Well, Max, we tried. I've been standing here in front of my you know, Bertie said maybe at eight o'clock today. I've been standing here live, ready to go since seven point thirty. Uh, we gotta get going on this so we'd have reports coming out everything else. Oxmell merger official. Still waiting on the league's announcement. But I think we have enough to go on here. How are you doing, Max? I'm doing great?
But this is this whole will won't we actually say anything on the record through our actual press releases instead of sending things off to reporters for them to say so that we can say, oh, it didn't happen if we want to. Isn't very annoying. Yeah, we're waiting here, like I said, supposedly, you know, waiting non official announcement. Today. We have Ben Fisher, who I trust with my life, and obviously Mike Mitchell reporting things.
So I think we have enough to go on here, at least in terms of what we officially know, and then kind of what we're expecting in terms of maybe the league name and team members and everything that Mike's reporting not officially yet. Like I said, I don't think you and I talked. I don't think Mike puts that out unless he's feeling pretty good about it. But we do know that the XFL officially finalized. Here with let me get this to the top here with Ben Fisher reporting that is that kind of your
leading news here? I mean, at this point, we don't have a whole lot else other than what Ben and Mike are given us. And then I mean there's that sport Co article, but mostly it's just oh, the merger, and then there's a bunch of speculation. Yeah, so bend reporting here and let me get this out is cleared anti trust Monday, I believe Sportico reported a league planning to kick off March thirtieth. That coincides kind of what I had heard yesterday kind of leading up into this, So that feels
all SYMPATICO. At this point, I think we were getting close to a February kind of deadline here of what was happening, and we all know with Abril, how do you feel about this? I know Anthony Miller was in our chat saying that's the weekend of the Elite eight NCAA. I mean, at least we don't have to deal with being up against as many rounds.
The only awkward thing would be Week one is usually the biggest audience of the whole year until the title game, and you're just sandbagging that during March madness, which is a little unfortunate. Yeah, we have this statement here, and this is Sportaco had this as well. We were pleased. We have completed the anti trust process in connection with the proposed merger of the X and L and US intend to play combined season the spring kicking off Saturday, March
thirtieth. We are now finalizing terms of the definitive agreement, and we'll share more about the new league in the coming weeks. We do know, and then we'll get into this other thing here. But interesting there. I will say, I'm glad we had you know, my mother wanted to go on vacation, my wife and we you know, we had a cruise here planned. Really glad I did kind of plan my February cruise. I said, you know, XFL be Dan regardless, we're going on the crew. Seems
like my gamble paid off. Yeah, I mean, I think we all kind of knew that they were never going to be able to commit to going to one league's timeline. The other everything's got to be some sort of compromise. So you know you're going to miss out on some training camp stuff. But yeah, so that would be good. So we have the Mars shot over here, and then this is the interesting thing to me, and we obviously have you missed our live stream here Max and I did last Friday.
And just also note if anything else comes out today tomorrow, I know Andy Murray standing by here. We can either do something live tomorrow or pre recorded to pay on his schedule. But uh, we know very little. But we do know this per source, I see XFL CEO rest brand it will be the top executive of the new entity. That is interesting to me. What do you make of that? Because I know we talked last week who's in the photos, who's in DC We did the you know, the JFK
film breakdown on that. It's not as surprise, is it. I mean, if we're after looking at those photos, it's like what we all thought is that there's a lot of XFL people in this photo. There's not a lot of USFL people in this photo. Now, I still think be below like the very top guys, you're going to see a lot of people mixing about between the two leagues with employees and stuff. But I mean, there aren't a whole lot of the top executives on the USFL, at least a
few of them like also work for Fox. So like, do you need them running this new league where you can just bring over a lot of the XFL's existing executive staff and then let the other people just be the Fox people. Yeah, this, I mean, this is surprising to me because remember there's been you know, rumor circulating here for weeks of you know, okay, XFL reached out and they're doing all this, and that very well be whatever. But my great fear was always right XFL being absorbed by the USFL.
Okay, we're going to add this to the you know, the USFL social media interns played and we're going to work through this stuff. Having Russ Brandon involved, does that give you more credence and hopefulness here in terms of
kind of what the leads and the look and feel like. I mean, I guess it makes me think that we're there's a greater chance we might have XFL rules, and there's a greater chance that the people from the teams that are sticking around are likely to be on the payroll mostly, although I have a feeling a lot of these local market employees still might get shafted with what sort of jobs like pay situation wise, they're being shifted on too, because
everything feels like it's all about out cutting costs. So I have like a little bit more faith, but not not a lot. I really just kind of feel like they've they need to prove to me why I should believe they're actually going to run a functional football league beyond the actual football in terms of and we'll get to Mike's reporting here in terms of the cities and stuff, But do you feel I don't know, to me, we've gotten back and
forth about this in the USFL. You know the look and feel of that, and it's a little more NFL light in Fox and we kind of know what that's going to look through in terms of I don't know, having that XFL flair to it. I mean, it is Russ involved. I just am trying to figure out, like what is his vision with this and what is that going to look like? The vision I mean, your guesses permission At this point, I mean, all we know is that they keep trying
to cut costs and merge and whatever. But then they don't actually care about, you know, building a real fan base. So we'll see maybe that changes. So piggybacking off of Ben's just will not piggybacking just adding on to Ben's report here we have a Mike coming out and this is very similar to what I heard yesterday. The growing sense from the sources with the USFL and XL is that the new league will be branded as a UFL, the United
Football League. We've talked about this, with only eight teams existing in twenty twenty four, the remaining markets being put on posmode. One course source is indicated. I said that right when closed source is indicated, the retornity markets of the new merged league will be Arlington, Houston, San Antonio, Saint Louis, DC, Birmingham, Michigan and Memphis. Eight teams. I know that people aren't going to be happy about that. We had talked last week,
what is it a sea? Mike put this out kind of what we've heard and what we've expected. I know there was the back and forth with the government, but what do you make of this? I mean, I don't really care that there's going to be you know, more teams from one league or the other, because we, like we talked about last week, it's really just down to which league has more stadium deals. Right, So in the event, the Houston team is the XFL team and not the USFL
team. Whatever. That's that's semantics at this point outside of social media following,
which we know which one has more and it's not the fellow. But anyway, the markets that are being kept, I mean, these are all the ones you really needed, right, I mean, obviously it would have been nice to keep Seattle, but you're not going to have a team all the way out in an island away from all the rest of the other teams that has a massive, expensive NFL stadium contract that they're putting you like fourth or fifth in the selection order of events behind field to table and well,
Luman cost it time. I mean, I remember Sam Schwartzeen when he would come on to talk about the XL rules and all that. I think it was off camera, but telling me kind of the story about how that even came about. I mean, Luman cost it fortune to run. It wasn't even kind of in the initial plans back in twenty twenty. Yeah, I mean, although it would have been even wilder if they went to Husky Staem instead and they went to an even bigger stadium and then it looked even more
empty. This time around would been worse. I will just say. And I was talking with my wife Dorothy about this last night. I think Seattle is a closed market now for the XFL. Like I don't care, right, Like I don't. I it's cool having a dog in the fight. We covered the USFL and obviously the CFL, and I mean BC is my team, but it's still four hour drive. Like, but to me,
this would be very challenging to go back into. Let's say we do put Seattle on hold and you know, twenty twenty five, it's like we're coming back to Like I feel like this is this is a closed burn bridge now. I don't see that. The only way they're coming back to seattle's at the league survives like five to ten years and then like people actually believe this thing is serious. I think that's the only way they come back to Seattle.
And even then, I'm like, I feel like the economic models kind of busted there because you have to be unless you want to be on college stadium where it's just way too big. You have to go to you have to go to this NFL stadium, which is really expensive, and that's your only options. We just don't have We don't have a good I mean, unless you're going down to Tacoma and playing it like we have a couple of nicer high school stadium but there's really just nothing around here that you can't play
in a high school stadium as a pro league. I know, we did the minor league baseball embarrassment. We can't we can't do that again, damn we I mean no. Unfortunately, we have a comment here from John Lewis. We'll pull up questions of comments here and the men that we'll kind of get through the initial news. What was interesting to meet about this is we've heard the back and forth when Mike was you know, originally on and we
kind of have the first live stream here of the marriage. And now we have the handshake with Houston belonging to the Houston belonging to the Gambler's not the rough Necks. I have heard, and it seems at least how Mike is listening to the cities here that the Houston team is going to be more aligned with the XFL in terms of team and branding thoughts on that. And I know I had tweeted out to Mike, you know, because it's five verses
three here interesting breakdown on that. I would think that they would want to four and four, like you said, just for a peace of mind and like we're green to everything. But it's really hard to get rid of the roughnecks in terms of the gamblers. Yeah, I mean there's not the only logical reason to get rid of the roughnecks for the gamblers is so that some like petty USFL executive can like feel like, ah, we forced it to be even who listen, nobody should care how many teams are from what league
or the other league. The only thing you should care about are how many teams we have in the first place, how many stadiums do we have. So I was I was sick of all that pettiness of Oh, the USFL is gonna have more teams, Oh the XFL is gonna have more teams. Whatever, Let's just let's just have a league that works. I'm tired of bickering about who has more teams. Lever Well, it's it's tough too.
And I was talking to a couple of players last night, you know, kind of I think player are getting informed and this is all kind of coming out. Then you know, people are kind of okay, what do you know? And this is what we for them? And Mark Thompson, who tweets a lot right now, is talking about training camp in Texas, which kind of aligns with what I've heard. You know, players are heartbroken about this. I mean, if if you're a team that's not on this list
and you're finding out, like I do you know? Do I have a job tomorrow? Do I know what's going on? Like that to me is the biggest focus on this, because you know, these are players that we're told this is business as usual, We're doing all this and next thing, you know, it's kind of like Fano snap of the finger and half these teams are gone like that. To me, is is the biggest shame with this. It's the coaches, it's the players, it's the staff, you
know, the ticket sales. Orlando's not on this list, Like what does that mean for Corey? Right? I know some of these people can work remote for the XFL, but if you're a you know, if you're a local executive, I don't know, what what do you do moving on from here? That would be very challenging to me. Well, if I remember right, Corey in particular is one of those exceptions where he was local and someone involved in the national stuff. But in general, yeah, I mean,
obviously there's gonna be layoffs. The one thing that we could see for whoever can work remote on these jobs is that I mean the USFL. I don't think the USFL had a very strong ticketing infrastructure from what I remember. So you might see some XL people who can either move unlikely or or work remote or work in the hub for the ticketing do that and then they fly out again to the ticketing events like they did in twenty twenty three, which
because that's almost over now. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely not gonna be ideal, is it to me? And don't I don't want to be I don't know, it's hard not to be critical here, but in terms of like if you're working for one of these leagues and it feels a little disingenuous where and this is why I had said from the beginning when like when they came out, we have the merger announcement and people you know,
it's business as usual USFL announcing free agency and all that stuff. Like if you're someone that's worked for one of these leagues and you're told business as usual, knowing that the XFL is going to the federal government, the USFL, they're going in wanting to cut down the teams, right, they're the ones where we had heard the reports that the government wanted more in the USFL and XTVEL wanted less, Like, uh, to me, it just feels very
disingenuous, like, well, no, stick around, we're going to figure this out. But we're actively kind of campaigning. It's like survivor, like we're campaigning to get rid of you while we're also telling you like no, I don't worry, you're safe. You know, we'll campaign to get rid of you. And then with whatever we're left, we're just going to languish around until we decide we're tired of spending money because we don't actually care about
spring football. So now I got a lot of comments on the last stream and say max max so negative max and negative, So let's look at some positive share. Let's looking forward, uh better working together than the part I mean, what's the silver lining here for people? And then we got Chris in the Chat with the Dragons very upset about that Jose comedy. Here, let's go Bramos. I'll pull up some comments here in the second. I
mean, we won't have the cannibalizing effect. So there's that whether like the however, many like two hundred and fifty thousand people who intersects between the XFL and USFL audience that were pulling away from each other whenever they're airing direct or
on the same weekend, So there's that. There's the chance to have a real marketing message for a league that can actually be promoted fully instead of like half baked halftime commercials during some college football games and Monday night football games. And now you have the ability to market across Fox and ESPN, which means
your reach marketing on the NFL shouldn't massively increase. Although you're running out of time, the regular season is not that far away from being over, and you haven't even announced how many teams there's going to be around, or the name of the league or anything other than the kickoff date. I mean, we're four months away from pick off, and there's a lot of things that
do not seem put together at all, and I am highly skeptical. I have Mike's posting our group chow we have a little bit more breaking news. And then I want to go through the sport of Call article as well, because there's a couple of quotes on that. But Mike sharing this Rest Brandon's message. You know, now, I guess the president whatever of the of the UFL here, you know, Rest brand and our Lord and savior.
