Well, happy Monday here. Welcome to the Mark Cast. Read here.
It's been a while, probably the longest stretch it's been since the show.
I think we did the supplemental Draft here about two weeks ago. Send Andrew
Murray the link he's getting on. I was making coffee, getting ready to
go here. Wanted to make sure we got out here. James checking out.
Let's go. Marcas appreciate it. Yeah, I guess lots of things
going on. Glad the week he'd be back on here today. The UFL
twenty twenty four schedule has been announced, and while we wait for Adrew Murray,
I want you please comment, you know, any complaints against the schedule,
any compliments. I've seen the DC Defenders fans complaining there's no Saturday games
right or they want more Sunday games, So let me know what you want.
I will just say if there's and I said this before with the supplemental
Draft, if anybody in the world is ever listening to this from the UFL,
I understand that the West Coast is probably not your target audience here for
the twenty twenty four UFL season. There is no need for an eight am
Eastern press conference when seven of your teams I think are in the Central time
zone. Seven am. I'm like, it kills me. We go out
Friday to five, we're doing all this to five schedules coming, Sunday schedules
coming, you know. I got up at six thirty today thinking like maybe
i'd swing and kind of get ready to go here. I think we always
kind of plan on going at ninth I wake up, I get poo,
poo, it's been gone five am press release. Like moving on. You
know, if you want things to matter, make them matter. But it's
such a complete fumble of the ball here coming out you know, Friday,
into all this stuff and then here we go five am press conference. Here's
some Pokemon them, you know whatever animated there, here's some emojis, and
then moving on. So that's my two cents. I am excited for this.
As I've said, we will be at the kickoff game here on March
thirtieth, have all that book to We'll be posting all of our other stuff,
you know, guests and all that don't know about the championship game.
Booked the wedding here or in the off season for that Saturday, So that
might be a quick turn. But we will do that here Denzel checking in?
What up? We got Jenny here checking in from southern California. Really
appreciate that. So we'll get the schedule pulled up here. I see Andrews
getting ready to go here. I just have my rants, so I think
that that's out the way, and you know, feeling refreshed here until all
of this went down, But we are here. Dan Quinn is my coach
now apparently we have close Kingsbury. A lots of things going on in Breid's
life here. Andrew, I know that we had talked and you said I
feel refreshed. I am negative refreshed now coming into today. How are you
doing just because of everything that happened this morning? You're negative refreshed, Like
I was so excited, Like we talked about this last week. We're gonna
do this schedule all this. I wake up whatever time Dorothy got up six
twenty five. Seth texts me. He's like, hey, did you see
this? I'm like, it's done, it's done, It's all done already
here we are here, We got fifty five whatever people watch right now,
we'll go through all the numbers everything. What do you make here? How
are you feeling today, let me get the schedule pulled up. I mean,
it's finally out. I'm glad that there's at least something concrete that people
can start planning around and have time to look at for not only their viewing
schedules, but also if they want to travel the games. That's finally in
full view about a little less than two months out from here from the start
of the season. I will say the unceremonious release of it is to be
expected. I think at this point, considering everything that we've gotten from both
of these leagues the last few years, it doesn't seem like there was gonna
be a big role out. The five am release time is hilarious for US
West Coasters. As you were going on and on and on about I know,
for now, I'm done. I've set my piece. I'm good.
I mean for me, it's it's all information at the end of the day.
But I understand. Look, I mean, we'll go into it a
little bit later. But obviously, with there being no West Coast teams,
maybe there's no appetite to please the West Coast market. So how about it
as you will. But that was a very USFL move. I will say,
because that's definitely something they pulled off last couple of years. And I
understand that there's no teams that really not many teams that are west of Texas,
so I understand there's not really a need to placate to them. But
still I understand your your you're voracious at it about it, but like again,
and this is this last time, because okay, reach, I understand,
but I think, right except for DC, seven of the teams are
in the central, right, because Memphis is central, Birmingham is central,
right, Saint Louis is central, all the Texas teams and then that's it,
right, and then you have d C. So like, I just
don't understand this. Like even the USFL in twenty twenty two was that they
did like one one thing per hour, which like by the end of it
you're like, okay, we're done. But I at least that was kind
of a clever way to do it. I just you know, I'm for
consultation free of charge here. If anyone wants to do that, I check
it in here. I'm getting everything pulled up on here. But no,
we know all that stuff. Let's just check in here. Will get a
couple of comments with out of the way, Christina, I got vacation time
ready to go. Val hooks US Rattlehawks versus repnexs CACA. Yeah, Christina
is one of our new members. If you want to be a member joined,
I think it's a dollar a month, but it gets your things spotlighted
on there. Jordan checking in as well, and any other preseason UFL thoughts.
While I get the schedule pulled up, we'll get into it because I
want to make sure this is a little time ly. Well, I just
wanted to say I'm glad that you had that stream with mister Vogel and we
were able to get that information out about all the things about the draft or
the Spersal draft. All the players have been reallocated, so having John on
there was really great. As far as other information, what is going to
come to fruition, I mean we really have most of the major information.
I think the only thing is obviously training camp. See who shows up,
who doesn't, Who is you know, going to be in the throes of
being acclimated to the team, who's returning. There's a lot of that still
to be discussed the next couple of weeks. But I would say for the
most part, I mean most of the major information is there. The allocation
of where all the seats are going to be in terms of each stadium.
I'm still curious about as far as where everybody's going to be sitting. We've
seen some things, obviously, are your friend, our comrade, I guess
Corey putting on information about the Memphis show boats and where the some of the
seating charts are same with the Stallions. That's the only thing that I'm still
curious about. But most of the information I think now we have set in
place. Yeah, it's funny. I've seen some I'm just sug just mcain.
I got a new little poster there in the background. You like that,
My Winter Classic poster. I've got revamped. I have no beard.
I did no comments about the beerless read here, but that's good. Some
interesting seating charts I have seen. The Stallions one I thought was interesting,
and then the Memphis one. It's like we've learned from the XFL, like
we're only going to put people on the one side of everything. I will
say in just a comment as well. I got I posted yesterday like hey,
we're going live about all this, like not to throw like Mark under
the bus. But like Mark commented Brennan, a couple other was like,
are we done with like the recorded shows? Like at least for this kind
of stuff, this is where I want to be. We have comments here
coming in exciting for that, but for the sustainability of Read's welfare and the
podcast, I do think we're leaning a little bit more into this, not
to say that we won't get but these two and a half hour pre scheduled
they whatever, Like that was awesome. I've had a really busy last month,
which is great for like my personal life and just business, but I
also don't know what I'm doing for two and a half hours of pre produce
interviews in the off season. Like I think Hussey and Evan and I are
going to try to get together for like a CFL free agency one. So
stuff will be coming. But you know what was I supposed to talk about
the last three weeks? So we're into all that. So we have here
the opening weekend. We knew March thirty Saint Louis Battle or so we knew
the DC We okay, they I read all this and this off the top,
like we have we have the the opening one and then we have the
actual okay, March thirtieth, heter Brollingham, Stallions, Orange and Renegades.
Who know about that one o'clock Eastern on Fox. Then the other three we're
going to have the battle Hawks traveling to Saint Louis are traveling to Michigan.
I think that there's issues with the Dome hosting four pm on Fox. And
then we have the two ESPA games on Sunday, the DC Defenders at the
Brahmas with like see that open at home, and then the Memphis show Bus
at the Roughnecks. I want to talk about kind of the network delineation of
everything, But what do you make of just that now that we have the
opening slated games, for the most part, you're getting a lot of USFL
XFL crossover here, which is good. I think you want to showcase that
immediately say hey, look, I know you thought these two teams were in
different leagues. Guess what, They're all together. So that's good. Obviously
most of these stadiums were familiar, with Rice Stadium being the question mark.
We're not sure how that's going to work out and what the setup for that
is going to be for Houston, but everything else is familiar we You and
I have both been to the Alamo Dome. I've been the Chalkdust Stadium.
You've been the Chalkdust Stadium, so I'm familiar with that setup. Portfield I
haven't been to yet, but obviously they hosted games there for the Panthers last
year, so a lot of familiarity. I do think it's funny that the
BattleHawks for the third straight time, by being put on the road for Week
one, everyone makes so much of a big deal about how much won't field
advantage they have. Well, maybe both leagues are any any iteration of anybody
who's ever watched the Saint Louis battle Hawks understands that and decides not to get
that up for some reason doesn't want to like spoil that out of the gate.
It's really funny to me that they just keep putting them on the road
in Week one. Now. I know, obviously it must be like whatever
the Edward Jones don't must be doing something. There can't be like there's not
really enough space for all these teams to be able to play in their home
markets the first week. But I do find that really funny for once again
they are going to be on the road. Well, it's like, I
think that's the the plight of the I think that's the plight of the Saint
Louis Ballhawk fan. I'm just commenting, Mark, I see your comment here.
I'm just commenting some questions we can get to in a minute. Yeah,
that's the ply that the BattleHawks fan is. You know, we can't
we open on the road. We travel. Like I said, a lot
of at least a lot of the matchups have to do with you know,
stadium availability. Right, It's the same with the CFL when we get that.
But like, why aren't the rgoes at home? Like because they got
to deal with you know, Bibo Field has a lot of different you know,
what would you call that inhabitants, a lot of people using all that.
Yeah, we have Andrews Motocross is at the del March thirtieth, so
that is for that. Some key breakdowns here. And it was, uh,
it was funny, Like Mike tweeted this. I was like, how
did he get this moth so quick? And I'm like, oh, it's
from the press rest. I was like, wow, Mike Mi like this
crunching the numbers, You're really quick. I was really at by six thirty
am wake up call. It was really stuff. So, yeah, we
know this forty three UFL games, forty regular season, the two Conference one
championship game divided into USFL and Excellent Andy. Have we got your thoughts because
when we were on here talking about this conference breakdown, like that's not how
they're going to do it, and I didn't realize it was so controversial,
Like, I think this is the smartest thing to do. I think you're
you paid the money for abably these trademarks and everything. We're not going to
let go of this IP. We're going to keep the conferences. I think
that's hot. Yeah, I think we discussed it a lot. At first.
I wasn't so sure about the idea of keeping both of these entities around.
But if they now that they have gone through the entire merging process,
I suppose it makes sense now that you have the IP still in your back
pocket, you still have the XPL, and you still have USFL. So
how much division that's going to create between fans would still remain to be seen.
But I do think that there's a lot of positives in terms of keeping
both of the ips and knowing that you still have those copyrights in your back
pocket. And again familiarity teams and players and fans that know which league both
teams are represented by, and not saying necessarily that they're like going to another
division or they're going to get commandeered or bought out by another conference, so
that familiarity is there. I am really curious to look at some of the
TV scheduling, which I know we have a lot of thoughts on, but
it's I will say, from the outset, this is fantastic. How many
different big networks that they have this on. There's none of this FX stuff.
