kids their idea was that rather than being a direct competitor to the NFL the UFL would give Pro ready players the opportunity to be conditioned and in playing shape for the final stretch of the NFL season wrapping up theirs in November and giving players a chance to join a battered roster that's in need of some help however while this provided opportunities for a number of NFL hopefuls that was about the only thing it had going for it from the start the whole league suffered from a lack of exposure to the public and a general disinterest in trying to stand out from the crowd in any way and to reiterate they were playing in the fall it didn't take long to realize the UFL model was intriguing but ultimately a losing bet and they ceased operation after three and a half seasons so the UFL gets an F for good old fall football moving on now to the Alliance of American football the most recent of any defunct league on this list and it might just be the saddest case of a league self-destructing that I have ever heard in 2018 Charlie Ebersol and Bill Polian founded the AAF as a spring developmental style league that made its objective to one day work alongside the NFL rather than against it however things tend to go a bit awry when your main investor goes to prison and I can't pay anybody and desperate times are often met with desperate measures in the case of the AAF that meant selling the farm to Tom Dundee owner of the Carolina Hurricanes who made it very quickly known that his vision for the league was to get support from the NFL immediately to keep it alive so when the NFL came back and said no dude you got to get your own players Tom responded by shutting down the entire operation right smack in the middle of the league's very first season losing hundreds of millions of dollars on his own investment not to mention putting tons of players out on the street with no real reason given as to why in the end the AAF couldn't help but just place a sword on the ground and then fall on it despite their best intentions so for that they get an F for financial corners so while startup leagues may come with their quirks that generate interest early on it's been proven over and over again that if you don't have the necessary foundation the cracks will show immediately but sometimes it's a little more complicated than that to elaborate let me pass it back to Katie you moving past the bottom feeders we move to D tier this tier represents more success than the previous mentioned but ultimately still failed one league stands alone here the USFL the United States Football League had been a well thought-out plan for nearly two decades before its existence instead of competing directly with the NFL during the fall they introduced the idea of playing in the spring along with that franchises were prepared to taint the financial losses during the early years they had teams plan one year preseason promotional budgets to market the team a proposed salary cap to control spending and even credit lines to help keep the Fran houses afloat they didn't change much about the game itself if anything it was more geared towards benefiting the offense at first the league seemed like it had a legitimate shot to make it [Music] [Applause] the hype around the league was unreal and this is how well the USFL started out in 1983 the average attendance was roughly 25,000 which is about what they expected then in 1984 the league expanded and unlike other startups the average attendance actually went up keep in mind that the NFL was in a state of turmoil in 1982 the players how the strike that lasted a weeks then in 1983 the ratings were declining the USFL had proven itself enough that ABC offered them a four-year 150 million dollar TV deal to play in the spring in 1986 there was even speculation that the offer went up to 175 million it seemed like the league had made it but here's where things went wrong United States Football League is resorting to what some are calling the long Bob in court and antitrust suit against the National Football League Nick Charles is here it's great all the details on the action is not on the field tonight the lawsuit is large and lengthy though the USFL suing the NFL for a total of 1.3 to billion dollars the USFL success was short-lived first it started with many of the team's going over the proposed cap to sign players team owners were desperate to compete and it cost the franchise's financially this got out of control and David Dixon the founder of the USFL was so upset that he was bought out at this point the league was bleeding money teams were going under and the majority of the owners wanted to move the league to the fall to directly compete with the NFL or find a way to merge that's when they went on a sue the NFL for antitrust laws long story short the USFL lost instead of being awarded as much as 1.7 billion they were given a laughable three dollars and 76 cents for only lasting three seasons and ending 160 million in the hole D tier is where they belong let's move on to C tier this is where we start to see leagues last longer than a few seasons standing by itself in this category we have NFL year well it was originally known as the world League of American football it featured teams from the US Canada and Europe although the league did well in Europe teams in the United States were barely noticed Plus you could imagine the logistical problem with traveling overseas for a lot of these games the league was suspended after two seasons but it made its comeback in 1995 this time around with only European teams the world League of American football would go on to serve as the NFL's Developmental League for over a decade it had been backed by NFL owners since the beginning in 1998 they changed the name to NFL Europe to call NFL Europe a success would change depending on who you ask on one hand the league lasted 15 seasons he gave a starting point to many future greats in the NFL like Kurt Warner Dante Hall and Adam Vinatieri some of the teams had very loyal fans like the London monarchs and the Frankfurt galaxy we even saw a lot of these teams make an appearance in the old Maddon's now we go to the other hand the league was bleeding money the games just didn't do very well on television many of the teams struggled to get much fan support and this resulted in a revolving door of new teams and league realignments in 2007 it was reported that the league was losing up to 30 million a year that's when Roger Goodell said goodbye to NFL Europe there was no denying that some of the teams really had a great fan base and we're doing well the only current compromise they have is a few NFL games played each season in London will we ever see an NFL team overseas it seems unlikely who knows but anyways now we move on to the B tier to make it this far and not be the NFL is quite remarkable you have to find a way to be unique and that's