This was out the league staff today. Team, you may have seen stories or social media posts this morning regarding an update on our potential merger with the USFL. We're pleased to have completed the anti trust review process in connection with the proposed merger and intend to play a combined season the spring, kicking off on Saturday, March thirtieth. We're in now finalizing terms definitive agreement share more a very similar right to the to the press quote given out to bandon Sportico.
But interesting now to have that be sent out from Rest Brandon here at
least at some point so teams people can know what's going on. You know, it's it's it's just funny how the the people that I bet the employees found out from Twitter and from reporters before they found out from RUSS because that seems to be something that's happening a lot lately with a lot of these leagues and like sports in general, but with something as much of a magnitude that's changing their employment like this, not having the heads up of like for real,
like maybe they got a hint, but not having the official put put it down word until four months out, Like we are literally one hundred, like one hundred and twenty maybe give or take one or two days away from March thirtieth, and they these guys still don't know what their job is, whether are they going to keep their job or not. I mean that's crazy. I mean, marlet me. I was just seeing it. Yeah,
how many days until March thirtieth, one hundred and twenty one. We also have a little bit more breaking news, you see, I like doing like this is a good timing coming out here. This is at via Patrapho, but Pat trying to call me this morning. I'm like bad, I'm standing by I get her the live here. This is for Danny Garcia's Instagram, very similar on that, but Danny Garcia putting that out. Let me see because I had her I had her thing pulled up, and I didn't obviously
haven't been refreshing that since we came on here. But Danny getting the word out that way because obviously, oh yeah, we have it here because obviously her exit or Twitter account, her x account is gone. Maybe Danny's like anti elong musk and all that, but here, yes, per pad and it can congaborate this on here at whether you make a Danny sharing the news
this way. I'm glad there's been an official statement by a league, by a league personnel that isn't to a reporter and instead is signed by that league person on their own accounts, their own place. Now, it would be nice if we had that on the league's you know, social account itself, like the both of their leagues and their websites, Like where's the press release? Like, come on, we need more than this, But this is something looking on I'm looking on the XFL site. Still nothing on there.
So we're slowly trying to get the word out here. Does this give you more or less confidence in terms of the communications of these leagues moving forward? How this has rolled out today? It's hard to say less when you're already at the bottom. I mean, the bar is already you know, you know, in heck or whatever. I don't want. Yeah. No, the last thing we have here is over the bill, the Billy social media, the billy social media impressions for twenty three here, So working through that.
But this is good. So we have that with Pat. So Danny's put that out. I don't know if the Rocks put that out. I don't know if that's the most Again, like I shouldn't have to have eighteen Google Chrome tabs open to try to figure out like who is sharing information about this? Incredibly Imagine if you're a fan of either of these leagues and you're waking up today and discovering that your team has probably gone I mean, and
you still don't know that for sure. Yeah, if you're a Houston Roughnecks fan, yeah there's a Uston team, but like you don't really know whether it's gonna be the Roughnecks or the Gamblers yet, do you? So until they say it, you know, so we're all thinking, right, there's so much uncertainty that just doesn't need to be there. And also the coming weeks does that mean two weeks? Does that mean four weeks? Does that
mean six weeks? Like how long are they gonna string and then there's supposed to be like training camp for this is gonna have to be like in February. So like if we wait to announce everything until January, I mean, what what is there gonna be dispersal draft behind closed doors in a smoke filled room and we're not gonna find out about it until they announce. How many teams? I mean, there's just so many. How is all this supposed
to get put together? If you're not even gonna tell us what's going on for several more weeks. It's just how am I supposed to believe in this? I just don't. I mean, it's clearly happening, But how am I supposed to believe this is gonna work? I just yeah, I'm seeing I'm seeing a lot of comments here in the you know, people even the like people think you're negative out. I think Max and I are at the
point where I think there's some realism in this. And it's to me, it's like, it's it's not good news that have these teams are going to go away, right, It's not these it's not good news of these players. My question. And I was talking with one of the guys last night. You know, it's like, what do I do? Right? Am I going to Canada? Am I going here? Am I going there? I mean, do you think that, uh? Do we redrafted the leftover
players to the other eight teams? What do you like? We're so full now, we've done showcases, we've done all this stuff, Like what happens to those guys? Well, I mean you'd had to think there'd be a dispersal draft, yeah, I mean, otherwise you're you're giving up all the top talent from your other teams and just saying, oh, you know, we're just going to keep our teams as they are doesn't make any sense.
I mean, obviously, if you want to infuse talent back into the teams that are left, you're going to take the top players from all the teams that are left and then cut out all the bottom guys. And that might result in a you know, ten percent better football product, but it sure is going to be heartbreaking for those other guys whenever they got nowhere to go, and you know, maybe you know what, technically, maybe they end up in the Arena League. Maybe that actually ends up being serious. You
never know. I mean, that's I don't know how much it's going to pay. It's it's still not a deal. Yeah, I saw a tweet about that, so I don't know if that was Mark or someone like, oh, well, now this means collectively we're you know, they're they're going
to have more resources, right, bigger rosters and more money. I don't think that's necessarily And I don't know if we talked about that on the last stream, Like, I don't see it was kind of like when the AAF went the way in Vince mcpam with XFL twenty twenty was like I think the quote was we like why wish why should we play these players more like we there's no competition, Like I don't. I mean, I see wages staying
the same, certainly, I don't see that increasing. I hope they can keep I hope they can give them as much money as the XFL was giving them while keeping a lot of the some of the extra benefits coverage the USFL had in a couple of small areas, and that they can work out something with the union. But yeah, I'm not expecting a pay increase at all, our roster size increase. I'm hoping they stick with the XFL roster size, and they don't decide to go down to the USFL roster size because that
would be quite upsetting. I have a bigger question here. But first off, yeah, in terms of the union, and we talked about like, how are how are they? You know, what are the players? I was talking to you, so yeah, we have they were USFL. Excuse me. They said, you know, there's you know, protections in place right with our CBA and all of that. And obviously the XFL voted not to be on this, you know, not to unionize last year. Uh. I'm just curious how that's going to work with you know, where you
have these two entities coming together and part half protection. I don't know what that looks like. I don't think you can have it where part of them maunt of protection. I think they're going to decide whether to unionize the whole league or abandon the union. I don't know how you could have a union for a for three eighths of the league. It doesn't make any sense. That would just create a nightmare for agents and for players and for the It
would be bad for everyone. If the holy it must be either the whole league is unionized or nobody's unionized. There's no other way for this to work. I was thinking about this last night when I was getting the news that you know, this was coming today. So right, we've talked and the XFL lost all this money, and we can go into you know, the USFL did make money. They didn't make money. I mean, I have
my thoughts on that with bookkeeping, and we talked about that. But if we're doing this model, right, so presumably we're doing the XFL, we got the Arlington, Mark Thompson's talking about training camp in Texas, we're doing the you know, we're going to the cities, right, Like, how does that save a lot of money? Like? Where where is the cost savings here? From what the XBL did last night? Is it just well, we don't have to fly to Seattle and pay luman Field, right,
we don't have to go to cash Man. That wasn't costing a lot. Like, you know, we can bust the players in Texas, we can do the like, where is the cost savings here? The cost savings is going to be? And however they can do the wrangling that Fox did where they have oh this is someone we already hired and now they're just going to do double duty for the US for the UFL or whatever they need this new league because apparently they don't want to keep an established brand, they just want
to start over whatever. And then on top of that, you have the ability for all your Fox games, you can now own your advertising revenue directly. So if that's if half of them are on Fox, that's a significant
revenue increase for the new league compared to not owning it at all. And then you still get your production costs covered from the ESPN side, plus whatever insteatives you can hang on too from that deal, so you can get a little bit more revenue that way, or maybe even a lot of bit, I guess, because that's probably the main reason in the USFL turned a profit from the revenue side, quote unquotes, because they were counting Fox's revenue as
their own revenue. But I mean, outside of that, it's probably really not going to be a massive cost cut cost cut down outside of how are they can fined to have even less employees, right or have even less office space or whatever, because I'm trying to figure that out right, and obviously we don't have a look at the books, but you know, this is is the XFL business model and getting rid of some of the some of them
maybe poor performing teams. I mean Seattle was fine, but like we've talked about it, the cost for that and everything else, I don't know. To me, that feels it just doesn't feel like there's enough to be done
there to go through all these hoops to get to that point. The only the only thing, I mean, like I said, the only way this is this really pays off is if they decide to say, hey, we're going to cut off the the weakest of the bunch, and then we're going to put our foot down and actually be serious with the whoever we have left.
You know, if they do all the local marketing they need to do, if they do the national marketing, even on this tight timeline, I mean, I don't think the numbers are going to be explosive or anything, but at least we can say, hey, they try, they're being respectable, they're building something. I have a comment air from Blake is a UFL confirmed as eighteen is confirmed. The lessons really from the league. I agree
with you absolutely, and we've got scrutiny on all this. This is the same that I had heard going back to when we when I landed in Canada whenever that was for the Gray Cup stuff. I was sitting at the reporter suite that night and got this message and it was conveyed to me that hey, look this, and you know, none of these reports that have gone out, none of the Neil Stratt and stuff, none of everything, have talked about this like it's because you know, they didn't know what was going
on. And da da da da da. This was echoed again to me yesterday. And obviously Mike has his sources as well, So this feels as close as we have at this point. But obviously everything's with the grain of salt. We do know the march that we do know the official finalization. Yeah, And I mean, you know, it's fair to be skeptical about anything at this point, and also skeptical about how much any of this new
name nonsense is going to work. I just I keep thinking about the Katie Nolan clip with from BET when she talked about the UFL when she did the spring football segment on her Always Late show like five years ago. Oh yeah, that was that was hilarious. But I have to go fetch that because it's unlisted. But I still have it saved because I knew I was gonna want to reference that video again. What else we have? Yeah, Kyle know that it won't be starting after we got to the super Bowl, Marsh
and that's that's per rest and everything else. We have everything on that. We had a comment here about oh, Scott, and Scott has been messaging to me a lot about this. More teams like to be added twenty twenty five and beyond there on Plaz. That's where I get. I just have trouble with all of this, and you're asking a lot of faith with everybody. I know, you know, we don't want to be negative Nancy too much on here. But like I asked the Tampa Bay bandits ask that fan
base how that's working. It's when you put things on pause, you're out. You know you're shaking your head here, Max, Yeah, I mean I believe when I see it. First off, for twenty twenty five in particular. But second off, why would you divert your Your whole goal of
the whole time has been cutting costs. You're not gonna get profitability with whatever new setup you have out the gate right away, So why are you going to divert your attention from building up the leagues the teams you're actually playing on keeping to then add more teams and then add more costs, and then you're gonna sink yourself in deeper before you've even built up what you already had. I don't think we're getting any more teams until they can prove they can keep
an eighteen league running smoothly and actually making money and all that. I just don't see why you would do that. Yeah, just in pointing that here yet Seattle's the big savings. But again, like this, this is a lot of hoop jumping to save some stadium leases and stuff. Like you said, it must have been more cost savings rolled into them being able to control the content going to the consumer and all of that. But it feels like, I don't know, I guess it feels like it's a little bit wonky
at this point. Yeah, I really think the main reason if they're serious, which I don't think they are, but if they are serious about actually trying to make something real, then it's going to be because they want to start over and they just feel like there's too much of a negative perception around some of the bottom of their teams. Or the teams that never had stadium leases. So let's just start anew And that's if you're optimistic and you believe
they're actually going to build a serious football league. Yeah, Louci poet On here says, twenty twenty five is too early. Give them through the five years, you know it, as they all got one year under their belt here. I mean, this is and they're you know, and I like more comments about expansion, and video is about expansion, and the article is about expansion. We can't even get through one of these things without feeling halfway
decent about it. I don't get the point of expanding if you can't even build a league that works with what you already started with. Just I mean, I know MLS did something like that, but they had like billions of dollars of capital and belief and funding. And also they had like the unique advantages of owning the rights to the US national team marketing rights. That was how they got owners in the door. There's no unique special advantage to investing
in the XFL, Like there's no secret back toward advantage to that. So I just I'm not like an expansion a time soon. We have another comment, I got some more highlighted. I'm a bit disappointed. I think it's the best viable option versus the fan dream options. I'm hopeful that coming together gives them a slid base with more resources and progress moving forwards, you know,
and I agree here. I mean, certainly we saw the opposite of this, so I think that this was bound to happen, and we had said obviously originally with all this stuff was reported that that like, we expected this down the road. It's certainly not in year two of the XFL. Yeah, I mean I expected it down the road before they all did. They all started. I thought one league was just going to decide and I
we'll just take from the other. But what ended up happening is that both of them were run so poorly in different ways that they just kind of cut off all of their bad parts from each other and gave and we'll take give it our best shot with whatever was good, maybe a little good. I don't know how good some of this is. Some of these teams are still not We're not doing this a lot, but we know better and we'll try again. They had to. We have a comment here, whereas Andy Here's
got expansion will be based on owners Does this feel like this? But I mean, does this feel like a stop gap? Now? Who we talked about this last time and kind of passing along this baby, and now we're getting to this point like we're just hopitated we need to get to someone to take over some of these expenses. Does this feel like a bridge now to getting people involved in terms of getting the ownership on there. I don't know
how this merger is going to make people want to be involved. What's going to make people want to be involved is that they can see you're actually getting real traction and real fans. So if you're going to do that and you get them, then you'll get owners. But until then, people are just going to look at you like, oh, that's that football league that people only kind of care about and the owners don't even care about, So why would I want to buy into some part someone like that? Arthur hopping on
here asking you know, what's the name of the league? Mike Mitchell reporting going to be the UFL. That's similar to what I've heard that we've seen the trademarks files and all of that. A lot of people watching right now. Hopefully you can like and subscribe if you're not imagine most people joining us right now. But we have like one hundred people watching Max. Not too bad for like him and him and and Han around here for an hour and
a half trying to figure out what we wanted to do. So I appreciate everyone enjoying it. But yeah, I get subscribe on that. I didn't have funny. This is just funny on here from a coach uh sipping jama juice outs I let's remember definitely saying the USFL we're gonna be with the unvel in a few years. I'm some wondering who the hell told him that? And then like that video was pulled down immediately. It's a clown show, it really is. I mean, I think we've known for a long time.