There's not all these FS one games, there's no Peacock, there's none
of this. It's it's just basically network television for the most part of a
little bit of cable there with ESPN and then ESPN two and one f S
one, So you're getting it out there and you're putting it on major networks,
which is really good. That's that that's the combined power of having both
of these leagues together, and that's both what both were missing the entire time
because they split the difference as opposed to when we saw basically an iteration of
this in twenty twenty, when the XFL was on all these networks, so
we're kind of back to equilibrium here and we're able to have all the resources
and all the network contracts formed together again. Yeah, I mean this was
like the Prince, it was promised right that we this is why we're merging.
It's because the XFL, you know, better business model. The XFL
was able to engage fans. It seemed at a higher rate being in the
markets. The USFL you know, their hub model. You know, obviously
it's the slow growth as well, but we're kind of combining those now we
have the power of everybody. We don't need to compete because yeah, I
mean you go back and even the XFL to I think this and just from
the from the pure numbers, and we'll get into the week by week here,
but this to me, even on paper, is a far better schedule
than even the XFL when you look at the breakdown here, ten ABC games,
twenty one Fox games, that's expected, right, Fox carrying a lot
of this stuff, ESPN ten and then only two games, an ESPN two
game and then an FS one game. That to me, like you said,
this is something you can tout and say, this is uh, if
your network executives, if you're Fox or if you're you know UFL people,
And I always keep oneing to say xfl us. But if you're UFL people
here, like you can tout we are you know, we are putting this
in the best position. This is why we are merging like and you can
say that earnestly, right, I mean this by all counts and we'll get
to there's some you know, overlapping games and we can look at time zones,
but all right, you know times that the games are. But uh,
on paper, this looks good and you can earnestly say like, we
are making an effort here to make this work. Yeah, no, absolutely,
that you finally have numbers that you can show a lot of network numbers
and look, here's the reality of the viewership. And we've talked about this
a lot. Is what kind of market share are you're going to get of
all these football fans. You know. The thing that I really jumped out
to me about a month ago or a month and a half ago now,
was when Sporticode came out with an article talking about the TV ratings from last
year of all network televised entities in the US. Last year the top one
hundred programs, ninety six of them were football games. Is either college football
or is professional football? Like? That's the live audience has been completely captivated
by live football. It's just it's absolutely obliterated the market. It's taken out
everything that's non sports related, and even sports related. It's completely dominated.
So if you are somebody who's working in this league, you're looking at that
number and you're just saying, I want a piece of that? Now?
How do you get a piece of that? We'll get into But there's that's
a whole nother part of the puzzle. But the point is the live television
audience is looking at live sports, and specifically football crazed people like us are
looking at something like this and trying to get people involved as much as possible
and putting it in front as many eyeballs as possible as part of it.
Marketing is the other part. But this is a huge first step. I
will yeah, I will say we've I'm sure I said this many teams on
here. Just having more football isn't enough. I think the marketing, the
messaging needs to be worked on. We've mentioned that. The other thing that
will be interesting to track I don't know if you have been in depth with
this. I've been talking a lot with going back and forth with Paul Paul
up formally and the Marcas and all this here over the last couple of weeks.
But uh, there's a there's a drama now surrounding our friend Dwayne the
Rock Johnson, one of the main marketers of the XNL The I can't still
like I'll call it the x NFL till that. Uh, basically like he's
headlining the WrestleMania this year presumably, and he's taking the spot of Cody Rhodes,
and it's this whole drama where like, uh, people got hurt and
brock Lesner kind of got canceled with the whole vistick Man thing. But now
they're bringing in the Rock against Roman Reigns, which probably should have been last
ye, but they're bringing him in thinking like we're going to save WrestleMania with
the Rock first Roman, and the fan outlash has been very, very negative,
like, hey, we've been on Cody roads, this thing, this
is the Rock big footing, this is just like hul Kogan used to do,
and all this very negative around the Rock because A I was gonna be
curious, like, how do we do this build up? Does this help
or hurt the UFL with the Rock on TV right because he had come out
a couple of weeks ago and like, hey, I'm going to be a
part of all this. But now where he's and like they're you know,
they're monitoring and everything. I don't know if they're going to make changes,
but like I saw a lot of tweets like, you know, the Rock
Black Adam failed, the XFL failed, they had to merge, and now
like he's coming back and he did like and a lot of it. It's
just interesting. So I'll be curious, like and any of that. The
Rock is not a very popular person right now, at least in terms of
people that you know, not the casual fan and a lot of the people
that you're trying to attract to the XFL USFL thing here, I'll be curious
to see, all due respect to the sleep world, that is a niche
aspect of this, and I don't know if that's necessarily what they're aiming to
get involved here. I understand now if it was Vince McMahon involved, I'm
sure that would be a different story. But you know, I mean that's
another parallel universe I think about a lot. But I still think that The
Rock is still going to bring notoriety to the casual fan. Again, I
can't tell you the number of times I've told people in the last two years
and saying, hey, the Rock has a football league. People's years parked
up. They're like, the Rock con is a football league? Okay,
is the USFL. I'm like, no, it's not that one. And
then it's a whole thing about miscommunication as to which league it is, and
then it's always something along that nature. But look, he's going to appeal
to a casual audience. Now, is he going through a bit of a
rough patch. Yes, But to our knowledge, there's nothing really that controversial
that he's done that maybe other celebrities or other big name personalities you know,
in the last ten or twenty years, haven't done that's really absolutely destroyed their
reputation and made it problematic for them to be a TV or in front of
us. So if he doesn't have that on a slate, then he's really
not going to lose that many people. He's gonna lose niche fan bases,
I argue, But I don't know if he's going to necessarily lose the casual,
casual audience. So I think for them, it's a long game play
and they're going to continue to put him in front of TV as long as
casual fans continue to be involved in them and that he has name brand recognition.
So I appreciate that concern from Russell Mania fans, from super hero fans
and all of them. I get it, that's part of the piece.
I think they're more concerned about the casual audience piece. That's like human minded.
Mean, Roget's like one point eight million viewers every week, so I
mean, I think UFL would kill for for a anything else on the breakdown
here are to I mean obviously Fox twenty one Games, that's you know,
they're a heavy investor in Matt right FS one. Max was texting me like
surprising that FS one that we were trying to build kind of into the sports
network really only has the one game and we can look at where that's being
place here, but a lot of the emphasis on the main ESPN, but
those secondary channels really not getting a lot where even with the FX right with
the xbl lashtrack, we're really trying to make this be a thing and really
never clicked. No, I mean I think I recalled there was a game.
It was actually the Seattle Game is where the Roughnecks went to Seattle.
And I want to say it was a Thursday night on FX during March Madness,
and I mean like the opening night of March Madness. And that was
not the play forgetting exposure. That that to me was a really big mishap.
That kind of skewed the ratings. Obviously, the ratings were all over
the place last year. We looked at it from both leagues. Every time
there was anything where it was FS one versus Fox, where it was FX
versus ESPN versus ABC, the numbers were skewed. And that that showed,
like team people just don't have those cable channels anymore. People cut cord cutting.
They don't really care for that. They care more for streaming. Which
it's funny to see the Peacock thing come to fruition. Now that's another conversation
we can have, which is obviously the USFL tried to get ahead of the
Hey we're putting in on an exclusive streaming game. Only people need to come
find Peacock. Well, when you have a league, that's just still starting
up. I don't know if that's going to work, but when the NFL
does it all of a sudden, you know, then you get twenty three
million people watching it. Of Course, people still complained, a lot of
people said, are you kidding me? This is not just free? Are
you out of your mind? People still watched it, but that's because they
had the brand and the recognition, and there was going to people people who
were desperate enough to watch it. So it's interesting to see that sort of
beta tested almost with the USFL, and then it actually happening with a bigger
entity. And obviously wrestling has a lot of programming on Peacock as well,
So I think it's interesting to see obviously not maybe those numbers not being as
skewed as they were. Of course, I think ESPN is probably going to
still be a little bit less than ABC or Fox, like that's just the
reality, but it's not going to be such a desparate difference like it was
with FX and FS one. The interesting thing to yeah, they and I
remember I want to read out this treasure. It's just laughing and reading this.
But you know, like wwe just to go back to that has been
used as a property in the past, like we're you know, like Netflix
now right is acquiring the WWE ron Like, Okay, we're gonna use that
to draw people to Netflix. Right, We're gonna pay a lot of money
to get that. Uh. We as you said, learned last year,
Uh, this is not a property yet that we'll do that, as we
saw with the FX, as we saw with the Peacock. Ben Fisher when
I had an interview with him last year with a sports business journal and he
said, as much like this, all the ratings does is show like whatever
the bigger network is, you know, that's what's that's what you know doesn't
matter the matchup, but does it in the time matters? But you know,
it doesn't matter if it's two undefeated teams or if it's a two and
eight team versus a five hundred team, like if it's on the biggest network
window. And I think we're seeing that here. I think they've learned,
like we just need to get this in front of as many people in the
world as we possibly can and and and then hope for the best. Right
and we'll see because if it doesn't generate off of this slate, and we'll
go through you know, the week by week here we'll get I don't want
to delay too long here, you know this will not do it. I
was just laughing here where it's like all all UFL games will be broadcast on
ABC, Fox, ESPN, F S one, ESPN two. Games on
ESPN and ABC will be streamed on ESPN Plus and Fox Games, Fox Sports
App. All games will be streamed via TV everywhere. What what does that
mean? All games will be streamed via TV everywhere? Shouldn't they say mobile
device? I think that's a little strange. Is that what that means?
I think I think I think it means just accessible through different TV outlets.
I'm not sure what that exactly means because you don't stream. It's a very
like that's a very like boomer line, almost boomer generation line, like,
yes, we're gonna stream through the TV. That's not exactly how it works.
That's a bit about it. I gotta go on the YouTube here,
Yeah, exactly, it's it's very much on the YouTube. Yeah, that's
a very odd phrasing there. I also, why did they capitalize everywhere?
This press release has a couple of everything everywhere? Andy, we're streaming everywhere
as long as we're having five in the morning, we're gonna stream everywhere.
I did not of the proper now, but okay, are we go?
All right? So we know all this? We know and because I think
the interesting thing was there was there's a couple of regional games. I think
I saw Mike posting the chat or something, so it's not actually streamed everywhere.
If there's going to be regionally locked out games, we know that.
We know the stadium's right. We did it the Rice thing that got announced
last week, and I think that was the hold up of you know,
why we didn't get the schedule. And then there's always this word that's the
MLS, and I don't know if that has anything to do with it if
I think that we need to get the stadium lockdown. It's the same thing
with Cashman. You know, we got rest brand in here, the combined
reach, we have, the you know, exceptional platforms, the experience.
We're equally excited. Bill Wagner here, we can't wait to kick off.