just what the Arena Football League did back in 1987 after witnessing an indoor soccer game years prior Jim foster founded the Arena Football League it was constructed of a field roughly a quarter of the size of a regular football field the sidelines were replaced with walls and there were eight players on the field per team instead of eleven this had turned the game into a fast-paced action-packed fan favorite the aesthetic of the game was so cool it turned into multiple video games years later with less players to pay and it totally different vibe than the traditional game arena football had found a formula for success the league managed to last over 20 seasons making it the third longest running American Football League in North America they even reached a point where they had their own Developmental League daf-2 but here's the thing I'm sure most of you watching have at least heard of or seen highlights of arena football but how many of you have actually been to a game or watched a team closely I put a card on the corner of this video so you could vote for these questions anyways the is the Arena Football League was a 20-year journey of suspended seasons adding teams subtracting teams and never finding much more success than just getting by they even had the original af1 dissolve which caused the af2 to become the main league and then legally change in its name to the af1 with the constant rebranding of teams some found a way to be successful but for others it just never caught on the league ceased operations in 2019 now we have seen spin-off leagues make an appearance over the years and currently the Indoor Football League is still in operation after a decade of existence they have had the best business model as they've had the same name and corporate structure longer than any current indoor football league for this reason they also belong in B tier now remember all these tiers are relative here we are in beats here and we're still not even close to the NFL just tell me explain this IFL players currently earn a minimum of $200 per game before taxes NFL practice squad players make a minimum of 8400 a week the difference is substantial but we have two more tiers in learning from the Fallen leagues of the days of old it's clear the market for football while very broad is a lot more slippery than it looks and it's very easy for a league to overestimate its staying power just on the principle of how popular football is even globally now the game continues to expand to this day with the NFL building interest in the UK and even an NFL rules professional league down in Mexico without a doubt though the single best example of a Football League finding success outside of the states is the Canadian Football League which has now been in operation for over 60 years the game resembles that of the NFL but includes a wide variety of different rules that makes the CFL a unique game such as allowing 12 players on the field at a time three downs per possession as opposed to for running starts for wide receivers etc etc but what the CFL has that so many leagues have tried and failed to achieve over the years is a defined market they're outside of the NFL's domain much smaller scale and focused on being consistent and growing year over year they're not perfect and have certainly had moments doubt over the years but they don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon so for their continued success story they get to be the first league inducted into the eighth year but while the CFL has found its own bubble of success up in the great white north the American Football League of the 1960s is the only league to ever take on the NFL head-to-head and actually win considering they're still a part of pro sports today founded in 1960 the AFL made it clear they were going to try and expand into areas the NFL was slow to strategically placing franchises in cities like Oakland Denver Buffalo Kansas City and more possibly the biggest power move the AFL ever exhibited though was getting Broadway Joe Namath to sign in the AFL straight out of college to the richest contract in football history at the time a statement that not only did the league want to have an audience for their football it wanted to have the audience for football the AFL and NFL went on to compete for players influenced and increasingly worked harder to one-up and outspend the other to a point where a merger between the two leagues seemed like the most sensible step forward just six years after the founding of the AFL in 1966 this holy matrimony brought us the first ever Super Bowl with the AFL against the NFL early on younger AFL teams struggled against historic powerhouses like the Green Bay Packers but it was the AFL poster boy Joe Namath's upset win in Super Bowl three that echoed the AFL could compete with the big boys and to this day the most recent Super Bowl winner is an original AFL franchise so while they're no longer technically around today they still get put in aids here for accomplishing what the USFL couldn't now we have reached the top of the mountain a peak that if we're being honest is really about 30 tiers up into the stratosphere and in space rather than just a step up I'm of course talking about the National Football League an institution that has existed for over a century now and is not afraid of anything at this point except for maybe marijuana but to sum things up here's a graph showing just how massive the NFL is not just among football leagues but to the point where you can fit the annual revenue of nearly every other major sport within it case closed st now all we have left to discuss is the second rendition of the XFL by the time this video is being published the league is doing well week three is in the books ratings are still solid and attendance numbers are actually going up and it seems like the league has fixed a lot of its core issues from the first time around it has a better product on the field while still keeping some of the more fun aspects of the game like better kickoff rules and sideline interviews so far the XFL is proven to be a great alternative to the NFL for those of you paying attention to the league what are your predictions for which tier this version of the XFL will end up in at this point no one knows and it doesn't matter let's just enjoy it for what it is because football especially when it's exciting is a million times better than no football can't move to the ball he's fielded and here goes keep up and for the first time [Applause] and now they said he's step down no touchdown st. Louis [Music]

Channel: KTO

Views: 526,567

Keywords: ranking, startup, start-up, football, leagues, xfl, xfl 2020, wfl, aaf, ufl, arena football, nfl, football league, nfl europe, usfl, indoor football league, tier list

Id: XmkBk1crDaQ

Length: 20min 2sec (1202 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 26 2020