With these new leagues, everything is kind of a bit of a clown show with everybody up top, so you know, not not surprising anymore. It's all a joke. Tpjos have starting with eight teams with fuel interest and
expansion instead of starting with teetering teams and fan bases. It's tough to me because we've lived through this, right, I don't know what the I don't know what the like the casual you know, I can tell you like my Seattle I've told you this before my Seattle season ticket holders, like they're just
waiting for their money back at this point. They're very over this, Like I don't know what the casual things, Oh, this is a new exciting venture versus okay, this is you know, collapse of two into one. I don't know what the casual will think of that. Most of the interests and expansion is not well. I mean, I'm sure if you if the XFL or UFL is viewed as serious or interest and expansion, But most of the interest and expansion is really just the kind of people that are like that,
like love hypotheticals for like all sports. They'll be like, oh, realignment pack twelve, realignment, everything that happened with that disaster, or the MLS expansion hypotheticals or MWSL or PLL or NLL or whatever. I don't think I think people underest me how the viral the virality of expansion content has nothing to do with actual interest in your league. It just is all talking about
a sports league. They don't actually really care about your league. I had a'm here and then that I want to get to something else with the teams. I'm Duelscott this if it's the USFL dater f Leavage is the happiest person in the world right now. You don't he wrote it out. He never had to get rid of the handle. He's he didn't have to be bothered anymore. Xavier is probably very happy out of this. He survived two xfls
and still use your name. And the other funny thing is now everyone's just going to confuse this league for the video game that's coming out, the Soccer video game, which by the way, has the exact same branding font as the XFL does, except their f is slightly different, which I just just think is only going to contribute to the confusion even more. This is this is such a mess. Man still getting DeBie down there? Comments Howey,
Max? Sure, that's okay Max. The reason why Max is to be DeBie down there and here is mexicants to get his butt up at seven thirty Pacific and standby while we figure out going live. So if you want to, if anyone wants to get up at seven thirty and stand by for an hour and a half to go live, you're all going to come on here and share your opinion. I have a question here in terms of the team
alignments and everything. You know, we go back to even the original USFL here in twenty twenty two and talking about, well, you know, we picked these markets because these are the trademarks that we had and they were the ones that were back from the eighties, and we talked at the time like, well, that doesn't make sense because you know, twenty twenty three now
we have these. It's kind of the leftover. There's no real thought or purpose than just these are the teams that had stadiums that worked out, like you know, the three Texas teams, whether it's the Roughnecks or whether it's the Gamblers, Saint Louis, d C Birmingham, Like, you're missing a third of the country here. What do you make of this alignment without Vegas, Seattle, without Orlando, like very south, it's very East based.
I mean, you knew it was coming, right. It was kind of a necessity that they had to make it more regional because I'd imagine having so many teams, having a couple teams separate from literally the entire rest of the country was just not going to be sustainable. So I get it. I'm a little bothered. I mean, I understand why, but I'm a little
bothered that you're not gonna have a Florida team. I mean, it's one thing to not have a West coast, but imagine, like among football diehards, I mean, Florida is second to only Texas often like Florida and Ohio, I guess, And I mean Ohio is a weird spot sometimes to put a team in. So I get while they're not in Ohio, but not having a Florida team might bite them a little bit in terms of building a
fan base of football fans. Although it be fair, they did such a bad job in Florida with not only twenty twenty three, but even twenty twenty was really struggling in Tampa. So maybe they're just too burned on Florida they don't want to stick around. I also find it funny the only of the remember we're talking about the XFL ownership, how they had their three teams, each one of them was like their contribution to the new league. And Danny's
team is gone and Jerry's team team is gone. The only ones that remains, of course, is the Rocks team. I just to me, like again I'm talking to the USFL stuff like it just never feels like there's there's thought through of this, right and you know the XFL had this already with the three you know, the three Texas teams, and every single person I've talked to you like why are there three teams in Texas? Like, well, it's because like they're going to be out based out of there and they
can bust people and this whatever. Like to me, there's never I don't know if anything, And I know it's hard and we have a comment here in terms of them keeping the strongest fan bases where it's it here, but like, I just wish there was more thought process behind that than just like, well these are the ones that worked and no thought of realigning or moving anything, Like we're just we're keeping we're keeping the healthiest children and we're throwing
the rest of them out in the river here. Yeah, I mean the alternative, I mean, the only way they could have kept more teams or gone to different markets than what they are you had, would have been if they decided to start in twenty twenty five, because you just don't have enough time to build a completely new fan base right now. If you want to launch in four months. I mean that's you're already. I mean already. The markets you're keeping, they've been strung along so much they have no idea
what's going on. Nobody in San Antonio. Here's the thing. Let me give you some examples. Houston. No one in Houston has any idea what is going on with this merger. You know why no one in Houston is any idea because they stopped covering this league months ago. First off. Second off, there's a head coaching search going on for one of their big local college teams. And then on top of that, in San Antonio, the big local college team is rumored to be getting hired potentially for the Houston job
in college. So that's the main football coverage going on outside of Texas high school playoffs just for example. And then in some of these other markets, you've completely ditched them ever since the end of the football season, so they don't care about covering this merger stuff. They're not going to talk about it. So how are you going to make these markets you have left care that
you're coming back whenever they don't even know that you're coming back. How do you think that, Like Seattle, Vegas, the USFL Like, how do you think those departments are going to handle the fan bases here? We're going to get an email out saying like thank you for your support, Like, how do you think that messaging is going to go? Because to me, I mean, I don't think it's I think it's a lose lose, But
what do you I think it's emails and maybe a social media posts. I think we might get like how we had at the end of twenty twenty where we had the guy who's the Bailey or whatever who would be w Carlin. Yeah, he posted the meme of the guy like putting his head up been turning away. Well, I can't remember, and I don't know if they'll do the Jake joonall, but I'm sure they'll do some kind of funny posts signing off, and then the team will be dead. There's no graceful way
to handle this, especially for Vegas. Maybe for Seattle you can come up with some nonsense that makes it seem like maybe you would want to come back, but I don't know if anyone's gonna believe you. The other thing that fascinates me we haven't talked about yet, what coaching staffs are gonna be kept in this league. Who's gonna be transferred to another team? Who's gonna be cut off? Like, for example, they just hired the Vegas staff.
Are you really gonna cut off the guy who you just hired away from the NFL. You're gonna look so bad to the entire NFL if you if you hire away one of their boys, one of their coaches, and then you fire him before he ever had a chance to coach, you're gonna look bad. Well that's yeah, I think that's a really fair point because we've talked about obviously the redrafting of you know, some of the leftover players, right
if you were on one of the teams. But yeah, if you're a coaching staff, if anything, we have talked about having like, you know, one person doing multiple jobs in our last stream as wise, I mean, you're certainly not carried over a lot of those staff either. The USFL are different contracts, and I think they were the reporting they come out. I think it was Mike earlier it said, you know where the where the USF XFL is a little more long term contracts, they can get the USFL
guys out a little bit easier. Yeah, I don't know how you carry that over at this point. Yeah, I'm assuming they just cut off all the old USFL staffs. You know, maybe maybe they want to keep to Philip to PHILIPO at New Orleans. Maybe they move them somewhere. But I mean, Houston's staff made the playoffs. You can't cut them off. You
can't cut off the Arlington staff. You can't cut off the San Antonio, you know staff, even though they didn't do that great because they were doing they were one of the better staffs that actually getting out a local market. You can't cut You definitely can't cut off Reggie Barlow. You definitely can't cut
off Anthony Beck. You definitely can't cut off Skip Pulse. I don't think you can cut off the Memphis staff either, And then even Horden and Michigan, I don't know how you what are you gonna do with Levin's and all these guys that are We're supposed to have a job in the spring you just hired and you're gonna go This is all just pressingly messed up. You gotta get you gotta you can get a comic hairy kiss again, even ride the
negative tray, Hey, Hey, that's a good point by Max. So there, it's not all it's not all negative on here, uh, Badger magic. I would rather have an eight team league that works in the twelve team league that does it. I absolutely understand that sentiment. It's just it's it's hard if you're one of the It's like, what was that show the
Leftovers? Right, Like, it's hard if you're the leftover, if you're wondering this bath, it's this is even it's even worse than like the Pac twelve stuff that happened where the poor Oregon State and Washington State fans lost their league, but at least they still have their team. Your team is gone, like you're done. This is over and it's fine, Like in terms
of from a league building a perspective to cut off these teams. What's not fine is how they went about this and how slow moving they've been, how inefficient they've been, how poorly communicating they've been. It's been a little bit of a disaster. So maybe they can recover. I got some more comments here. This is kind of good viewers. I appreciate. I I like
and subscribe. Get all this stuff on here. Another one from Bathartanna and I have a couple of questions on here they need to listen to as fans. We know what we want. It's been my sentiment from the beginning. I mean, I think a lot of this coming in and Okay, we know more and it's our money. Like conversations years ago could have been had it within negated a lot of this stuff. So yeah, I mean we're at this point now, we're doing the best we can. They're trying to
do what I believe. You know, they feel like it is a way to sustainability. I don't. I think at some point you got to take a loss on this. It's challenging. But any other thoughts on that, it'd be fine if they were carrying about sustainability, if they also cared about growth. Do they care about growth? Tell me, I mean it,
sir, it doesn't seem like they care. I mean, we went through I wrote up the entire fans Bill of Wright's document from that was inspired by Aliga did care about growth, and still you look at every single professional league that isn't a super established major league. They focus on all of those principles all the time. And it works. If you don't, you fail unless
you're like one of those like internet leagues or whatever. But if you want to be a serious professional, big time national broadcast league, you have to focus on like building a fan base in market. Yeah, let's see her Pat given this giving the dollar super chat out here, So I will tell
you I got on the I never asked for any that stuff. I watched together crack and post show recap lately because we've just been terrible and it's good to commiserate, like they're getting super chats all the time, but go, thanks for this super chat and like, look in there's only like ten people watching this stream. I'm like, what the heck? Guys like I never get in about some of it. But it's like question, and then we
have one for Mike as well. But Zach, a longtime listener of the show, was you're gonna do the show now that we know that there'll be no Seattle team, will you still cover the league the way that you've been with all your expert analysis? My? My, what is it my covering the league? My dedication to the league has nothing to do with Seattle team existing or not. Never has been. I mean obviously originally with the fan
base and you know, being with the Dragons. It will be how the league is operated and moving forward and kind of what access we can get. I know what I've dealt with it with the USFL before. Like, I can't spend the next year and a half banging my head against the wall dealing with that. But if the rumor is true and some of the X ANDL staff or is shifting over the USFL and kind of doing a lot a lot
of that stuff, that is good. But we'll figure it out. I had so much fun in Canada for the Great Cup, it's really hard to kind of think about pulling back now entirely. But we'll see. I don't know what do you make next? Yeah, I mean I think the access as long as the I mean, I don't think you're gonna have Russ involved in this league and then decide, oh, we're going to pull away the access that we were giving. I mean, you can clearly see that that
aspect gave the XFL a huge boost. I don't think there's any way the USFL is going to win that argument, especially whenever they're not the guy running the league. It's not Daryl Johnston running this guy for taken league. At least there's one thing I'll give Russ Brandon credit for is that he actually let reporters talk and podcasters talk to players and some executives and coaches and whatever.