We're excited nothing with that ESPNS, Tim Reid and all that stuff. Season
tickets available. Single game tickets will be available for pre sale starting February twenty
and on sale February twenty second, so you can get all of that stuff
there. So that is very exciting. Do we want to get into the
week by week? Do you have anything else you want to get to before
that? Well, we'll talk more about the stadium matchups later, but yes,
I am very excited about the week the week of course. Yeah.
Andy has his list power rankings of home field advantage for the UFL, so
we'll get to that at the end and you can leave your comments on that.
So again, like all times Eastern, seven of your teams are in
the Central time zone anyway, So we've talked about this the Fox. You
know this is tremendous, right, battle Hawks, Renegades, tremendous. I
think this is as good as you can do for a kickoff game a championship
all that we've already done the other ones off of that, you we're showing
Michigan. I think the Brahmas will show out here starting off at this four
pm on Fox DC Defenders and the Memphis showboats here. Like you said about
the Rise, we talked anything else on week one here. I yeah,
again, I really love that you get the champions matched up immediately. That's
that's in the best interest of both leagues. You get the showcase the best
of the best. Presumably, Obviously both rosters have gone undergone a lot of
overhaul, all of them will, but I think there's still a lot of
returning players, there's a lot of returning coaching staffs. I think that's an
important element here, and so there will be familiarity. I do think it's
interesting that it's being played in Arlington. Obviously we've been in Choctaw Stadium now
was opening last year as well, the opener that you went to, So
they seem to be getting a lot of favoritism in that way. Arlington's opened
all three week ones every time that they've had a league, XFL in twenty
twenty, XFL in twenty twenty three, and now the UFL for Michigan.
That's exciting. I'm really curious to see what the appetite of Michigan fans is
after obviously an uproarious run by the Lions that just completely revolutionizing interest in Michigan
football. Obviously you had the Wolverines winning the National Championships, So like a
lot of great times for Michigan football fans, does that enthusiasm carry over into
Week one. Again you get the host of Beatlehawks congratulations and not going to
the Dome week one, so you better take advantage of that. That's that's
fantastic as well. Both games being on Fox is interesting. Again, It's
gonna be so my mind's gonna have to like get used to the idea of
like again just seeing both of these teams on one one channel too, like
one ABC and one Fox. But then again, it was like this the
xtfelt twenty twenty, so if you remember that, it's not that different.
But seeing the Panthers and the Stallions specifically facing SFL teams again, that's great
to see that crossover. Ty Herr. Excuse me. Detroit is in the
Eastern time zone, so sixty eight six eight six of eight or in the
division, so sorry about that. Yeah, shark here, Yes the home
team, yes it should say Stallions at Renegade. Yes, Saint Louis at
Michigan. Yes, the home team is on the right. We know that
just because at Renegae Arlington's hosted. I will say the I wish, you
know, and maybe I can book around here. I booked we will be
in Arlington for that kickoff game. Would have loved to go to San Antonio
here for the Sunday game and do a little riverwalk tour because I could have
done that. Well, I guess I would have had to ping down and
go back up, But you know, anyway, that will be exciting.
This will be the true retestament here in this because I've I've gone all in
on the Bramas and I've had a lot of DC Defenders fans say like,
well, you're a Commander's fan, why aren't you going to be a Defenders
fan? Like, you know, I got Wade Phillips, I got a
J. Smith and all that Bramas and we have our history there and everything
with San Antonio that is kind of my favorite city of Texas. But this
will be if the Defenders come in and pants the Bramas, I will be
a little embarrassed there for that. But the twelve game there the Sunday that's
also Easter Sunday, right, and it's like MLB kickoff or the kickoff m
will be what do they call that opening day, MLB pitch off, all
that stuff that whole weekend, So you know, a crowded sports here,
right, and it's like we're going on on the Elite eight of March Madness.
But and then three pm here, good, good, good times and
everything for that, So I think that that sounds good so far. Week
two here Memphis is going to be opening up. We got so this is
just the first so ESPN Sunday night, so the ESPN Sunday game, so
we're getting those going. Week two here we're opening Memphis twelve o'clock Renegades at
the battle Hawks. So at least they we'll be able to open. That
will be you know, eight pm kind of prime time there on ABC for
the battle Hawks, Panthers hosting again the Stallions on ESPN, and then the
Houston Revnecks going to d C. So we get we don't have to wait
as long. We don't have to wait till week three or four for the
battle Hawks and the Defenders as well. Poor Renegades, I mean, this
is the second year in a row that they've been sent as the first visitor
to Saint Louis. I mean last year it felt like they were getting sacrificed
on a pike. At least this year maybe there won't be as much misalignment.
I mean, their offense was obviously in town last time. They went
to Saint Louis, So this time around, maybe with at least press around
presumably and they have a better offensive setup, maybe it won't be as as
much of a of a kill shot for them. But still, I mean,
I feel bad for them going to Saint Louis again. And this is
a Saturday night primetime matchup too, which is really cool because I think Saint
Louis for the most part, has only been playing in the daytimes for all
of their games, so for them to get like a primetime matchup here on
ABC is fantastic. That's awesome. I love that. That's that's maybe one
of my favorite time slots in the entire schedule after looking at it. Yeah,
they say here a Renegades will be during Final four, so let me
be interesting to see how many viewers there will be. Yes, I think
the attendance will be phenomenal. Yes, I agree, And it's you know,
it's a tough I don't. I don't know if you just wait until
the you know what would it be two weeks later and go and they're you
too laid into the NFL, Like I think they're really in the rock at
a hard spot here, you know, I think ideally they would have started
to get into February, but I just don't think there was enough time with
all this merger talk, and that's why we're doing the March thirty. I
think there's a couple of things I thought about sort of relooking at the schedule.
One, look, you're going to cross over to March Madness, might
as well avoid as much of it as possible. Like I said, that
opening slate, as I mentioned last year. Last year that happened with Houston,
Seattle and all the other teams. It was so tough because you're that
whole opening slate of March Madness game is such a rush. There's all these
teams, there's all these games going on. It's just so hard to compete
against that. Whereas this one, you're starting on the weekend of the Sweet
sixteen, the Elite eight, and really you're only dealing with the Elite eight
because of the Saturday and Sunday. So that's fine. You can sacrifice to
that and then the Final Four and then the games will be over soon.
So I think that's fine. The second part of it is this season ends
on June sixteenth, that's right around when schools are finished and kids are getting
out of school, and then all the people are going on vacation, they're
leaving town, so like you're kind of still able to get all those those
audiences, the family audiences before one scatters h for summer holidays. So that's
I think that's another part of it as well. And again I think I
still have to look at the weather element of it. Obviously, the later
you start, the hotter it is, and some of these territories are not
conducive to really colder weather because a lot of it's really it's deep South,
it's you know, it's Alabama, it's Memphis. It's really hot in some
of these areas Texas obviously, so you have to at least keep it in
a reasonable time slot or schedule for everybody in terms of not potentially getting overheated
during the playtime. So I think it's fine in that regard to it's I
think the schedule is about about where you're gonna have it. Ideally, we
have I do a couple of comments. I do A games started Saturday,
eight six and eight thirty seven, eight two and five during the UFL opening
weekend. So we're trying to are we trying to kind of program around that
a little bit. Uh, well, you got the one the one o'clock
game. No, it says, yes. You see, they're starting later
in the day Saturday, So the football I'll be wrapped U Shark and asking
if a lot of football fans watch basketball. But the ideas we're trying to
get like any casual like do you lack anything involved in the ball, like
at least come watch us, Like yes, I understand that, like we
have. You know, we have different audiences here, but I will say
I don't give a rip about college and basketball. I should. I went
to Gonzaga. We do quite well. But you know, like my my
XFL friends who we've got reversed for our season tickets here for the Sea Dragons,
like, uh, they would be watching March Madness. They will not
be watching the XFL that weekend, if they are to intersect. Well,
the answer, at least personally for the answer to that question, I watch
basketball after football season's over. Well, you know, football season now is
all year, baby, It's it really doesn't matter at this point. But
you know, for for most people, obviously, once the Super Bowl is
done, then people start to turn their attention away and say, Okay,
what can I bet on? What can I watch? What can I do
to kill my time? And that's when basketball comes back into the fold.
So that's usually when people start to care about basketball. I could not give
a rip about the NBA. If I had a team, like I said,
I had an NBA team, I think it'd be different. But I
don't. So for me, it doesn't really matter that much until we get
later into the season. Same with college basketball. I mean, once you're
getting into conference tournaments in March, then then you start to actually care and
then you have March Madness. But before that, regular season play not very
consequential. So again this is delving into a little bit. This is where
you're gonna start to test. Those markets are gonna test the NBA markets,
are gonna test March Madness. You're gonna test the baseball markets. We talked
about the regional markets, but again baseball, I think is different because it's
regionally based. It's I care about my team, like you care about the
Marriagers. Do you care about anyone else? No? No, I care
about the Padres. Do I care about anybody else? I mean some of
my divisional rivals maybe, But I don't want to go on my way to
watch them, so like that's that's different, right, So I think for
them, like you said, can you appeal to the casual audience. That's
really what we're trying to get here, Phillips. Here has the Easter Sunday
games the UFL tradition. I certainly don't like it. I mean, Easter
is incredibly early this year. Someone whose wife teaches, and you know spring
break is kind of based around that. It is incredibly early this year with
that March thirtieth, don't I didn't like that when Andy and I went to
Birmingham and that was Easter. I mean, thankfully that isn't like the mom
I'm missing Easter and like I'm just owned from the family kind of thing,
where like, hey, I'm Christmas. I'm going to be gone for Christmas.
I gotta go to the UFL game. But I think we're going to
do that. We'll talk more about the championship game. I know that mister
R. J. Young is reporting that it's going to be in Saint Louis.
I imagine that's what it is going to be. I just don't think
it's official yet, right. I think that's one of those like maybe that
got published a little too early. I don't know if I will be at
that game. We'll see, I said, I booked a wonderful couple at
this beautiful hotel downtown here on the fifteenth, so that would be a quick
turn. Are you giving up my Calgary a BC game? That damn looking
here at what's happening to the schedule. But the other thing I was gonna
say, oh, we had a comment, but we'll oh this Dale,
I'm talking about it. He thinks the Ballahawks Defenders rivalry is going to be
pretty noticeable this year. I do think. I do think that that will
be in terms of social media. I was a little impressed with some unimpressed
with others of kind of the stuff we did today with the schedule releases.
But I do think at least in terms of that whoever is running those accounts
Leah and I don't know who the Defenders have now, but I think they're
doing good. Anything else Week two here we can move on. No,
I well, we'll get into if we're gonna keep going to the schedule,
I'll go ahead and get into what I feel about the DC Defenders and the
Seleus Ballahawks later on. But I'm glad they mentioned that because that's something I'm
going to bring up later. Okay, so Week three here Defenders at Arlington
one o'clock on ESPN on Saturday. I guess the other thing, just to
point out, I think all weekend games, we don't have any of these
weird Seattle you know, ten o'clock Eastern Thurtisday night game. And I don't
even care, like for my own because I'll go. You know, I
live ten minutes from the stadium. I'm happy to go hang out anytime at
Lumen or T Mobile or any of that stuff our fields. But like,
Sale fans got such a raw deal with all of this and just the way
everything was scheduled and the weekday games and the late Sunday game and then obviously
losing the team. But if I was a Seattle fan, that would be
pretty disappointed with an of that stuff. But yeah, DC Defendi shot Aures
at one o'clock Showboats taking on the Stallions. We seeing them now. We're
kind of getting into these xfl USFL in Conference seven o'clock on Fox. Again.
These are good. I don't know how Sexy have a lineup this will
be showboats at stallions. But that's good time zones, right, So Sunday
noon on ABC and then at three o'clock on the AABC Like this looks like
when these are both on ABC, but looks like Fox kind of programming schedule.
At least with the USFL in twenty twenty two, we got kind of
these two not too early, not too late games, you know, nine
am, West Coast, if you you know, if we're allowed to watch
games, I might be able to check out the game at nine o'clock here
on On the other I think that's I love morning football. It's one of
my favorite things about living on the West Coast. I know for East Coast
fans obviously that's a that's a foreign concept, but there's nothing better than like
nine am to ten am football. I love that slate. Again, I
think it's cool that you have some of these matchups. The biggest thing that
kind of stand out to me is these rivalries that you really have kind of
more built into the x FEL than the USFL. Just from my standpoint for
the Stellians, I think it's a shame that they don't have, for example,
like the New Orleans Breakers to play yeah, I thought there was something
that was starting to form there and now they're not around. But DC against
Arlington, obviously, that's a championship game rematch. DC is probably pissed about
what happened in the Aloadome. Obviously, we had a lot of voracious DC
fans that were there and left very disappointed. I think that's a fantastic rematch,
and that's in Week three. That's awesome. I also feel that way
a little bit the Ballhawks at the San Antonio Brahmas. That was the first
game of the XFL season in San Antonio and for Saint Louis that and they
had that game where agent mcchaerren came back in the last two minutes. They
showcased the three point play, and they showcased the on side kick roll or
the on side play. It was like a real just kind of a great
display of the rules that were in the XPL at that moment. So I
think that's cool that you have that rematch there. Obviously I don't I don't
think Agrian McCahon's gonna be part of that this time, but it's still kind
of cool to get that little rematch as well. Again, Stallions and Panthers.
I hope Panthers can continue that momentum and keep that enthusiasm from Michigan Football
and Birmingham Saturday primetime. So they had a couple of those last year.
I'm again, I'm curious to see if the Birmingham fans can start to really
showcase why they they're Birmingham fans or why they have so much enthusiasm because there's
a lot of Birmingham fans I think I have interacted with and you have interacted
with online, but sometimes I don't see that so much in the stadium.
But no doubt they win when they play at home. They so I think
that the fans should hopefully get more into that and get to the idea of
playing these different teams and obviously not having the Hub and not having so many
games I think will help at least people kind of diversify their schedule a little
bit. So we'll see about Birmingham. The challenging thing here and we almost
have one hundred people watching the stream right now. Thank you, you know,
just giving a thumbs up. Subscribe if you're not, please appreciate that.
Like I said, you become a channel member as well and help support
I think it's ninety nine cents a month, but it helps. It looks
good on my analytics when I look at my YouTube channel, the thing,
and it's it's challenging when we talk about some of these markets and we talked
about this weird merging the things and okay, you know what markets are we
losing and what's the USFL bringing in, like just sharing of it, Like
Birmingham is not the largest market in the world. And when you're trying to
attract fans like you know San Antonio, you know, bigger Houston. You
have these bigger cities, you know, Memphis, like some of these ones
in the USL are bringing in. Like like you said, I don't know.
You see a lot of the USFL online, right and like I see
a ton of like even on our channel, like a ton of Stallions fans
and Gregory and all of them, and they're always you know, Buckham or
whatever the thing like. But then it doesn't necessarily translate in where I don't
I don't know if I just don't live in a lot of like I'm in
the Brahmas Twitter space now a little bit, I just don't know if I,
you know, live see it as much. I don't know to me,
but we get more of the fans in there, right, Like I
think San Antonio, for what it was, I think they mobilized really hard
locally. Like it just seems like I'll be, like you said, I'll
be curious to see kind of what this looks like this year. I do
think it's interesting. Like with Birmingham and Memphis, we are reconfiguring the ceding
chart at least I know Birmingham is. I don't know if Memphis allowed the
full stadium seeding before. But like Birmingham is, you are sitting in these
sections. We are moving stuff to the side we wanted to look good.
Maybe they'll open that, you know, if Corey works his butt off and
gets that. But I'm surprised that they're kind of adapting with that of like,
hey, maybe maybe we can kind of learn here as we go along.
I think that's interesting. Yeah, I'm not. I still have mixed
feelings about the one side stadium thing. I felt that way about Orlando,
I felt that way about Memphis did do it last year, and you know,
I mean, it's fine if you're trying to get optics on television,
but it's just so weird as a fan experience to look across and be like,
there's nobody over there, and if you happen to show one to TV
angle, there's nobody there, you know, by accident. It just it's
weird for the visiting team. I mean, that's the thing, Like having
a visiting team and getting heckled is part of the experience, right, Like
you're going to another stadium where like there's these people behind me that just won't
shut up, and that's like part of that's part of the experience. And
for them to not have that as a shame because again, I think that
gives distinct advantage to some of these other teams that clearly are going to have
people on both sides of the aisle, and that I think will show in
how the other team responds and how they play in the stadium. So that's
something I'll get into more with the home field advantage marks. But yeah,
look for I commend Corey. He put us in so much work. He
works as bought off. I'm glad that he has another job in this league
to be able to put this together and sell tickets. But hopefully, hopefully
there'll be enough demand that people will be able to sit on both sides and
they'll be able to really have a nice filled out maybe lower bowl area that
would be really ideal unless you, yeah, you talk about the hometown or
the away Ravali when I go to the outy field and I can't even see
them. The supporter section from my own safety read you got to get out
of here, Patrick, Pat for v check it in here that Hawks are
owing three against the defenders, not really the rivalry we think. And Pat's
the Saint Louis homer here, so that's a you know, that says something.
He's right, though, I mean, that's the thing. Saint Louis
is on and two on the road, and they lost in the ball Dome
in a critical game last year that basically decided they weren't going to the playoffs
last year. So no, he's right. They as much, you know,
as much tooting and as much tooting of their own horns, and as
much as they want to be so so involved in their own community and say
how great they are. Ballhawks fans haven't really had anything that really celebrates over
and especially over DC. DC has just completely dismantled them every time they played
them. In twenty twenty and in twenty twenty three. So I think that
for BattleHawks fans would be Catharsis for them to go up and beat DC and
sweep them this year. But I mean the Defenders are I mean, you
guy to call them a marquee franchise, they really are. They've they've been
to a championship game, They've been over five hundred. Also, DC has
never lost at home. We keep that in mind. They've never lost a
home game in both years, so that that streak is continuing. That that's
people don't talk about that enough. I think we always talk about the beer
snake and we focus on their successful overall. But they've never lost at home.
So Audifield has a ton of pride. I will never forget Paul and
I going out XFL twenty twenty. We went because the game was like at
noon, so we had to go to brunch like so early and getting bottomless
mimosas for two hours and then going to Audifield and literally weaving THEXFL kickoffs happening.
Uh, really fun, really fun, really fun that experience. There.
We have Evan Williams aka Evan Willismore checking in here. What really matters,
just finding a date for our riverwalk Albo trip. I know. I
again, I booked my flight back from because I was doing miles from a
Dallas for that. But you know what, we'll have to figure that out.
I will just say, because I'm reading through some of just want this
is on the thing. I'm reading through some of these Twitter comments because everyone's
like tweeting out like I'm watching the UFL, I'm watching the USFL. We
need to remedy this this UFL like like WTF right, Like, I don't
know, I understand it. Probably a certain things are are taken at this
point. I don't know if it could. It's at X three we have
the UFL logo, but there's UFL, Like is that so that Twitter is
like, well, you can't change or you can only change the name.
Maybe they're maybe they're transitioning right because Twitter has all of that now, or
if you change your name you get suspended for a day or whatever. But
like UFL parentheses XFL like shouldn't I if anything, it should be like the
XFL division of the UFL, or like I just don't even understand. I
don't know. Very weird. It feel feels very weird, especially because I
think the USFL wan's still the same. Do you have any thoughts on that.
It kills me that we're like a month from kickoff. Now we're still
a month and a half, we're still figuring this out. Yeah, that
part is the Prince's part is weird because again it's a combined league. But
it's almost as if it almost gives off the pressure to the casual viewer.
Does the XFL own this? Did they just create another identity as the USFL
even involved. Are is still around and I mean they are obviously they have
their their teams involved, but it seems, yeah, it's like the again,
you have to be careful about brand identification, and here it's still sort
of this nebulous like I'm not sure who really owns what or who has what.
We obviously know we have the details, but for again, for somebody
who's on the outside looking in, it's a little bit it's a little bit
of fuddling. I still want to go with the idea of having these these
accounts, like, for example, maybe the network accounts saying like oh UFL
on Fox? Yes, Well on the end, why don't they have that,
like just have the separate Twitter identifications of like, hey, this is
our game coming up, or you should watch this check this out. That's
fine. You don't have to have the parentheses of like if it's the USFL
or XFL you really don't want to focus on that, that's fine. And
you have the divisions, that's fine. But this part is still a little
bit confusing because you're looking up there and you're saying, well, wait that
that looks like Fox is locally up on the UFL. But then it's like,
but the XFL's next to it. It's XFL twenty twenty three, which
was last year. That's there's three parts that contradict each other. So I
think you have to have like more diversify and try to put your and allocate
all of your resources into like different accounts, but also just having like less
confusion about what's what and who's who. That's I think what maybe confuses a
lot of people. And I understand again, I had a lot of people
the last two years being like just had no idea which lead was from what
and what separated both of them? Yeah, because I mean, and I
understand it was like this Fox or the XDO one you like three hundred and
eighty thousand whatever. I mean, the USFL one is the gold like I
understand it is a third of the followers at this point, but like,
can you not like that's a pay, Like that's a you have got the
gold check? Can you not call up? Like I think that gives you.