So yeah, also, I would this hasn't been said officially, or buy any reporter, but they're not going to base themselves in the actual markets. There's no way it's still going to be the It's still going to be Arlington because they have a contract with Arlington. First off. Second off, well the XFL side does, but second off, because it's just obviously more efficient
and effective than trying to do three hubs or four hubs or whatever. I mean, I still don't understand how they ever thought that was supposed to work. Now that's my understanding as well. Yes, and that has not been officially put out yet, but my understanding is Arlington. I guess we already have Mark Thompson tweeting about like training camp in Arlington, but or training camp
in Texas. But that is my understanding. The XFL, which, again, if you want to circle back to our conversation, like you know, what, what kind of cost savians are we going to have there? In terms of that, we had another one from Mike did the XFL take the lead in this merger. He the XFL teams appeared to be five to three. We'll see, you know, we'll see. We talked about the Houston thing of it. XFL CEO is in charge, and to go with the
XCEL model of staying base in Arlington and find out the home cities. It's a weird reversal from kind of what the understanding of the situation was from before. Correct. Yeah, I mean, I think what they came to realize was that they did the XFL did a better job of running football than USFEL did, which I think was obvious from the jump. But and then I know, I know, Scot's fire. Whatever, it's the truth, y'all.
Mean, I don't know what to tell you. Whenever you can get a better AUDI against with less exposure, even if it's marginal, it's just the truth. And then on top of that, generally the reviews for the quality of play was better for one league than the other. But anyway, it's not that much of a surprise to me to see that the XFL executive side one is on top. But I don't think it's because the XFL took the lead. I think it's just the ownership group decided we have we can't
maintain two executive teams for one league. We're gonna have to You can either pick and choose people from both, which I think they will. I just think ultimately it to pick someone to run the ship. And one did a heck of a lot better running the ship than the other, and there's just no way you can you can keep the other one. Also, on top of just the way they ran the league, Darryl sometimes said the wrong things to the media and got the leagues and a bunch of fights and whatever and
made the made the pr look bad. And then he would admit how he was embarrassed by their ratings. Like I get you want someone honest, but you don't want someone putting out a negative picture. Whenever you want someone saying, hey we did we didn't do good enough, you want them to say, hey, here's we think we can. We need to fix what we were doing, not be like, hey, where I'm shocked and sad that we have lower ratings in the other league. Just basically what Daryl said.
He was like disappointed, Uh, yeah, are you surprised in that? And I guess, well, you know, we'll get an official statement at some point from the USFL. But Daryl, it seems to be it wasn't like we talked, wasn't in those but like that was the guy. I mean, are you surprised as he just go back to doing Fox commentating. I mean that seems like a weird he was such or their life blood of
kind of the USML side of it. It's I mean, like I said, they had to pick somebody, and one guy did a better job than the other guy. Not not to think Rust did that great because he did not, but uh, the other guy did worse. So that's fired against Russ Brandon. No, Rust had better. They picked paid. You said you didn't do a great job. Well, obviously that's why we're in this position. I mean, would we be in this position if if the if the XFL was ran so well, no, we're in this position because the
XFL was ran poorly. Let's be honest about this. We don't need to run from that. It's the truth, mister Dwantown. That's a question here. It looks like inn even four or four teams for the league. Yeah, we do we do, But do we what do we do with the Houston because that seems to be the sticking point here. Tell you that the Roughneck staff was more successful than the Gambler staff, and I'll leave it at
that. You tell me, tell me one reason why you should keep the Gambler staff over the Roughneck staff whenever they were more successful in every metric. I certain movestash villain would probably disagree with you. Whatever, we have a question here, David By starring March thirty. It's four months from now. This EMRGIN league doesn't have a lot of lee time. Honestly, I thought they wouldn't merge until twenty twenty five. Yeah, Like, see how this
is kind of rolled out today. And we talked about this from the very beginning when the official merger like intent to mergers put out and we went through. We have the eight different messagings from all the you know, we have the USFL season ticket holder messaging and the XFL season ticket holder and the players for the like. Is there enough time here to get all these knuckleheads to work together? If they announced everything today, I would say yes. They
did not announce everything today. They did not announce really almost anything today, like officially, unofficially, we know they've basically decided they just have to hammer out how they're going to show it, I guess. But waiting three or four or five weeks two handle like showing who's sticking around in your league, that's a lot of time when you do not have much. So I will say we had a question here to get to this. Imagine we've also interviewed
met Mike Mitchell. I was like his insights, I'll do my best. Mike's like, like, all this has a lot of personal Everyone's got a lot of personal stuff. So we'll see I want I want to give Mike, and he's balancing all this stuff while steely with everything. So we will do our best. Uh if nothing else, you know, we'll we'll we'll get the professor or whoever on here. We'll figure out. But yeah, the best working through that. And I know that this isn't even an ideal
day today for all this to come down for Mike. And I promise you that when and if anybody gets to talk to Mike on a show. He's not feeling too great about all this either. You've seen what he said so far publicly already he's been lambassing them too, So don't think this is oh I'm just a negative guy. I mean, the people who actually work so hard to cover this league feel the same as I do. And I'm just somebody who cares as a fan. Yeah, let's see here, it's got
well. Dean Blandina say it's not a Dean blind Needo interviewed today. They were ripping with him with Rich Easen talking about how like the NFL officiating has ever been to this best or never it's worse? Yeah, I mean it's to be fair, they've done some of their changes and interpretations have made it harder and unnecessary ways. But yeah, they've definitely been struggling. But yeah,
I would think it's Blandy. No, he's more charismatic. He he understands better how to how to implement all this my mic for U into my life for impression. Yeah, and just in general, you can't keep both, right, you have to keep one. You're gonna pick the guy who was better than the other guy. It's the same reason why they're keeping Russ over Daryl. They're they're going to keep Dean over Mike. It's it's you got to pick one. It's pretty obvious which guy was a better guy.
Sorry, that is Okay, I wanted to make sure here there wasn't anything else on the the bord Coo article. Was there anything else from that besides the statement that Ben Fisher had as well, anything else you wanted to get you on this? I mean, there's loads of speculation about what they have to do and whatever, but there's no reporting on like what like anything else they know. Right, it's a whole lot of like how do le already did, what factors made them suffer, what things they had to do with
the union. It's all just opinion after that in speculation. I thought this was interesting regulators because there was obviously to talk about the downsize and the teams and all that. Regulators prefer more opportunities for consumers to enjoy a particular product or service. In terms of them reducing that to me was surprising because I know there was a sticking point on that. Well, I mean, it's not surprising to hear them say that because they wanted them more teams, right,
it was a whole thing we're hearing about. But I would argue if the league's got onto either entirely or like you know, three fifths, you know, broadcast television and the other two fifth is ESPN Maine. You you've done the job both providing more opportunities because you've actually made the games accessible and not just in a oh I have it way, but oh I recognize I know where to find that way. So yeah, it says here it's not clear. We were still waiting on the brocket, you know, not clear
how the new entity teams will be watched. We've talked about that and NBC potentially getting out. I found that this likely aided the XBLS and USL's proposal is support track record of spring pro football in the US. The xbl started and so several times the A it was interesting here they also quoted Mark and
then Steffan here with talking about the salaries and all of that. Yeah, curious to be and we talked about that earlier in the show, like how this ufl PA, you know, different pay structures, different bonus structures, you know, there's a lot of different things. I mean, we did the whole breakdown about that member back with Andy here last year. Yeah, it's going to be a mess. It's it's a spider web octopus mess.
You I have no idea how they're going to handle this. So they're going to come to some sort of agreement or some there's gonna be If they don't come to agreement, there's gonna be some sort of dispute over whether the union six around or not. If they don't come to an agreement. Either way, this is going to be incredibly difficult and messy and frustrating and confusing. No one's gonna have any idea what's going on. Oh, by the way, we're kicking off one hundred and twenty one days. No big deal.
Oh my god. Yeah, I'm looking here. We have David at the end of the day. The purpose of a merger is to create Synery, something greater than some of its parts. I'm optimistic that the new product will be bigger and better. And then we have Scott on here. I'm glad Birmingham did survive. They will keep the same team makeup. They had great chemistry going on. I mean, you have to imagine, right, carrying
over the teams, redrafting the leftovers. I don't know. I mean, if your players do you cut bait At this point to me and Pat was talking to our group chat like, you know partraffino. Yeah, the promise is we'll add more teams in twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five. Like if if you're twenty eight years old, are you sitting around here for another couple of years waiting? Like do you just move on? I think if you know for a fact that you were one of the best players on your
team that you got is getting rid of you, you wait around. Like if you were getting consistent playtime and you were performing well, or if you when you played occasionally but you were injured a lot, you were really good, or you just have a really strong reputation compared to most of the other players in the pool. I think you you wait and see if you can
get drafted and dispersal draft. If you're not one of those guys, you cut bait, or you go to the Arena League or the Indoor League or NAL or the CFL if you can get lucky enough to get a training camp spot there, or you just go home. And I think a lot of these guys will just go home. At the bottom of those leftover teams who got cut off, I think the pr Pigston there's a reason they went to the trouble of changing the name, just because the teams have been selectly doesn't
mean the coaching staffs. So the players are safe at least with the I'm here, you know, I know we talked about that, but like, I don't know, you say there's just a way of cuts and everyone goes home. I mean, I mean, i'd imagine for whoever players they don't keep. Yeah, they're basically cut for not a special draft. But like, you can't switch around staffs for most of these markets because most of these
markets had effective coaching staffs. Think. Oh, by the way, speaking of cut off coaching staffs, Seattle was a top four, top three staff in your league. They in the XFL. They don't have a team now, so are you going to move them to Detroit maybe and then cut off Hordon. I mean, the Seattle staff has a guaranteed contract and the Detroit staff does not, so you would make there's gonna be all these sorts of
conversations and then the obviously there's no guarantees. But for most of these markets that you're keeping, you need to keep the staffs you already have because unless you're transferring staff from another team that you're cutting off, you don't have time to hire a new coaching staff, right, now, you just don't have
the time for this. You only have four months. Like, you can't possibly expect someone to hire a coaching staff from scratch in a couple of months, then go and play training camp in February and kick off a league at the end of March. That's unfair. Yeah, Pat's got a We're gonna I got Pat, I have that ready to pull up here just to say in here, even with four months to do a traditional draft at this point, uh, we're getting very We're getting very here. The more's thirtieth.