I think when you get the gold check, you get like a direct
line to Elon's office, like, hey, we need support with this,
Like can you get one of the four people to work on Twitter to kind
of help with this stuff? Like anyway? Weird to me, but I
don't want to get to two derailed here. But I was just a little
like, Okay, what is happening here? All right? Week four battle
Hawks hosting again twelve thirty ABC. I think these like mid Saturday games do
really well as well. I know the first and they when they filled the
dome the first time, it was kind of that mid mid afternoon a good
time zone here, uh d C. I think this will be hot DC
traveling to the Stallion's fox. So now this is this has an asterisk?
Do we do we know what the asterisk is? Oh? I know I
know what that is. Yeah, that's the reason that's the regional time time
broadcast because there's games that are on at the same time, and they're talking
about regional broadcasting. Okay, are we are week for Oh and someone commented
in the thing that TV Everywhere is an app so I guess when I was
laughing about it via TV Everywhere? Okay, news to me? So anyway,
defending, So what does that mean here? Where it's Fox? So
I might not like if I'm if I'm in like again, if I'm allowed
to watch the games? Do I is that on in Seattle? Or is
that only like Fox on the East? Like, I don't understand how that?
Do we know? Yet? It seems to me like it's a regional
pick, as in maybe even if for now as a West Coast avient audience
obviously doesn't really matter because there's not really teams that are allocated to the West
Coast. But in terms of this, uh, it clearly is saying that
there's going to be regional markets that are watching different games like they do in
the NFL. Obviously, kids, they're overlapping, right, I get right,
they're overlapping of the stallions. Well, this isn't terrible. This is
which begs the question why, because now you have games going on at the
same time. And also, isn't the whole point of your league to expose
as many games as possible to as many people as possible. Why are we
splitting the difference here? Why are there two games on at the same time
in the same time slot. Why are you, like, are you assuming
that there's regional biases and baked in news flash? There isn't. I mean,
there's people in your own region that don't even know that these teams exist.
I don't think this is a model personally that makes a lot of sense.
Because also, if you're if you're going to do this to us,
if you're going to do this to the West Coast audience, why does it
matter? Why do I care? Why? Inherently? Why would I care?
If I'm whether I'm watching the Stallions, the Defenders or the Brahmas Panthers.
Now, on paper, I'm sure the Defenders game. I'd much rather
watch at the Stallions. What if I get the Brahmas game and said,
and I don't want to watch them? What you know? Why are we
making those kinds of conscious choices? And also, are you going to offer
up a way to be able to watch these games if you don't want to
watch them on TV of what you're getting on broadcast, can you are that
could be the big selling point for you? Maybe that's everywhere? Okay,
so maybe then it's an app, which again I don't know if you can
sell that right now because you're still trying to get your league out there.
That seems that level of exclusivity is something that really really bothers me in today's
media. I'm not talking about just like the UFL. I'm talking about in
general, people saying like, oh, it's really exclusive. It's like,
why should I care about your product yet you haven't sold me on it yet?
I don't I don't understand why there's this exclusivity that's already baked in here.
Again, the NFL can do that because guess what, it's the NFL.
They have all these people they have. They'll be like, hey,
look, Taylor Swift and the Chiefs are going to be playing the Dolphins on
Peacock. You like you really want, you really want to be involved in
this media storm. You by this subscription, that's fine, and like,
okay, you can piss you off, But like they can do it because
they know and they can get away with it. I don't think they know
how much they can get away with here, and that's why it still bothers
me. I don't This part was the part of the schedule I looked at
and almost double take that, like, why no one's done this? Spring
football does not do this? Well, this is what happens. And I
have a question for you here. We got the Sophie's choice here, But
this is what this is. If you haven't been a part of spring football,
this is exactly. This is the mid season of the spring football.
Start that week one like USFL, like simulcast Fox, Fox, and NBC
in prime time, and we're doing all these like everything, and then this
is the week five, you know, seven o'clock at Easter or it would
be ten o'clock Eastern like the FX game. Right. This is once you
get to the middle of the season, like, okay, now we kind
of start like we only have so many good chips, right, so okay,
let's give these we gotta we gotta, we gotta front load the season
and then we'll kind of backload towards the playoffs. This is kind of the
middle and like the NFL does really, I mean, I obviously every season
of everything kind of has that mid season drop. But this is kind of
where we're involved in that. Here's my question. Would you rather have two
simulcane simultaneous Fox games or one on Fox and one on f S one,
or one on Fox and one on the ESPN two an hour or two different
like at least here they're both on Fox. Just depends which game you get.
I get, well, okay, and then I again, I have
to ask what the ratings are going to be in those regional markets. So
maybe it's a test. Maybe it's a test to see, Okay, how
much does that region really care about this league in this market. Maybe that's
the way of them testing it. But I would rather they just split the
difference, or they just have it in different networks and they put it on
ESPN or FS one like a slightly different time slot, maybe like an hour
later. That's fine. I can deal with that. I can channel flip.
But this this doesn't really make a lot of sense if you're trying to
bring in ratings and you're trying to bring in as many people as possible,
unless you're just trying to do it as an experiment or I don't know the
stuff to change. I mean, obviously they don't set the time. I'm
gonna assume no, because if you want people to buy tickets, you don't
want them to suddenly buy the tickets and then shift the schedule and move it
all around, Like you're not going to flex games like you do in the
NFL. So I don't really care too much for this idea of this model.
This okay, Jenny here, gosh, I can't watch all the games.
Uh, this doesn't bother me as much because I still think half a
Fox audience or a regionalized Fox audience is going to be better than where you're
going to get on one of these lesser channels. Like that's just you know
when you watch these like when they show the coverage of okay, you know
who's getting the game of the week for the NFL, and it's like half
is getting Kansas and half's getting the Chargers or whatever. You know, however
they delineate that. But like, it doesn't bother me as much. I
think that's going to be okay here, this one is so this week,
like week four, this is when you get the articles of like ratings declined
across the UFL because we got these the simulcast games on Fox and then this
is your solo two pm FS one game the Renegades at the at the Roughnecks,
and that this will be the decline. The Mike Florio's of the world
will be tweeting like this is the downfall of the UFL. Right, But
I mean, this is the first big challenge here, right, because everything's
been pretty peachy here here Abc and Fox and ESPN. Week four is when
you're going to be hitting a roadblock here. Yeah. And also you have
three games on Saturday. Keep that in mind as well. You have three
games on Saturday, just the one on Sunday, so you know people are
going to be kind of rolling on into Sunday and seeing that there's not a
game on Fox or ABC and then have to go having to go to f
S one to go find it. So and also, just from my standpoint,
this really depends on how the Houston market looks on TV. We haven't
gotten into that, but this is I'm very curious to see how Rice Stadium
looks. And this is the standalone game. Is this going to have as
much importance? Obviously it's a Texas matchup, so the Texas Showdown is really
important, but how do we brand this, do we brand this the Battle
Texas the Texas. I still like the Texas thrownown. I wish they rebranded
because I like that a lot. In twenty twenty, that was to me
one of the best parts of the league. And I mean, I know
there's another team, but like, these are the two original teams that you
had in Texas, and I think that that rival that's again, that's a
rivalry that it really exists. And I do believe that there's still a little
bit of battle, but a little bit of heat between those two two entities.
I will just say the the other thing with oh, the FS one,
Like again, this was supposed to be kind of the big drawing card
of a lot of this. We were going to kind of build up some
of these games. I don't know, I mean, the FS one market,
I don't know how well that did. And we'll be curious to see,
like the calling Cowards of the world, like how how much do they
lean into this and skip and everything kind of promoting this now because you know,
obviously it's Fox, but you know, like, I don't know,
I'll just be curious to kind of what the marketing is coming out of the
Fox side. I will say I've gotten into like I've been DVR and con
coward every day and I don't I don't watch the full two hours or however
long, but I do watch the first ten minutes. I usually find myself
nodding along like it make us some good points here, especially all right,
week five here Bramas at Renegades, Fox again back Prime Time seven o'clock stallions,
Sizzi, this is another one of these overlapping games. And they said,
this doesn't have the asterisk with it, this isn't the like and maybe
they just forgot the asterisk there. And then Sunday ESPN at noon and then
Fox at three, I get another one of these overlapping games. So oh,
here's a question. Sorry, real quick. When they count, someone
tell me, because I don't like I started to do about there when they're
counting these games are like, does this each count as a Fox game?
Right? When they're doing when they're taluting the numbers, right, we have
twenty Fox games. What's like, it's two? I mean it's two?
Is you know you're getting that, but you're really it's like half the baby
here. It looks to me like Fox has a bigger market share. All
at least in terms of if they're gonna get ratings. They think you have
the bigger network, you have more network games on Fox, so obviously that
I guess that would go notched on their belts. And then see when they're
taling this seventy two percent of games twenty one on Fox, but we've already
seen four of those games of simultaneous so it's really like it's only seventeen games,
well, seventy two percent of on Fox or ABC. So but this
year when they're talking twenty one games on Fox, but we've looked at four
of those games have overlapped so far, so that's really only two games.
Like if you're give what I'm saying, because you're competing against yourself there,
yeah, then that's that's like notching a Pugic down, So that's not really
that's that's yeah, that's that's a weird accuracy issue. I don't know what
that means. Again, because we don't have the standalone game, like you
said, I don't know how they're really going to configure this. Also,
going back to the regional market share aspect of this, you're playing in Arlington
and Houston at the same time, so are we dividing parts of Texas now
for watching this game? Is that how it works? Or you just like,
like you said, is it going to be America's like the you know,
America's Game of the Week thing like Fox usually does, where they pick
one team or one one matchup. They can do the same thing here because
they're both in the same state. So you can't just I assume you can't
just cut cut one side and say Okay, well we're Arlington, you go
watch your games in Houston, you go watch your games. That would be
really weird to be splitting up Texas. So I wonder if that's another part
of it, if or if they're just going to have one game that they
do doesn't even say no, this is the more important matchup. The other
one gets relegated to some streaming app like you said, TV Everywhere or whatever
it's called. Well, no, I mean, because that's I don't know,
I look at that. I because again I'm trying to adjust my camera.
I you know, I complimented them in the beginning and I said,
look like this is really you're really making an effort here. But if you're
if you're if to at least so far in the time zones, and I'm
going through all this live. I like going through all this live as we
kind of, you know, react to this. I can't do a bunch
of that step ahead of time. Two of the games so far across call,
you know, cross whatever against each other. I just think that's interesting.
And then we're getting he was talking about ESPN twelve o'clock and then Michigan
Panthers going on at Fox anything else. Week five we got David says preach
professor. Well. Week five, obviously you have Saint Louis at DC.
That's one of your first big, big matchups here, and this is Saint
Louis's opportunity to get revenge the owing three against DC all time. This is
their chance to get revenge. This is going to be an Audi field,
which again we'll see how the Defenders do this year, but so far they're
undefeated. They've never lost in that stadium. Let's see if they can continue
doing that here. It's an early morning matchup on Sunday. I like this.