No, there's not gonna be any drafts at this point. There's no way. I mean, maybe they redraft of some of those players. I mean you just let everyone go and say, oh no, you'll do a dispersal draft. But that'll be it'll be behind closed doors in a smoke filled room. They're not gonna they're not not gonna have time to present a disparsal draft. Also, that would be so grim. Could you imagine like broadcasting Oh,
here's the players we decided are allowed to survive this. This contraction is like go home, you're done, son, Like that would be that would be depressing to watch. I'd rather just get a press release for that. Honestly, it'd be like Survivor but for sing because it's serious. I don't know they made a new Hunger Games movie. I think that there's that's a movie. It's not real. I know, I know, well, this is this goes into this. Uh so DeAndre Tory, right, he's tweeting
out following up on how do I get all this? Following up on martial article to pretend to care so much about the players, make a whole fifty fourth man documentary with the jump shift after one year when players passed some opportunities to come playing. This league is crazy. Eliminating eight teams basically destroyed the entire league. No one cared involved in just business. I certainly share those
sentiments. I understand the sentiment, but I mean, it would is it that much better if the league if they had sixteen teams and it just dies immediately? Like either way, this is bad. It's do you do you want to? Do you want to now? Or do you want it later? It's the knife's coming, so how do you want to take it? Well? And I and I think what's important to me is I think to take the fandom out, like we get a lot of comments on here.
We got one hundred and ten people watching, which I appreciate. Like, you know, I'm just happy there's more football. I'm just happy. Just be happy, just I absolutely understand that. But there's you know, hundreds of players in coaching, like this is the end of the road for a lot of these people. So it is very hard for me to be positive about this when there's a lot of people going by the wayside right now.
Oh no, I'm not positive about it either. It's just well, but I'm just trying to justify a little bit of the negative sentiment right now. Like I understand if people are happy, and that's awesome and it's going to be cool, and you know, certain people are going to be happy because there's teams or whatever. But there's a lot of doom and glooms surrounding this right now. It's really hard to kind of completely earned the doom and glooms
completely. Even if you're a fan of a team that is sticking around, you have to at least feel a little, if not a lot, concerned over the fact that you still don't really know anything at all. What would what would success look like in twenty twenty four for this merged league. Are we defining success in terms of raw metrics or a we're defining success as it
actually looks like they're building something. How are we doing yeah, in terms of like we're moving on to twenty five, like we're hitting another year out of this. Okay, if we're talking about actually building something that lasted twenty twenty five and it looks like it's building momentum. Like we said last week, local marketing number one has to be serious, has to be now,
should have been yesterday, but it's not. National marketing more serious. And then focus on taking care of your fans whenever you start getting closer to playing the games, attracting fans, maintaining relationships with fans, doing a more serious social media strategy during the season, doing a better job of covering the league on the the with whatever content access you have, because it felt like we would get this these is the XFL. For the USFL, it felt like
they didn't keep United by Football in season two? Did they? Now? So that was gone? So the on the XFL you would get like these nice patches of content where you got like a nice hour long you got the round tables and training camp and then Jim Hazlet, We're not over. Jim Haslet. Rod Woodson wasn't even there. And then because you know, he had some other stuff, you had to do whatever, and and then you
would you would not get any serious content for a while. And at the end of the season they have like one nice eight minute video of like XFL NFL and then nothing. And then they would just keep reposting old games and old highlights, and I'm just like, I get that you're making number go up, numbers go up, you know, the the meme stonks whatever, but you're not actually contributing to building interest in your league. You're just building
numbers on a spreadsheet. Like that's not actually serious. That's just noise. You have to understand it that it's just noise. I do think it's interesting on here. I'm looking still at the XFL website, like, you know, we got the Russ email and Danny posting, like it's still just amazing to me that we don't have I know, if there's anything on the USFL site, like it's just and I hate this, like, oh here we
go. Oh no, I got excited for no no. And that was that September twenty eight so we're still you can see the up to dateness of the usfl on news content cycle rolling out like to me, uh, I very I don't like when they're like, well, you may have heard on social media. You may have heard like we're all in this world here, like we like this is it would be nice to kind of give out a streamline message all these people. Just even a press release, y'all, like
put on a press release. Come on. I thought about it at one point about it, and obviously now Seattle's gone anyway, but I did think about, like, uh, you know, I could. I could probably do this and just write some pressure releases from my from my house and send these on like if I just get out of the game. I don't care about this stuff, Like let me I could. I could respond to emails, I could forward emails. I can do this stuff. I think a
lot of people could do this stuff if they wanted to. But the leagues don't care. Prove me wrong, league, prove me wrong. Made me believe that you care, so I don't. Yeah, Pat Stocking, here, we have one hundred and eighteen people watching this right now. This has to be over the I'm trying to think of what we had on with the first one with Mike Mitchell and kind of all that stuff. But I appreciate I said, like the video, hopefully there's one hundred and eighteen likes on
this video when we get done with it. I really appreciated that. With people dropping off, I think we put this an interesting comment Abdul, and he's had a bunch of good ones. I think we've put too bad. That both things lost money, which was confirmed, and the XFL made money, there would be basically there there were you know, they wouldn't be doing this and the USFL was in the black. I think that's kind of the sentiment of that. Yeah, like I said, it's it's all it's manipulating,
it's it's lies basically in different ways. It's all lies, y'all. But like to me, the problem with that And I tried to be pretty pretty levelheaded on here. And I was talking with one of the USFL players last night, like you know, and they go ahead read like because USFL, because you know you send this out right like with the us development money,
Like what's going on here? This podcast makes money because I rather off everything on my wedding video business, Like if I like this podcast technically makes money because every single thing that's used for is paid through best made videos. Like it's not uh, but if you you know, if I had bought this microphone and everything in the stream we are and then everything else like that,
that that's where I get into trouble. And then imagine if on tom of that you counted like your your fees or whatever you earn from your wedding business on top of that, because like or like a small portion of it, like a like a like a like a half a percent of your wedding and now of a sudden, you really look like you're already money off for
podcasts, which is basically what the Fox is doing. They're taking a small percentage of their advertising revenue that definitely is not just the default on Fox plus plus a percentage and acting like it's what the USFL earned. In reality, it's just what Fox earned. It's all lies. Yeah, they hear a comment, well, or how long we want to go here? I appreciate maxiting rather Obviously, no one wants to lose their jobs after merger of the
league isn't on solid footing. They're in their jobs for anyone, So I do understand that sentiment, Like, I mean, this is we got to keep this going here, so at least there's that, right, Yeah, I mean, but I don't think anyone who is keeping their job feel like they're on solid footing right now either. I mean, how can you feel like you're on solid footing whenever? Like I said, is it just feels like a clown car everything, Like we're in a clown car right now waiting
to fall off cliff. I'm waiting for the moment when it all really goes bad. But I want to believe that, you know, there's a there's a light on the end of the tunnel and not just a cliff. David's has another coming yet. But Jordan, like you all say, cutting teams in the half loses so many jobs, opportunities, players coaching, Scott do
pressure release from each city still around? Yeah, I don't know, Like I think you need to start letting people know if you're you know, we're selling sixty percent off Black Friday merch and Cyber Monday and all that, and there's still not people going to be like that to me is a troublesome thing on that point, Like we're still pushing one narrative and then obviously this is very much going on in the background because they aren't allowed to push any other
narrative because the league refuses to have their stuff together and startups lose money. That's you know, that's kind of how I feel on that. We have a good comment here, Chris. I thank you Reeve for the great covering football. I appreciate that, mister Downtown. I feel bad for the office staff social media teams that lots of their job to day people forget the real people that behind them make these teams run. I absolutely share that sentiment.
Like and that's even when it used to kill me when I would see people like like badgerying the XFL or USFL social media teams. It's like, you know, there's like people that like this don't work here, Like this is you know, I understand you're you're like upset whatever, like these people lost their jobs or like maybe you got to move now, or maybe you gotta work remote now, or maybe you got to travel to a different part of the country now because of all this stuff you get well, I think from
my understanding most of them like already were based in that market. But yeah, you're going to find a new job, and it's gonna have to be much more stable. It's just it's just not it's just not good, is it. You know? We got there? Yeah, now now we know what on Black Friday merged? Uh yeah TP talking about players covering the various
arena leagues. To me, it's it's I don't know, to me, the biggest one of I mean, there's a lot of losses this year, but competition always breeds more, uh, better rights for players, better pay, you know, better, better competition, Like we saw. The darkest time the WWE had in my lifetime was when w W W CW went away and they didn't have any competition and they could roll out and I love him now, but like let's roll out John Cena every week and beat down Okay,
we move on to the next week. Like having like ae W Now whatever people think about that, like you know causes WWE you to bring back cmpunk to do all this stuff, like you know, you only have one league. I'm curious to see kind of what this looks like, is that well this is good enough versus like well, actually we got to outspend your outcreate compete against someone else. I mean, what I want is to have
adequate care for the players and coaches and stuff. I don't necessarily believe in this, and we need to outspend stuff, but there needs to be adequate care from the start. As long as you have that, as long as the players don't have to worry about paying their life bill, about about feeding their families because they're earning enough to make a living, especially the active players,
that needs to be the truth. One thing I would not be surprised to see if they really wanted to get serious about cutting costs is that they cut quarterback salaries even more than they already have, just just to inch off a little more there. Maybe they cut off maybe they don't have GMS or player personnel departments anymore, or maybe they shift around guys from the x FIL side. And obviously they're going to cut down assistan staffs. That's going to
cut down costs. It's just this is all so it is. It's hard to feel positive about this right now, whenever there's so much uncertainty. And what has been certain is that both of these leagues have been run quite poorly so far, and now they're coming together as one. And now it's like, how is that going to make it run better? How are you going to be a better operation? Because of that? We have a couple more comments or yeah, if you don't like, if you don't like this video
means you don't like scring football. I appreciate that we have excuse me, we have a comment here talking about maybe the i f A can big up these layers? Is gone, isn't it? Isn't that like dead? Is it officially dead? Yeah? Another recond because like they hired our Brills, which we're not going to touch about why our Brials is not someone you want to hire but you don't. And that league I thought was a total disaster. And I thought, what was his name? The scout guy like Rick?
Yeah he's I don't think he's a I don't even think he's still there, is he? I tell you, I don't know talking here payers. At least at least you have the AFL, you know, I mean, there's don't start to run the NFL too, Like there's they were still struggling to get stadium in a real the stadium arena deals whatever, and there's don stortained about when they're drafting players and how much money they're getting paid and what TV contract are these people have, Like, we don't know any of those
details about the AFL. At least we know with this new merge league that they have TV contracts already they confuse together into something what there's no proof of what is actually happening with the AFL. So if you really want to talk about, certainly the AFL is quite uncerted right now. We have a comment here. I saw him post a couple of times here. Mark, you
guys are badly and talk real informative. There is the real information. Well, Mark, welcome to the hour one and fourteen minutes into the stream. But that apartment, this is the question and answer abortion now of the class. Thank you very much for joining. We did. We did a lot of that stuff. We're getting into comments now, TP Jo Seph. Even the CFL teater ties with financial stability. We have to start somewhere. Oh
no, we are nowhere near where the CFL is. The CFL has built established fan bases and they're out in their communities and they're known and they're beloved. The XFL is so unstable that their fans don't even know the Most of their fans have no idea that this merger thing is happening, and then the ones that do know is happening don't know when their tickets are being transferred to
They don't know, they don't they're they're completely in the dark. No CFL fan can say that they're completely in the dark about what is going on with their team, about when they should expect to hear things. So we are nowhere near where the CFL is in terms of an operation. We had a comment here from Raw eighteen says, to justify the merger, might as well stay separated and take your chances. It's tough. I mean, I think it's kind of the lose lose. I think we've seen how this is going.
The number of teams is not what matters. Been justifying merger. Would't matage been justifying a merger? Is you realizing that there are things that are not working and you need to start over, and if a merger is the most efficient way to do that, then fine. What's bad about doing that this way is that it's so poorly put together in timing and everything. It
just feels like it doesn't matter that you're cutting down all these costs. It's just not going to be enough to build something, and quite frankly, the excitement was not going to be there even if you did keep all these teams, because everyone would be skeptical about what is actually the actual long term survivability of this league. Because both of the fan bases that have been in these leagues so so far have not been encouraged by how these leagues have been run.
There's no way you can be encouraged unless you just want to be optimistic for the sake of it. We have a couple. There's so many comments. I don't think I've ever had any comments on these videos, Jenny. What about the people that bought season tickets. I know we taught you, like I tell you, my Seattle people were waiting to get our money back on this. You know, front row fifty yard line that twice defeated now and I think we got to see maybe four or five games are over the
two years. I mean, I'm pretty pretty disheartened. Name it's obviously, I mean, it's suppressing, isn't it. But you know, if I believed that the new league would be run with care and with actual attachment to whoever they're keeping, then at least you could sit here as a Seattle fan say, Hey, they learned their lesson? Do we think Okay, let's I want to ask you read do you think this ownership group has learned their lesson and that they're going to care? Now? Because you know my opinion?
Well, I so you use the word care, And I don't like to say that people don't care. No, no, no, no, not the people in the lower levels. We're talking about the real executives who we can say with a track record, why we believe that, Why I believe they don't care. So I have a good comment air from Blake I got started as well. I will say I do not believe that anyone involved
in this league has learned their lessons yet. I will not say that whether they care or not care, but I do vehemently agree that the people involved in this in the higher up have not learned anything over the course of the last two and a half years. And if you haven't learned anything over the course of the past two and a half years, and how can I mean? I mean you. I understand that you need to be in the position where you're not allowed to say that you think they don't care, But if
if you're those executives trying to justify to a fan why they care. What's the argument that they care from them? Like, what is their argument that is supposed to make us convinced that they care, which is like what is Danny in the rock? Like? What is their messaging in their run? Yeah, because so far their messaging has been saying the same you know lines in the same repeated stuff with no delivery. So how are we supposed to
believe that? As a fan? I share that I think I think moving forward forward, selling season tickets, selling selling buy in from people getting buy in, I think is going to be very, very, very challenging. There's no reason to believe that they're going to do it, because they haven't, so it's certainly going to be it's certainly going to be harder now.
And that's why I say I don't think they care is because every single one of their actions up to this point has shown us that we shouldn't believe that they do so until they prove me wrong. That's why I say I don't think they care, because it's in the putting the person and pudding. I got a good comment here from Blake. Honestly, I think casual fans are
encouraged by the merger. Looking at any tweets from Marjorie accounts with mini fans and most I'll say again, because I think we give your give your thoughts. I think the idea of a merger, the idea of expansion, the idea like you talked about before, is a little bit more. It's like a I meeting the pop rock. You have it, you know, and then it's it's instantly gone, and there's not a lot of sustainability there. And anyone tweeting about this merger right now is not a casual fan. That's
that's very obvious. If you're casual fan, you have no idea any of this is happening at all. Like, let's be real, no one, no one who's a casual fan is paying this hard attention to Danny Garcia's Instagram account. Come on, anyone who's a casual fan. Casual fans. I mean, I love Mike Mitchell. I want him to have the audience of a casual fan, but it's so obvious that obviously he does not have the
audience of the casual fan. He hated, like, you know, I want him to have that kind of growth, but he does not have that. You don't have the audia casual fan. You have the hard course. Anyone who's listening to the stream is a hard course. Anyone posting about the merger is a hardcore. So the casual fans have no idea what is happening right now because you haven't reached out to them. You're not in their world. You're only in your own bubble. So when we're talking about casual fans
being excited, have you do you are? You? Do you know casual fans? Because I think you underestimate how casual a casual fan really is, because we're all hardcorees here at this point. Well, I think it's always has been. I think it's always been under appreciated from them, which has always surprised me in terms of just the rock and being involved in DC and all that. It's always surprised me the lack of kind of awareness of how
hardcore this fan base is. And I certainly didn't ever hear it. And then out at the beginning and I'm getting Facebook messages for you know, like Zach and everyone's starting off at the beginning, like hey, what do you think about that? Like I never I mean, I'm in that world. No, but to me, it abounts me that they'd never gotten like just how hardcore this is and how unlike a property like DC, there is not a huge well swell of casual fans who are willing to go along with the
hardcore is for the movie and then go back home. So, you know, you don't just get casual fans by making a product. You have to reach them, and then you have to convert some of them the hardcorees, and you have to convert to nobody's to casuals. That's the only way you're building anything, and they just have not done that. Yeah, I agree with the casual fans, especially in the niche world. We people talking about we need to hear from the rock. Uh knocking from the rock today.
I'm sorry, it's not happening, y'all. Sorry, Well it's I you know, I we have that we have the Danny thing here, and then we can pull that up again because I know that people are you know, Danny. This is the only official word that we have from the league. I know that Sportaco and Ben Fisher and God bless them for promoting nothing on the site. And I don't think we have anything on the Rocks account.
So it's more for the matter and we have anything from them either. And I mean we all thought, I mean I don't say we all, but we us two were chatting, were like, not, there's no way we're getting anything serious. We just have to go now. So yeah, because we had been waiting around here, I told coach is sipping John, But what's the rock going to say? Well, I just think him sharing the
same thing. I think that if nothing else, sharing the press release that was put out from you, the co owner, I think at a minimum should be done at this point. You know, No, I know what he's gonna do, because he always does that, like two or three or maybe even a week later, two or three days or even a week later, he'll whip out the tea mana and he's he's in is the bar it might be. It might be the bar in his house, or it's the bar next to his gym. He's gonna whip out the tea manna and celebrate
the merger. He's gonna do something corny like that and talk about how excited he is and for the level of football and blah blah blah blah, and then and player fifty four and whatever and then not give us any serious information. And it's just like a three minute video of the rock looking super muscly with sunglasses on and drinking tequila and saying, uh, whatever the teremanta toast bs Uh. We got so many different comments here. This is crazy.
Max. I appreciate I appreciate everyone hanging on here. I mean, Max, you haven't found that we're doing the right I'm having fun with you. I don't know if this situation is all that fun. I've just I'm trying to It's like managing my my grief right now. I don't know what stage of grief I'm in right now. Yeah, this is good here, Ali fan, I'm a casal fan. I'm the one. I just like, I'm appreciate that Al, at least now we at least now we found you
have one casual fan read congrats. This is fun today. I love when we get so many people in here commenting because like we do our CFL staff and we get you know, we get a handful of people watching live and then a lot of people watching. But I love all this stuff. Chris. I'll take Jerry Cardinal one sentence please, uh, and Jordan here, straight facts being spoken right now, So I appreciate that. I mean, I do my best. I know I'm the villain for being negative, but
I was extremely You remember how I was a year ago. I was gung ho, guns blazing. They earned my negativity. We have a comment here. Max Secon's having their great up But to me, this is why it's really been not only just scheduling and him being available, but it's really been important to have Max on here lately because you guys and everyone like Max was the die hard of Hey read you see this Red working on this, Hey Red, you see this extell I'm like Danny. I still am that guy,
by the way. Yeah, but I think that this is a good welfare check of like this is what the person that was if I could do this correctly, that was up here. Like we're tracking this down, We're tracking Max's descent into in the madness at this point. I mean, I've already I descended a while ago. The only difference is I thought I should believe when it was just denial. It should it was it was denial,
And now they've proven why I should not believe in anything clearly. And I mean, yeah, sure you can be skeptical about a private equity company running the league. At the same time, it was hard for me to be skeptical at the gate when I was seeing how that same private equity company was running their other sports operations, and they took it completely seriously. They did not take this seriously. So it's just like, why would you break your
own principles? That will still confound me for a long time. Why they couldn't stick to their own principles with how they ran their other stuff. And that's why I'm frustrated so much. Well, I appreciate that compiment in my breer. I think it's Dorothy's come around to it. I don't know there was a point in contention there for a while. This will get your fire that Max one of those love the XFL. But ask anyone over fifty and they have no idea what the league is. But ask anyone and they have
some sort of memory of the USFL. I would echo that sentiment, but I would say, but are they watching like they might know what the XFL or the USFL has been. Are they watching? The number? Is the prooves in the putting on the numbers? First off? But second off, yeah, actually, people over fifty definitely do know about the XFL because they were They were around for the first one, and when they were like thirty or forty or forty five or fifty, they were around for that too,
So they do know about the XFL. And also most of the people who know about the USFL who are younger, a lot of those younger people barely know anything about what the USFL has been over the past two years. They only really know about the original iteration. And the main reason they know about it is because you get these content farm channels that are talking about Donald Trump and how the nineteen eighty four USFL draft and stealing players and stuff like that.
They don't know about the new league. They don't watch the games, they don't know anything. So sure they know about the USFL, but they don't know about this USFL at all. Yeah, Dob whatever his face is like retweeting I got USFL signings, is like, it's because it's to the you know, to the NFL or whatever, So it's cool for you. It's back and forth. We get a mixture because I know, like Gregory
will be watching this, see we got it. We got a lot of hardcore USFL fans too, But What's funny to me is the it's not the hardcore, the older ones, it's all the people on Twitter that I'm like, you're twenty years old, Like what do you care about? You? Like, you're just like die hard Fox Fox Sports stands Like That's what I don't get. Like, I'm happy to entertain conversations with the USFL like people like, oh, you know back in my day, Like absolutely, But
it's all these new kids. I'm like, especially being a diehard fan of a team's even in your city, Like you know what I'm talking about, Like the New Orleans types, they're like, oh, we love the Breakers. I'm like, what has the Breakers done for you? Ask? Not what you can do for the Breakers? Ask what the Breakers can do for you, because they haven't done a dang thing for your city. I mean, I just don't understand how you could be so completely attached to that.
Yeah, we have here. The modern Gamblers haven't played the day of the football in Easton. I will say there they'll be. I'll understand if it is. If it is the Gamblers, I'll understand. The four or forest blit. It's a way to make it. You know, every league gets all sides get throw away, like I will understand that, but from a
every other aspect of it that doesn't make sense to it. Yeah, and also I just want to briefly out whenever obviously, everyone in this room mostly is going to care more know more about this USFL, and everyone on the spring football sites and on Twitter posting about it right now is going to know more about the USFL. But we have to understand just the casuals. That is a like in the casuals vers hardcores, that is like single digit or
less percentages of people of the overall demographic that we're talking about. Like we are in a bubble, y'all. We are all in a bubble. So yes, you and your buddies care about this USFL, or we and our buddies care about the XFL or whatever this newly they, We and our bodies care about spring football the like we'll say, seventy five eighty percent of this demographic has no idea and does not care so far because they haven't been given a reason to care. So you know, you're being called mad, Max,
Now, I like that. That might be you wanted to be the substitute teacher. You might be mad. I can be that that can be a substitute teacher. I can be mad, max I can be producer, max I can, I can, I am I contain multitudes. Hi David here, I remember watching the X Games back in the day. I don't like we will avoid the Trump comment here, but I like Christian. I'm happy for the murder because now they can grow without competition and stay steady.
You know, we'll see I mean, you know, in the ideal world, this is what we're working at here. So yeah, if I could only be so optimistic about an ideal world. Let's see here, Millennials, we got all that Zach on here. Please stay, you're umberre starch the football's funny. After the season, I started disconnected. Zach messed out on a lot of CFL great content. So we have a football fever here. Do you guys think the Hub concert will continue? We touched on that before.
The presumption is it's c x L business model with you, you know, a mixture of the team names and training camp in Arlington and kind of all of that stuff and the moving forward because there's just no reason not to do it that way. So yeah, well, where the news we're hearing basically confirmed that no one learned blank. I share that sentiment on that.
I also share that sentiment. Let's see here there is a yeah, wonder the teams are going to be, Like I said, we had that and if we're at touching on again here, but we'll probably get out of here pretty soon. Where's Mike's tweet I had in terms of that talking about the team It was the Texas teams plus Saint Louis and DC and then Detroit, Memphis, Birmingham. So I assume they're keeping all the team names and then they'll decide whether they want gam was Rough next, because otherwise you have to
start all over with team names again. It's just like the thing that will confound me at the end of this day is why they spent all this money on maintaining brand names and league names, and they're just gonna dump like a huge percentage of it just because they don't have the guts to pick one league name over the other. Even though they have the guts to pick some an XFL guy over a USFL guy to run the league, they don't have the
guts to pick the XFL name over the USFL name. And it said they have to come into a compromise with a name of a league which already failed and it was a complete disaster, and it is only going to get them flamed and is not going to provide them any positive momentum at all. And it's just going to be confusing to be like, oh wait, there's another new football league. It's only gonna confused people even more. Whenever you make a new league with a new name. It's only this is not new name
is not helping anybody. Yeah, are you surprised here? And I know that we obviously talked about that in the stream last week, but that it is I mean, my extreme porty like, it's so weird to me that they're doing the new brand name. I would just to me, I can't say I'm surprised. Whenever I knew that it was always on the table, I can't say I'm surprised. Am I disappointed and confused as to why they could possibly make this decision? From a logicals perspective, yes, can't.