I just love this matchup overall. I know Anthony Becks and crew just
would love nothing more than just finally finally drive the stake into the hearts of
the DC fans. But that to me is like one of the premier matchups
of the entire season right there. I have to have the opportunity. Well,
I guess I talked with Beck at preseason. I guess we talked with
coach Beck at the I think he was at the Arizona showcase. Yeah he
was, But I had to talk with him after the season. They're pre
we had kind of scheduled stuff, and then obviously all this merger stuff went
down. But I will say, if I ever had the opportunity to interview
coach back to or speak with them, I will call him a cry baby
for his the way he handled losing to the Sea Dragons and then missing the
playoffs and all that. Yeah, like you said, they can kind of
redeem all this now, but he was a cry baby. Win the game,
win the game. You're in the playoffs. Now, we're changing the
standings and we're changing the playoff seedings so that the BattleHawks can be like,
win the game, win the game, go play, don't win the game,
go home like I Like, you're an athlete, you know how this
works. Well, what happens if they end up finishing second of the division
and then the reverse happens to them, whether it's a team from another division
that gets a better record than what happens. So that's why you don't complain.
You win the game. Hey, how did the how did the overtime
overtime playoff woever work out? You know, we changed the rules for Buffalo
and then they still lost. Well, I mean they never got into the
playoffs into the overtime, so we never got to see that come to fruition.
What was more interesting is that the Chiefs argued for that rule. There
was an article that came out when they argued for that rule to start when
they played the Patriots in the twenty eighteen championship game, because the pastick the
ball and just went down the field and square and one. Chiefs did the
same thing in twenty twenty two, and all of a sudden, now Buffalo
argues for it and they get that rule change. So it's kind of funny
that almost happened in another universe. That almost happened to the Chiefs, but
they just didn't make biggest stink about it. Football question here every game was
on ESPN plus last year, but pretty unlikely the Fox said yes, the
ESPN ABC games will be on ESPN plus the Fox games will be on Fox
Sports, which I think is fine, right, I mean we're ideally,
yes, ideally there's one app to rule them a whatever. But I think
that yes, King Mars is question and we we can go back because we
have the press release. Uh, games will broadcasts all ESPN, ABC games
will be streamed on Fox. Fox names will stream on Fox Sports. And
then obviously say, yeah, so TV Everywhere is an app, so I
guess, uh, if you want, I don't, I'm gonna look that
up. What is when is the TV everywhere up? Because that might be
the that might be the watch TV Everywhere. TV Everywhere is a type like
I'm not getting. I guess it's this share this tab welcome to watch TV
Everywhere. Well, so now you still have to log in. You still
have to log in with like a cable provider. Yeah, I'm getting I'm
getting the Spectrum TV app on mine when I type it into Google Play.
So that's again, I don't know what that means in terms of being able
to stream it from another market, like can I or is it gonna be
region walked? Yeah? No, I think your best bet get on honestly,
guys, like with with with all this ESPN Plus is so worth it
if you can get it bundled. I have it right now with the Disney
Hulu bundle, but you can get on its own, you can get all.
Well, I guess I was gonna say, now you can't get the
CFL games. I was gonna make the further pitch to get the CFL games,
but at least getting the XFL games totally worthwhile. And then the Fox
Sports I think you have to you can pay or log in with your table.
I don't know how the Fox Sports that works. I've never used it
personally, but I mean if you have. If you haven't, then you
can use it for your cable provider. But I have for me, I
have YouTube TV, So that's that's why it's a little bit different. Yeah,
Fubo is a good one too. Fubo gets into all that stuff.
You can pull it up on your phone and you get and you can even
like when we're talking about, well, it depends how they do these simulcast
games, but like, I don't know, maybe you COULDVPM through and get
one if you really were kind of curious that way. So anyway, yeah,
Week six stagings at Showboats, another early ABC game. They really liked
these new and I think that's a good Like what else you're putting on Saturday
and on ABC? Yeah? Right, next at Ballahawks at Fox. So
early games that day Sunday one o'clock and four I Brahma is going to Defenders.
We see now we're kind of back to normal. One ABC game and
three Fox and these are all standalone games, so that would be good.
Yeah. So it seems like week four, Week five our experimentation for the
region markets. We'll see, Like you said, all the ratings articles will
come out after all those games. Just be ready because people poo poo on
us and we talking like, oh you hate the USFL. You're talking like
the numbers, those are the people to yell at, like those are the
people they check in once and then tune in. Week five, Oh my
god, why did the ratings fall eighty percent? It's like, well,
because there was two games on the one, Like yes, yeah, so
we'll see, we'll see how that all all pans out. But again,
used to going to Saint Louis. I mean that's a huge matchup already,
you got that's that's uh again, it's I know it's called the Battle though
I like to keep calling the Thunderdome. But I think that's gonna be a
big matchup again for for Houston and for Saint Louis. But every game in
Saint Louis is gonna feel like it's the end of the world for any team
that walks in there. I think and accursion too. You were talking about
the Rice Stadium of it. I share they asked you this question back when
we were talking about the Houston home games. But how Rice Stadium will look
Is that because it's a new stadium, or because the league stole the Houston
Markets team, rebranded the team and they gave them a team that wasn't and
now they're the Roughnecks. Why the hesitation? I think the thing about it
again is that. Okay, so first of all, it's not your team
that you had last year. The staff is different, the players are different.
It's the as we like to joke, that's the Gamble Necks, you
know, it's the it's the Gamblers actually being on the Houston Roughnecks team and
roster. So that's a little bizarre. But second of all, you're moving
venues now, so you were, you were pretty situated at the University of
Houston, and now you're moving over to Rice. So you know, does
your audience understand that, are they going to look for that? Are they
gonna be able to go to Rice instead? I know Houston is a very
sprawling area. I've actually been on the Rice campus, so I mean there's
plenty of people around. But again, you're talking about your core audience that
they're going to be able to follow you along. So there's that aspect of
as well, and also just the general confusion as to like who's actually on
the team and who's not, who's coaching, So it's not going to feel
the same. So I just wonder what the response is going to be or
if people look maybe people don't care. I don't know. But again,
there's not really a familiarity with the Gamblers brand or any of those players or
any of those coaches, but they're being transferred into the Roughnecks, and the
Roughnex brand is still around. I just wonder about the people's general reaction about
like, Okay, where are they playing and who's this person? Where did
they come from? Wait? Why is my coaching staff over in San Antonio?
Like people are gonna have to start piecing that together and we'll see how
Rice Stadium looks. I am curious, but the numbers there are something that
I just wonder if Houston's really going to have much of an advantage overall with
that setup. I think it's a mistake. I might have said this.
I think it's a mistake too. I if that was my team, I
would have difficulty cheering for a brand that's existed for three years. You know
that played was it ten you know, ten to eleven, played sixteen games,
like I don't know. I would have trouble with that. I would
I would keep I would keep the players, you know, and all of
that stuff. Darren, Have they found about giving Rise students this kind of
tickets to fill the stadium? That is an excellent idea, Darren. We
should, you should we should email you know, email Jeff here, you
got the email. If you go to the UFL dot com, you got
the email on there. I think that's a good idea. Sorry, any
I absolutely agree, honestly, would do what Darren saying. I wish that
a lot of these teams did that, and any any local university that they
were able to get promotions and saying hey, you should come on nine and
like bring all of the you know, bring the student energy in. Like
that's if you want to bring in if you want to make this league different.
I think it's not only just appealing to people who followed professional football,
but what about people who follow like, for example, college football, and
say like, hey, there's all these semi professional athletes, Like you're pretty
used to watching college football, which is in a sense it's the own level
of amateurism. I think you absolutely should appeal to those markets. That's something
that I really wish these teams did more of, and I think that'd be
awesome if you could do that. Look at Birmingham, you know, like
the Birmingham Stallions. I would say they should go down the UAB University of
Alabama, Birmingham and say like, hey, look, I know this is
your stadium and the college football is not going on, but like, hey,
we still got football going on. We'll give you some great student discounts
and you should come on in and watch some more football if you're really into
that. And this is another great atmosphere to be part of it. There's
something I wish that again, the promotion of all these leagues is what we
talk about so much, and that's just another aspect of it that I think
is really untapped and is really would help the numbers overall and just bring in
the energy enthusiasm that you're searching for into these leagues, not just solidarity and
one market of like, oh, this is a professional football. We'll just
carry this to the people who can afford these tickets. Like that's to me.
I think that is a bit of a miss. Philip here says,
it's a Roughnecks. That's my team. Philip. If I if I passed
tomorrow from this world and Andy took over the mark cast, but still in
the Mark Cast, or would be you know, I mean, I just
I wish there was a little loyalty here, Philip. I just you know,
I just appreciate that. The other thing Darien's asking one little rosters.
We finalized, we did the supplemental draft. That stream was like what two
weeks was it Monday? Right? Two Mondays ago? And then people reporting
the training camp February twenty four. So then they'll do that and then they'll
do cutdowns before the season. Am I missing anything there? Yeah, there's
a cutdown in March. I can't remember the exact dates, but there is.
But obviously that'll be a week or so before the season actually starts,
so I mean the numbers will start to come in in two weeks, but
the final cutdown on the rosters won't happen until going into March, so obviously
they have about I want to say, six weeks into until they actually start
the season, so there'll be time to allocate and go through all that.
I wonder maybe if it's the same as like the NFL schedule, where it's
like training camp, you have that month and a half and then the back
end, the last three weeks is when you start to do all the cutdown
on the roster rings, so that I would imagine that's part of a similar
setup. I have to double check those numbers. One more comment, we'll
get the next and you'll have to hop off here for a second. You
got people coming to the house, and we'll work through this. We'll get
out of here at timely matter, all right, So I do asking how
the USL teams will deal with row the atmosphere. I do like that running
narrative as a joke of like all the XFL teams have an advantage because they'll
have fans in the stands in the USFL teams and going like, what is
this? I just think that that's funny. But I mean it's well,
it's it's two specific teams that I could think of, but that But I'm
again, Orlando had the same thing. The Orlando Guardians had the same disadvantage
where it was like one side of the stadium there's all these fans, but
there's nobody on the other side. Vegas. I mean, Vegas was just
a quagmire for anybody. So it really didn't matter who played. I think
it was just not fun for either team. I think it was a it
was a home field disadvantage for a lot of people. Seattle. I mean,
I know, you guys there was maybe less numbers overall, but I
mean I think the Seattle fans were very enthusiastic, so you know, you
lose that market. But again, here's my other thing, and I really
want this. I want I want this league to be transparent about this.