I can't be surprised. I mean, we all saw the trademarks. We all thought it was in the realm of not even just possibility, but probability. Yeah. I liked the uh RIP of the National Spring Football League. God, I just that name would have been so bad. I mean, at least the UFL's three letters. If you're gonna have four letters and it's not us, it's never gonna work. Just don't do that. Yeah, David here at the XFL, I would get rid of that. The XFL
prize of that content makes sense. The league hats market itself and they say they can't do that with that ushole game. I'm worried. I'm worried we're going to have similar sentiments of last year where you know, and I talked with rest Brand and then the Arlington event and him saying we're going to be the first people in the last people out of these markets and not really feeling
that way. I don't even know. But like, to me, none of this changes that at that point, Like I don't see this now suddenly making that happen. It's only changing if they show us it's changing. Until then, we have no reasona believe it's going to change. Yeah, because
here I gotta come here, I'll start. But yeah, to me, that's like we've talked about this, but you know, the learning concept, like the learning is not the number of teams or like it's whatever markets you have, you have to embrace that and you have to work towards that. And we saw that to some extent, you know, like I think San Antonio did good, but you know, obviously DC and St. Louis are kind of the outliers there, but the ones that need to work, I
just don't know what lessons have been learned from some of this. In all that embracing of local teams and markets was done by the very tiny amount of local employees, while the larger executive base did not seem to care. So I love the small people on the ground, but you need to have the big weight behind it, pushing them and giving them the support they need because they did not have it. And that's why it was so hard. You give them what they need, you give them the time they need, the
people they need, they will get it done. But they have not been able to do that because they don't get it. They don't get that support. So I was, I was. I was a casual XFL fan back and you know, I listened to Mark and everyone on the podcast and what's the other the chalk talk? Like what what was so? Because to me when I found successful was engagement with social media. They would interact with me. Ryan was doing this, you know, he did like his weekly things
as the president. I saw them at traders, like, was there a larger swath I'm missing or what was so successful with the x L. They were getting out there in local markets, they were having events, they were promoting themselves. They were on the news stations, And I mean, I know the local news in itself doesn't necessarily matter, but just getting involved with
the right people matters. If you're getting on the news, then you can you get attached to the newspaper, You get attached the newspaper, you get attached to social media. You have to be in the market, you have to be in the know, you have to be embedded, and they were
not. And that's why all this happened then. While in twenty twenty, except for a couple of markets that struggled because they didn't get they weren't quite as successful with pushing with the resources they had compared to others, it largely worked in twenty twenty because they were given all of those opportunities and they took advantage of them. I don't know, I think that it's not a you know it's a money issue, right, and is it a is it a
not understanding that, like, what is the hold back? It's not as I don't. The worst thing is we all know it's not even that much of a money issue. Well that's my thing, but it's not the money. It's not why it's too much effort. When you have so few people involved in running this league, you have to get more people to get less people to do more because they want everything to be as lean as possible.
Whereas the XFL of the twenty twenty was willing to hire a deeper support staff and deeper employee base, whereas we're cutting back on employees and support right now.
So you have to be willing to have those people who are in those pressure positions to give them the support they need to get the immediate results done without having real employees for them to work with, which is fine if you give them that support, if you give them a reason to make that happen, because if you don't give them the resources and allow them to make that push, then you're just they're going to get scolded for wasting effort in time
on something that wasn't approved. And that's why all these struggles have happened to go around compared to twenty twenty. Whenever they had, they were embedded those markets and people did care. We had the comment here from Mark, I wonder if getting rid of the hubs was the compromise being the XOUSBL only won in eight teams and the FEDS wanting more. No more jobs for the players, but a few more local staff. I I mean, all these teams
already had stadiums. All the teams are bringing already had stadiums. You're not actually adding stadium staff at all, other than maybe the USFL will get more ticketing and local staff than what they had in those markets. But the XFL already had a staff. So the only way you can make it work is if you had more. But that's not what we're That's not what we're seeing. We're the only thing we're seeing is that it seems like they're going to
take away, so you can't. I feel like people also overrate this whole Let's just have the rock go do it, and us listen. I agree, it's just buy it. It's a bigger buy. It's one thing. I'm going to go buy Cantonzolla. I'm going to go buy Tyrman. It's you're it's a totally different buy in to what you want the Rock as you want the Rock at all the major league benchmark events, that's what you want the Rock at on the ground. Having the Rock everywhere isn't going to make
suddenly people care about a football league. You need to have real people on the ground, building real relationships with fans and with business partners and with the media and with the local government. You need to have these tie ins, and they just aren't there outside of Saint Louis in d C. Even San Antonio is nowhere near what those other two places have. And then I guess you could say Birmingham, but it's not Those ties in Birmingham haven't translated to
establishing a fan base. So maybe you can say Memphis, and then Detroit's been struggling too, And then everywhere else in the XFL fandom has been completely struggling, even the ones that are being kept. So it's it's it's aggravating. Uh, we're doing all right here. We got yeah, Rock didn't even shod Saint Louis. Uh, well we'll figure out here. So anything comments come in, we'll we'll start winding down here. I think at some
point we were dipped too far below one hundred. I was going to say, we got to get out of here, but we're still popping back up. Uh. Here is a good question comment. And I love you all right, hustle, I love you. But you talk about the positives like matchups. Yet we have theoretically we have one hundred and twenty one days. Again, what matchup? Where's my schedule? We'll get to We'll get to all that. This is where's my schedule? What's what players are on the
teams? Who's coaching these teams? Why should we talk about what matchup? This is the event day. This is event day. We'll get to all that. I promise day subscribe. We'll do all that stuff. We'll get Andy in here, we'll get Mike and Pat, we'll do breakdowns and Rogers, we'll get John Bogol back out, We'll do all that stuff. This is this is what this day is for. And that'll be it'll be great to have when we have that. But we don't mean you don't really have
those things right now, do you read? I mean, what are you going to talk about? It's all in theory. There's there's there's not even anything tangible, right you don't know what's real and what's not right now. Yeah, we know what Mike's reporting, and we can put that back up here on the eight teams and we whether it's Houston one way or another, this is what we know. These comments are I just I have life right
now. I have fifty nine starred comments alone, let alone, like all the hundreds that are coming in here we have where is it a football fever? Max is my spirit animal? There you go? Hi? What can I say? I really, I really care about this and I'm just so hurt. Oh one other thing I was gonna mention, how do you feel about the timeline compromise for getting players of the NFL. That's a good point. So we do have and that is confirmed right the March thirtieth, that
is confirmed. The Saturday March are ath I MARKU is killing me with these comments in the chat to me, I wish they would avoid March all together with the March madness. So if that means the April is that too late?
I mean, what do you think is March thirtieth? Is that it was that a month and March thirtieth is rough already it's like already late because you're you're kicking off your league in the middle of like that's like the Elite eight, right, so it's like right in the peak of March madness interest. So you're losing your week one boom and then you have to build interest
whenever people are distracted by the end of March madness. And yeah, and like Pat's saying, yeah, also at the timing, they can't go to work communic camp. Now, That's what I was going to try to mention. It was like, Hey, these guys can't go to work community camp anymore. They're they're gonna miss OTAs you know, so all the benefit of
having the the February timeline is gone. The only benefit you have is that you know, for regular camp they can still make it early and on time instead of being not just early on time, they can actually try out for camp instead of it already being into the swing of camp before they even finished
their season and already like you might have some roster space left. What I wouldn't be surprised if they allow players to try out for the NFL during the XFL or not excepted the UFL season and then come to some sort of agreement to release the player if they get signed or whatever, because that way you can have them fly out to a tryout then come back whenever they probably don't make it, because otherwise I feel like I don't know how you're going to
keep that support based because that was one of the main arguments for playing in the XFL, and you just completely threw a head out the window. Interesting as well, and I saw comment in here that's the first weekend of baseball as well. So not that I know people, you know Markle Pooh pooh baseball, but I just I'm just saying heres, well Mark, well, Mark Perry loves baseball from I remember, but just talking about the competition.
We have so many comments here, just talking about the competition of everything. So that because it's Thursdays, I'm looking here on the let me get this up on here. I'm looking on because that's the kickoff day. And I have something else, not funny but interesting to share on Twitter. Just speaking of we get a lot of comments and negativity and all of that. We have this tweet here Madison with the USFL a community engagement football ops just a
big upside down. Sorry, well, don't you don't probably unfortunately. Sorry, no celebrations. That's not celebraty. That's me saying, oh god, damn, this league is doing it wrong. But you know this is it's tough here. And also imagine finding out this way. Imagine finding out via tweet that like, you're probably screwed. It's just it's also messed up. And that's why I'm trying to cope by making jokes because it's all so messed
up and it's just the situation is so bad anyway for baseball. Here's the thing. Baseball is not a broadcasting giant. During the regular season. They only have a very limited amount of national exposure and it's all regional. So from a broadcasting perspective, it'll be fine. But if you're from a local market perspective, if your team isn't attached in that market, they're just gonna go they're they're not they're probably gonna follow baseball, even if they're casuals because
they haven't been given a reason to follow the spring league. So that will be a concern with baseball. I'm just looking at it here. So Texas is at home, the Rangers are at home, Seattle's at home. Not that that matters, Houstonds at home. Sat Louis Is on the road. I'm just I'm just here, let me get this up. I was just kind of curious, like, and that's on that Saturday, like just just kind of curious like whether we whether we moving and moving around here. Also,
the other thing's so interesting. Notice how the USFL was in a bunch of markets that didn't have baseball teams. Uh, and now they the two out of three of the ones they kept don't have baseball teams. But the whole league is mostly in baseball markets now. I mean it's I think it's like five out of eight because you have the two Texas teams with baseball. You got Saint Louis, you got Detroit DC. Uh yeah, that's five right, yes, so and then the other three Birmingham, Memphis, San
Antonio don't have baseball. Well MLB baseball, but I'm not too worried about baseball in terms of a TV problem. So at least you'll have you won't have that problem. And also MLS is now streaming only except for like some Fox, so that's that'll be you know, nobody watches them on TV, but uh, that at least that will be less of an obstacle for scheduling compared to before. This is this, this might win the comment for the
day. Where's Chris on here? Paraffinea needs to analyze this and then educate it. I like that Pat, get on this, you'll go go analyze it. The worst part is it's hard to educate somebody when you can't get the facts. Yeah, I mean, what are we teaching? It's all where it's all an idea right now, right we can in you can't talk about what's actually happening because where it's all what we think is happening. Just it's so frustrating. Yeah, Texas, but there's always gonna be something on
to compete again, ye yeah. And then for Max, be sure your passionate care for string football. I know, not knowing what's going to happen if more stressful than what we already. So you know, we're all we're all in this together today. So yeah, it's I'm so disillusioned, man. I just I want to believe again, but it's it's so far gone. Rod's got a comment here for being such a good business people, and they seem to act like they have no idea what they're doing or how to
run the business. Where's Vince? They need the twenty twenty I again, Vince Vince bled money, But I think Vince Vince understood the Carney aspect of the WWE of like we're building the local, we're taking everyone into the you know that. That to me was bled money. But he could have it would have survived long term, like I don't know about forever, but it would have made it two ten years almost certainly because they hadn't They hadn't built
that base. And I'll belie leave act my age when I get given a reason to believe. Yeah, yeah, Royce. Here, here's about players who signed with teams not going to be there. Well, it's a lot of like intent leathers, letters of intent to sign right now, right, and it's a lot of like player rights being acquired. Right. Yeah, there'll be a dispersal, like I said, there will. There will be a dispersal draft because there's no other way to handle it. You need a
dispersal draft. God, I need way more than a hug I need. Is it too early to pop up pop a beer? Here? Oh? Yeah? Is that Easter weekend is March thirtieth? Easter weekend I'll check here. I just speak. Yeah, speaking of this, I just had this pop up here. This was just on my Twitter March thirty. Yet that's ever in the weekend for baseball. This is terrible. This premely needs to kick off Thursday night after the Super Bowl USFL. I've been playing well anyway,
That's all that said. But yeah, the March thirtieth thing seems to be a sticky point right now. I mean, I'm not a huge fan of I really don't like the March thirtieth thing either. I would have been if they wanted to wait until the like March third or whatever, the first Saturday of Marches. That I would understand because then you can get your Week one in and then you can have March Madness for week two through four or five, and then kick off the rest of your season with nothing else in