Please, with the love of God, please give us the attendance numbers,
especially from these USFL teams. Don't treat them like the nuclear codes. I
do not want this. I don't want this unfamil. I do not want
this second guessing. Trying to battle with people about what numbers were actually there
is insane. I don't want this anymore because people can eyeball anything and say
like, well I think it's this, or I think it's that. It's
asinine. Just please report the attendance numbers, because then you have a better
idea of who's there and who's not. Okay, the XPEL did it,
the SPEL did not. I don't want people to giving giving some presumption of
how many people were actually in the stands. I want solid numbers. A
couple of comments here, questions, then we'll get back to this. Shar
Do you know if the UFSFL team is still own the rights to the College
USL draftees, I would imagine so, I mean it's again, it's like,
you know, they would have to be interest. It's like the negotiations
listing candidate, right, like if you come to play in the CFL,
like you know, we have kind of first DIBs on you. I imagine
that's the same with the people the XFL took in there. What was that
the rookie draft that they did, because they each did one last year the
USFL did won in February, the the XFL did one. The other question
here, this is a new commenter. I haven't seen Jack and Jamie.
I'm news from football. Did they have training camp live coverage with the XFL
stuff this? Well, we both now with the UFL, everything will be
in Arlington, right, So it's not like a traditional where you would have
all eight teams doing training camp in their home markets. We do a pretty
good job of getting XFL people on. I know we had like Johan Heinbach
and some of the coaches on last year kind of from Arlington talking all that.
I know Anthony Miller, who it writes for this where it's illustrated now
with Mike Mitchell, he lives in the area. I imagine Anthony's going to
get some some access that way just because he's in the market, and he'll
will certainly come on and talk and we can talk with other We'll get player
interviews and all that stuff. So it's not in their traditional sense, but
we kind of when we get back to our regular Friday episodes that we'll get
some pre recorded interviews that way. I think you're going to have pre recorded
material. I don't know about live coverage, like somebody going to be on
the sideline with the camera. The league might put somebody out there with a
camera and just interview, Oh, here's Danny and here's the Rock and here's
Daryl Johnson and just talk to the execs and not actually cover any of the
football that's going on in the background. So I don't if that's what you're
talking about. I think it's going to be more that that's really what it's
going to happen. Maybe it'll be like a YouTube live stream, but as
far as actual coverage of what's going on behind you go to your beat reporters,
I mean that's going to be really where you get in and like you
said, Anthony Miller will be doing there on site and getting access to that,
So that's more that's where you're more going to get it than anything else.
And speaking of Anthony and Mike Miller here or I excuse me, speaking
of Anthony and Mike Mitchell and their endeavors. It could have a big announcement
here coming up, but maybe even today on Twitter involving the kind of the
future of the Marcus as well, So that could be excited. Let's go
back in Week seven one o'clock ESPN. We're going back to this are at
Renegade's hosting again four o'clock on Fox and then the ESPN games on Sunday twelve
and three. So again kind of the middle of the road here, Bromise
traveling to Houston, Philip, I'll start your question. We'll get to in
a minute. This will be a good one. I think BattleHawks at Stallions
hosting. Hopefully the Stallions fans show up for that kind of any takeaway,
sir, that's fun. That's a matchup that a lot of people wanted to
see. I think for the most part, you'd really love to see the
Stallions go to the battle Hawks arena. But having the BattleHawks travel a burning
him was a really fun idea. That's one of the first matchups you think
of when you when you aren't conceptualizing the idea of these leagues combining. Again,
show Boats. Every time I see the show Boats in the schedule,
I just look at them and go, I don't know how good you're gonna
be. I'm just not sure. I hope, I hope they're at least
decent. But that's a it's an okay matchup. As a pallet starter on
Saturday. But that that Saturday one pm Stallions Batlllehawks game, that's that's a
marquee matchup. You get the Defenders on Sunday once again, it's a morning
time slot for West Coast Central Time, Mountain time people. Brahms at Roughnecks
another Texas matchup. So you know, there's some decent matchups here. I
mean, again, the biggest thing is the importance of all these matchups will
shift as we go along once we finally get to know players and the and
all that. But as far as just looking at in terms of who has
advantages where, that's really the biggest thing. Like, I'm really really excited
for some of these former USFL teams to go to places like Saint Louis and
DC and run into things like the Beer Snake and sort of come part of
these traditions that were here before. That's that to me is the most fun
part of this and seeing how they react and how fans react to this,
because obviously that level of camaraderie was not around in the US of L very
much, so I like the idea of that. But now there's some decent
matchups here in Week seven as well, Whether they say here Abdullah, Professor
Dowdy, and Chef cookis Wow, Chef Cook is, Look, they got
to fix their offensive line. I have had a lot of problems with their
offensive line. The Stars offensive line has been awful for two straight years and
it's gotten a lot of their quarterbacks killed. That happened the Brian Scott,
that happened the Case cookis. That's happened to a lot of guys who have
been behind center for them. I want, I want Case Cookies to play
well, but I need to see that he has actual protection because he needs
it. When he has time to throw, he makes some damn good throws.
I just need to see consistency up front and the offensive line. But
like you know, I want Case to play well. He just when he
was behind that Stars offense line, it just wasn't fun. We have fun
chats going here in the comments in the chat. Week eight here Showboats going
again, Michigan hosting later o'clock, four o'clock Fox. This is it,
So now we have another one. So this is the sole ESPN two game,
eight o'clock Houston Revnecks at Stallions. You know again, I look at
the Stallions a little though that to me, says kind of more of a
sexy matchup, right, Just I know it's the pedigree of the Stallions versus
if I'm like, if I'm looking at the Showboats, it's not really necessarily
as as interested that way. And DC defenders here going to Saint Louis.
That would be a good one Sunday noon, and then Arlington Renegades going to
the Promise at Fox on one o'clock. Once again you were deciding divisional hatred.
And also in terms of playoff matchups, here DC going to Saint Louis.
Look, this is your second crack out at Saint Louis. If you
really are serious about taking down the DC, you do it this time.
This is a really this might be the biggest matchup of the entire season when
it all is all said and done, because DC has improving themselves and I
ran over Saint Louis last time. Abram Smith was a wild man running down
the field against Saint Louis. The BattleHawks. We'll see if they can have
their home field advantage here. I mean that that fan base is going to
be so ready to jump on DC. But this is probably the biggest matchup
of the entire season. I really am excited for this this night Sunday morning
matchup. Kind of wish it was a little bit later in the day,
but I mean as far as being a standalone game, this is fantastic.
Arlington going down to San Antonio again. I hope San Antonio is able to
support their team like I like the almodome A lot. I'm glad we had
that experience there. I hope the fans are able to get behind it and
really support that, maybe again getting this Texas audience more involved. I'm glad
it's not like a late Sunday night. I mean it's six pm their time,
No, sorry, three pm, excuse me, three pm their time,
So it's not like some of the matchups we had, And the problem
with the XL sometimes last year was we have these late Sunday night games that
really just crushed people and trying to get them to come to the stadium.
So having them closer the midday matchup is good, I think, and not
having it be like, hey, it's seven pm Sunday night, you guys
should come out to the game, and it's like, ah, I got
work tomorrow. That was a big complaint the promise. I do remember that
because they were really trying to do like the family focus thing too, right.
I think they had like family tickets as well, And yeah, I
do remember that being a common like, yeah, we can't I can't go
to the game here, especially like the Alamo Dome wall convenient for tourists staying
in the river walk or doing the things that we were going to do.
Like you know, I do think it's maybe challenging for families to get in
there as well. Yeah, absolutely, I think that's I think this is
overall better allocated. You can do it Saturday night, that's fine, But
Sunday night, No, that's that's really gonna hurt people mission downtown. Will
DC fans travel and bring the beer snake to Saint Louis? Is it at
the Alamodome? They wouldn't allow it, right, Yeah, they wouldn't allow
it. I don't think Say Louis is going to allow them either. Yeah,
it's one of those things like Aldi Field. I think being in the
soccer stadium and outdoors. I don't know if that has anything to do with
the different policies and just kind of the backlash they had with kind of the
throwing lemons and all of that. Stuff, But yeah, it could be
another fun news story that way. Oh, Lemon Gate was fantastic, but
I don't think you're gonna have that again. I mean, that was such
a disconnect, you know, like that that was the whole thing about the
league. Didn't the new iteration of the league, didn't understand the traditions that
were baked into the the DC franchise. And then yeah, they're like,
what beer snake? It's like, that's all anybody ever talked about this entire
time? What do you mean? What's a beer snake? And the fans
let it be known real quick. I just so vividly in my head remembered
fans chanting the words beer snake, beer snake in like the second or third
quarter because they weren't able to like construct it like that's how That's how adamant
they were about getting their way. That was. That was bizarre. I
want to make sure we touch on this, mister Downtown. What's up with
the inconsistencies of start times? Why couldn't we have one PM across the board
at MPM totally agree at least for this step. We just need to be
happy they're on the networks, they're on right, I mean, that's that's
gonna come. And you know, when you're the NFL or I mean even
hockey deals with like having to kind of work around and basketball, Like,
when you're the NFL, you could, OK, at these are the slots,
this is what we're doing. We just need to be happy that they're
on the channels they're on. I agree with that, but at least they
are on. You know, if I am someone that's not in tuned with
getting on ESPN Plus or whatever, like I can go to my channels and
go to ABC or Fox and find this game if it's on it either or
one or whatever. I think that's that's a great idea. But again,
they don't have priority yet. They haven't proven themselves yet. Once they do,
then they can start to argue for those timeslots, to say, hey,
these are the ratings we bring to the table, here's why we should
deserve this time slot. You know, then you can start to argue for
that. But for now they don't have that prioritization. But again, you're
on Saturday and Sunday. You're not really gated the Thursday or Friday or Monday,
like you have consistent days that you're on I think that's the first big
step. Max Year had a comment, I think the reason for the regional
games is definitely to test how much of a boost they can get on the
rating slot by having four fan bases watching it once. So again, like
we're testing some things, like you said, kind of working around some of
the time slots and then working around you know, some of the networks.
But that could be another way too. Let's see how that works. But
I do think that that's disingenuous to talk about some of the Fox game numbers
and having them b cyblecast. Yeah, and that's the thing, like what
are the numbers going to be in the regional based broadcast? So uh,
that is that is a bit misleading. But it was the same thing they
kind of had with the what was it that graphic last year they had about
the four percent increase of opening week games, uh, and over end or
something like that. There was some weird graphic that it was the numbers it
was it was it was really backwards. I didn't like how they skewed that
last year. That kind of Look, I know there's a lot of readings
gymnastics, and I know people talk about it and you want to boost it
as much as you can. I get that because they're going to be the
negative articles. You know that there's going to be negative backlash when there are
inevitably dips and ratings. But that that to me was kind of a bit
disingenuous. Well, what they did was they they took the they took the
year, the entire year of the USFL Radians and averaged it against the week
one of the SFL season two, and they said that there was an increase
on that No one week one week. Here's a good question, Adul,
could we see Friday night games next year Fox because they want to have smackdowns.