your way, and then you can still maintain your Week one boost. But now you have lost your Week one boost. What do you got? Oh? I just job and he's somebody they take me in this tweet. So this means I'm a free agent again. Actually, I need more information. This is interesting, Like the players are totally in dark. I mean, I can't imagine they know anything. Well, that's it, and it's it's
it's challenging because I don't have a lot of it. I mean, you know, like Mike and Pat and Evan and Anthony, they have a lot more engagement with like players on here and just in terms of like building the fostering those and I should do a better job, but I just but like when I'm getting people like, hey, what's going on, Like, it's it's interesting to me, like just how in the dark a lot of this
is right now? Yeah, And I feel like if you're a player, and you I mean the only reason I feel like I know what's going on even though I don't really know, is because I'm so closely following everything, like to my detriment probably, but uh, these players, if you're not following every single small detail, you can feel completely lost right now and you have no idea what's going on. And while yeah, I mean, if he's if he doesn't get picked up in that draft, he probably is going
to be a free agent. Right. It's kind of how it's going to be for a lot of these guys, and it's it's just gonna be so messed up and there's no communication. It's it's I'm throwing my hands up in there because I just I don't know what to say to all of it. We'll do about to we'll get out of here. We'll do the two hour mark. We'll get out. We got a lot of comments to get through here, and then we'll get out. One hundred and six people still watch
it. We have a lot of people wanting to buy max the drink right now. I would buy Maxic drink. We're all in this together. I act my age went, I get you, get you, gets you a date. So we have a lot of people wanting to wanting to buy max the alcohol right now. So don't get too crazy. Yeah I can. I could use something fruity and sweet right now. So if you want to get Yeah, Easter is March, that would be interesting. We you know, we we dealt with that with the USFL. Right is it that Easter
is mart? Is that that's so early? Yeah it is. It's a little early, but it's I don't think USFL kickoffs during Easter because it was always like it was no, it was was like April fifteenth or whatever. Yeah, wasn't that wasn't that Easter? What was the April fifteen, twenty twenty two. Anyway, Yeah, oh yeah, I'm getting the wrong Easter. I just I just here we go. Chris Marcas is a voice in the wilder this. I just got an email from go Daddy. I guess
who just won a bidding him out for the USFL shop dot com. This guy, Well, there goes their redirect link. Anyway, I was going to say Easter twenty twenty two was April seventeenth. Yeah, so is that weekend? So apparently? Yeah, I guess it fluctuates. I don't know. I don't know how Easter dates are determined. I'm Jewish, y'all. Yeah, that's okay, that's okay. We're talking about kickofs here and all this stuff. Gregory, I think Gregory would hop on here eventually, the
winner of Spring Football. Welcome all my spring league brothers and sisters. Are we? Is Spring football winning right now? Gregory? Are we? It doesn't feel like we're winning right now? I'm sorry, but yeah, I want, I want. I want to have your authorism, but I feel
like nothing but a complete loser right now. Following this league, they say here, and I wanted to get to this before we get out the eighteen is the part as long as they play in terms of the fan viewing on TV perspective, Excuse me with having you know, presumably right eight hot markets, Like, is that going to increase kind of the visit ability and what they want? Right? Like? Do you think there's going to be better
attendant that's going to look better? I guess that's my point. I mean, I think the ones that you have that were better attended will still be better attended, and then the other ones will be how they were or worse potentially. I don't think I mean this way. I don't think the interest is going to increase on the national audience from just having fans and stands, because the XFL already had vans and stands. What's going to it'll increase compared
to the USFL. It'll be closer to the XFL level level on the UH the the interest in national broadcast TV, where they were getting a considerably better percentage on ratings compared to the USFL from broadcast to broadcasts, and then on top of that, they'll be that better cable interest and also have being on ESPN instead of f S one will be really nice. Hopefully they are never
on f S one because f S one is a total disaster. But overall, do I think it's actually going to increase interest in the league just by having these this collection of teams orsus a different collection of teams. No, it's just going to be the people who were more interested already sticking around and then the people who are less interested being kicked out the door. Correct, I share those elements. We have a couple extra with these comments are killing
me. Blake had this What sucks is Danny's ig post pretty much consernances we won't learn anything more for a couple of weeks left in the dark with more questions than we have before today. That is also a similar sentiment. I'm continue checking the USFL next of my website, so it's kind of hard for me to feel like there's more questions whenever I've already asked every question under the sun. But yeah, I mean it certainly just makes me feel more completely
confused of what is actually happening. Yeah, Greg, well, the last of these comments, Like I said, we'll get out of here at the top of the hour. I love spring football content as a minor development of the league for the NFL. Now is the competitor amazing the NFL is it willing to help push it for a few years for year round exposure. Well,
they've already done this before. The NFL has already done the developmental minor league thing, and it was not sustainable and it didn't and also it was it was weird because it was in Europe, but it wouldn't have been sustainable in the US the way they were doing it either. They don't feel like
they need to do that. They feel like they can just let things play out on their own, and then maybe what will happen is if one of these leaves can never prove that they can last, then they can establish some more official relationship because now they're not bearing the costs burden. Denzel's chiving in the sales more like XFL than the USFL. We'll see when the official branding comes out. I'm curious to kind of see, do you know do we
just roll in? Do you like? Do you rebrand? I mean not like we keep let's say we keep the releegads, right, but do we do we do when you start the tweaks on that? I mean there's no time right. That's the other thing is that the styles of these teams that are being kept are totally different. Like it'll be completely jarring to watch the Memphis Showboats versus the the San Antonio Bromis. They'll be so jarring to watch
on television because the study is fun. I mean, but thinking about the NFL back in the day and when they merge, and I think about how the style was, there was no massive diversion of styles and uniforms back. I'm not saying it actually matters, it's just going to be so funny to watch, Like how different it's like watching college football where you have one team like organ is so over the top with their uniforms, and then they're playing
Utah and it's like completely generic style of uniforms. Yeah, Mike, asking about the game broadcast, I think NB The rumor was NBC's out. You know, they won't be right in my ear. I mean, there's no there's no substantive rumor that NBC is now. All we know is that NBC was not in Washington. We don't know anything other than that. But I am betting that NBC is seeing the writing on the wall. They're done. We'll see though. Hope they keep the X kickoff rules we're talking sea dragons
here to San Diego. No, yeah, not happening. Sorry, move along, Grog. Oh here it is, Grog. Their comments are coming so quick, I haven't give them up. But I am much a bigger fan of the X on the USL because I'm a Defender's fan due to growing up in the DNB. Glad the Defenders and they had made the cut, right, I mean, could you imagine? Yeah, well, no, that's yeah. I mean I think it's you're feeling like you do. I twenty four Uflonship game at cash Field. There you go, cash Man.
Uh that's your I read that as Canton. Sorry, but either way, I think that's funny. Either way. No, I left because it was Cashman. I mean that is I mean, it would be this league, wouldn't it. It would be this league if they had they just had to go back to Vegas because Jerry just couldn't let go Vegas. Not yet. But yeah, no, I'm sure it'll be at one of the stadiums they already have. If you could pinpoint and like I said, we'll get out
of here. Here's how they are. If you could pinpoint where this went wrong, Like was it the Vegas thing like, where where did the XFL waiver here? Vegas was just a symptom. Vegas was just like I said, the problem was the local marketing. The problem is the complete lack of communication, the lack of commitment to building a fan base. That's the problem.
Everything else is just a symptom. Vegas was delusion. Vegas was embarrassing, But the league would have if everything else was working in Vegas was the only failure, we would have just kept going. But Vegas was a microcosm of everything wrong with this league. And you could say the same thing for the USFL with all their empty stadiums that aren't the ones that are the hub teams. So just looking through here any love, if you have any last
comments on here again, man, we'll get out. Got one hundred people watching it. I would argue, by the way, that this absolutely can even though I think the AFL is currently more uncertain, this new league can absolutely be worse than the new AFL, because if the AFL is run more sustainably in small scale to start at least you don't have to worry about the AFL immediately going up. Whereas it really feels like this new iteration might not
last two years. Yeah, and it definitely doesn't feel like it the last three years. So hang on. We might have one more tweet here they get to before we get here, we go. Sorry, we'll get out of here, I swear, but we got to get the break news before we get out of here. Going to handle it, you know. A union statement on collective bard the agreement and proposed I haven't read this yet. November thirty, yesterday, league representatives informed the union that the USFL proposed merger
completed the anti trust review process with the Department of Justice. While in agreement to merge Leagues has not been finalized, there's been significant progress in bargaining. Rest assured the negotiating committee continues to work diligently towards the agreement on the key
issues were received from player feedback, including group licensing and union successorship. It's been confirmed the first game of the combined season will be Saturday, March thirty at The overwhelming consensus of the board of the players is that we will continue to inform player membership in real time based on the information. We have the liberty to openly discuss the only thing I wish we had from the union.
We aren't getting is when did those conversations about the merged league bargaining begin. We don't really have a tangible start date. And second off, what's left. If we can establish what's been done and what's left, that would be
helpful for just us understanding where everything's at. And maybe you can talk to them and figure that out or someone else, but that communication from their end would just help us understand where the players are at and figure out how can we support them in that issue, because I would prefer this new league to be unionized. Of course. You know me, I was staunching at the end of the year last year. Even though I was everything, I was more XFL. The one thing I said was that I was so happy to
usfol got unionis yeah, well and it's it's good. So there we go. That is we will. We will put this ship to bed here today. There we go. Thanks for hosting all of this and getting through all this. I appreciate everyone. Like I said, one hundred people here are winding now. I think we topped out at like one hundred and thirty something like that. Not too bad considering we kind of hmmed and hot around here for a while. Be subscribed please thumbs up. Ninety eight people still give
a thumbs up. Get this video supported. If the world changes, we'll figure out something tomorrow. Otherwise we'll figure out something next week. CFL off season and we got the DC. The Cory Mae is getting higher from the subscassion, wrough Friers kind of all that stuff. But we'll see. It's a little nebulous right now. I'm not trying to be too long. I mean, I like doing the Friday thing and all of that, but like, I'm not doing two hours every Friday. Like, We're not rehashing this
tomorrow, if that makes sense. So if anything happens, Yeah, And one more question before we end. Do you think you're feel comfortable in the notion that there will for sure be a kickoff March thirtieth, twenty twenty four Merged League. Do you think it's really going to happen or do you think how much of a possible do you think it still could be that it falls
apart. That's a good question. I considering how everything has come right now, it does give me pause because I don't I am not in these rooms. I sense that there is still a lot of organizational distress. Going on right now, and even like today, as we've talked about before you and not one instance of any of this coming out from the league has been in you know, what I would deem is like a suitably professional manner, right getting Danny's ig posts, you know whatever. So I don't know, I
think that a lot of time and energy has put into this. I certainly think they're going to try what do you I mean fifty fifty, sixty forty, I don't know, man, I'm like, I'm like thirty seventy right now, because it just you're telling me it is, but you're you're not put in any of the commitment. You're not showing me. You're just saying it offhandedly and then going back in a dark room for a month, and
we're not going to see that. It'll be like Christmas and then they'll start talking again, and you know, they'll they'll wish Mary Christmas during the Bowl games or whatever, and then on the Dick Clark or whatever, and then we'll get nothing again for several weeks. Next thing, you know, if
this is this is really happening, it'll be training camp. You're like, we have we wait, training camp is happening we had no idea this was coming, because even though we thought it was supposed to happen, you weren't telling us anything. I don't know. I'm just I even like even the most basic thing I have a hard time believing in right now, which is that there will be a football game played by the merged league on March thirty of twenty twenty four, and I have faith in that way. To me,
it feels like this will be my last comment. It's kind of like when you used to watch Survivor and you'd have like, you know, two guys, guy grow whatever they're you know, they're they're warring against their scheming against each other. And then like you get merged and you're on the merged tribe and like you're still like you're still working. It just doesn't feel like
there's a sympaticod like we are working together here. Still very much feels like and again, this is day one, right, we're putting this out, but you know it was day one, September twenty eighth. Then here we are going through all this and they certainly aren't working with the fans, which I feel like is a basic rule. So you know, if they're not gonna work with the fans. Yeah, all right, they feel bad. You make good points, Ken just feel sad. So I appreciate everyone.
Like I said, like and subscribe. We will see you soon as stay tuned, you know, turn on the bells and all that kind of stuff. But we'll see you next time. Next guys,