I don't mind MACS. Foxes built that into a good time slot,
but that is also very wrestling dependent on that. I don't know if I
would stick with the Saturday Sunday games at least right now. I think that's
that's the thing. I think it's a wrestling idea, right. Look,
the CFL, for example, knows that they have games on Thursday and Friday,
right like they are like Friday nights not Friday Night. Yeah, Like
the they that's their thing. They love that, they love the Thursday night
matchup. It's like Okay, fine, like that's the that's their their way
of dealing with the market. But the UFL does not have that yet,
they do not have that idea. I think it's a cool concept, but
again, I don't think you have people that are going to go out of
their way to watch on Thursday and Friday night. I just don't Saturday and
Sunday. I always thought that Saturday and Sunday was always seen as like alternative
programming anyways for people who didn't want to watch college football or NFL. So
I think that that's again why Saturday and Sunday makes more sense. Yeah,
I think at least right now, we're really they like they know, if
you're on this stream right now, you're gonna find the game. But they're
trying to get to the people that are more casual that way. Week nine
here Battle Hawks, going to the Renegades, twelve o'clock, ABC stallions at
Brahmas, a couple of ABC games here at twelve and three, and then
again, like, to me, at least these are nice and clean.
There's no like just we had some of the weirdest time slots and then we
now we have it boyd as as I say, that another simulcast here at
the Fox. So we have three simulcasted games here, DC Defenders at Showbos
and then the Panthers at the Roughnecks. So that's another one of these delineations.
Yeah, you're starting to get a lot of Texas based matchups here,
right or excuse me, Yeah, it's it's starting to get a lot into
the deeper parts of the year. Now you're starting to get into Texas and
late May it's gonna start being a little bit hotter. Notably, there are
three domed teams in this league, so you can be able to control temperature
settings there, which is good. Obviously, you can't do that in Arlington,
you can't do that in Houston, but you can do that in San
Antonio. So and you're gonna be in Memphis, so you're gonna be in
the Deep South here and it's gonna be probably a bit toasty, but again
not as maybe not as bad as if you were playing deep into June or
you know that beginning of that July fourth matchup in Ohio obviously, So that's
just something to keep an eye on because the XPEL does not have that.
Yeah, they've had mostly temperate conditions to deal with. But yeah, really
focusing on the on this Texas market here again, really just consolidating everything and
being able to have all these fans be around for the Texas matchups. I
may I may get the funny thing here. There's been a gentleman I assume
Joe, Bill Alexander here in the chat. That's been a really like we're
terrible and we don't know anything, and you're wrong and people are you other?
But Bill commented here, these dudes don't even know how loaded the boats
are. Bill, this is you right now. This is you at the
party by yourself in the corner. We're having fun, so appreciate it.
We got one hundred people watch around that. We really appreciate everyone like to
subscribe it. Bill, welcome you be a part of it. Happy to
have you on the stream. But you know, we're having fun here of
you. If you're going to be pissy pants, that you can do that.
But I just finally, it's been it's been going on for about twenty
minutes. I want to dissuade you and your your education at the professor.
That's fine, we'll see when the games are played. Anyway, So back
to the schedule here. Yeah, so we'll see. But another one of
these simulcasts. So what is that week four, five, and nine,
I think at this point, So we'll see. I'll be curious to see.
This is a good this is a good test I think moving forward,
I think so too. And that's a really important aspect here. So we'll
see, we'll see proof of concept how this works. All right, Andy,
go take care of your plumber. Hop back on here. I'll do
some questions here. Andy'll be back in the second. Then we'll get to
week ten here. If you guys have any other questions about the schedule,
we'll get to all of that. Yeah, people enjoying the egg tree and
all of that stuff. So that's good. Andy's got a plumber, he's
got to let in here, and then we'll get to week ten. But
if anyone else has any questions here. In the meantime, we had a
question talking and Andy here. Rather find that would work maybe with an expansion.
I'm not opposed to it. Again, I think right now we just
need to get to Saturday Sunday, whether it's noon or one or two,
kind of get all that going. I think we need to just any casual
fancy we can get to on this, I think is the goal here if
they keep a late March start leads itsself to expand it. You know,
I know that that's the buzzword. I know that that's how we get a
lot of YouTube stuff. Right now, I gotta clicks on that. You
know, we got we gotta get one season with a million plus under the
belt here, and we'll go forward with that. Shark's talking about which team
has the hardest schedule, We'll get to that. We'll get to that here
at the end when we kind of get through the late games. Yeahn talking
love the Saturday Sunday games only I would agree with that. I think again
normalizing here the Thursday games were really tough going through all of that stuff back
last year, Mister Downtown, when we come to the Bullpen in Santa I
need to get down there again. I wish I had gotten kind of the
full schedule before working through the kickoff. We will, you know, going
down Saturday and we'll do our live show everything we did that back at Chalk
Top back last year. Should have lots of fun guests. I'm sure great
Parks of the World and Pad and Andy and kind of everybody will be on
that so it should be a fun time. But yeah, we'd love to
do that Sunday game in San Antonio, but that might be a little too
much to just swing here. Going back through going through the comments here people
enjoying my if people enjoy my meme, that was funny, like that question
here, doesn't Fox have ownership in the UFL? I guess our biggest competition
we be Baseball for the afternoon the NASCAR. Fox has the right so that
yes, So there again there's always kind of scheduling gymnastics that way, and
again kind of the whole reason Fox got into this back with the success the
XFL had in twenty twenty was, you know, having the programming that they
own that they kind of kind of air mid week or midday on Saturday Sunday.
That's easier than like I don't know, the airing old movie recaps or
anything like that repeat. So we'll see. I mean, they can schedule
around, but ultimately, I mean, I think, you know, the
NASCAR rights they go with that, and obviously Baseball, even if viewership is
regionally based, I think you're going to get them prioritizing a lot of that
stuff. Matthew BattleHawks are gonna whoop the Panthers. Catca excited to see.
I think the BattleHawks. You know, I don't always love the the causelaw
and all that. I get a little tired of the Saint Louis the podcast,
and I love Jason and all of them with the X Fans Show,
but a lot of you know, a lot of shilling for that. But
it's exciting there. And then I will get Andy back on here. Sam.
All five rend Against home games are Saturday. Yeah, I did see
DC complaining that they complains about that. Sorry Sunday. Kind of the games
that we're going on with that Andy is back, the Plumber has been let
in. We've gone through comments. We need to talk and this is kind
of hard right now because we don't know rosters. We're talking like difficulty,
strength of schedule. I don't know if we're out of point right now where
we can talk about that. But let's get here. The week ten,
rounding out the season, Panthers at Stallions on ESPN, Noon Fox is Antonio
Brahm and Saint Louis Ballahawks Renegades on ABC, and then we're closing out with
a seven pm Fox Roughnecks at the Showboats. Yeah, again you get the
close out here with DC. That's fantastic that that second the last game on
Sunday, so home field advantage for them. Maybe they'll be able to use
that and allocate that into possibly having a home playoff game. The Showboats again
hosting the Roughnecks, Ballhawks, and Stallions. I mean, some really strong
home markets here the last week. This is really a great last showcase for
some of the strongest markets in the league. And you'll be able to have
that with especially the Ballahawks and the Dependers and the Stallions. So again,
we'll see with the Showboats. I think they had a good turnout last year.
We'll see if they're going to be able to get more people involved in
the market and again maybe be able to surround the stadium a little bit more
so if you're talking about some of the potentially strongest markets in the league.
This is a nice way to round it out here. At the end of
the season, I will say I thought the Showboats did a good job in
build in that new market, and I'm glad that they survived into this.
I think that there was a lot of work put in and I know people
in like you know, weird and criticizing and the hubs and the home markets
and kind of all that stuff. I think the Showboats showed that if you
got into something like that and put in the time, that you could make
that work. And so I'm glad that they did that. You know,
we're now in some more established markets already with the XFL here, you know,
kind of bringing those into the fold. But I'm glad the Showboats survived
and that you know, they all have the new coach and kind of all
that stuff working there. But that should be a good situation, I think
from Memphis, even if we want, even with Bill's comments inside, I
do think Showboats, you know, I think that would be interesting to watch.
Like I said, you know, we'd play the games, and once
they play, and if they show the case themselves to be a proficient team
in this league, I'll give them all the credit that they need. That's
that's all I'm gonna say. But yeah, they had a solid I agree
with Abdul, they did have a solid attendance. But again, I want
the numbers. I like to see it on TV. I want the numbers,
that's all I'm asking. So then obviously we're gonna have the So this
will be weird. The conference championship games that ABC and Fox tvd on all
that. My question is, so they are the conference championships and we had
I guess it was Beck that was on coach back talking that it's going to
be the number one seed that both conference and then the winning right, the
most winning. But we're still going to be conference based with all that?
Am I understanding that correctly? Well, I mean, I don't know if
you can be conference based because there's going to be crossover, right If there's
gonna be a team that comes over from one of the other conferences that has
a higher winning percentage, then they would cross over to the other to the
other league. Like if you have two if you have three USFL teams and
one XFL team that has the only one that has the winning division, that
has won the division, and then you have two USFL wild card teams,
I guess you would call them and I presumed one of them would then crossover
to the other league. So I guess it's still be a conference championship.
I guess it'd be weird because then you potentially could end up with like say,
like two USFL teams or two XPL teams in the championship games. So
so I'm not sure how that works. Really, it's it's it's a bit
weird, but I mean, if that's how it is, I mean theoretically
that could also happen, and like for example, in the Great Cup,
like you could have a team crossover. I know it's not really ever happened
very much, but like you could have that theoretically happen, right, and
they're not going to be like, oh, we have Western Conference and the
Industry Conference champion. It's kind of I mean you could, but then it
becomes weird because another team takes over. So that's really the only the best
way to look at it is just like just win your division, just win
the division. But no, but did this I think cause again, coach
Backton, I don't know if that was formally put out. We're still waiting
on like the World Bucks and all that stuff, but I think it's we're
condemn the conference championship. But I think you could have if you know,
if the if the Defenders won the division and then the Renegades were the second
best team and two of the teams in the USFL Conference. You know,
if the if the Stallions won, but then the other two teams, like
if they had the better record, I think the Renegades would go because how
would you, I mean, how would you not be in the playoffs if
you had the second best record in your division already? Like I don't know.
To me, that's confusing, But we're calling it the conference championship.
I would just like a little bit more clarification on that. I mean,
it's it's two things. One it's a wild card, and two it's a
crossover. That's basically what it is. And there's no because there's no like
the divisions aren't big enough to be able to allocate that, Like you don't
have enough teams to be able to move those kinds of things around in a
normal wild card set up. And two it's gonna be crossing over because you
want teams with the best records to be in. So say each team will
play the conference championship, will pay the top two teams for the best records,
and there are conferences against each other. So what is Beck talking about
when it's like the best But we've gotten different reporting in different like match like
different. I feel like we've had other information that said that that wouldn't be
the case. It was going to be someone with the best record that would
be crossing over. I don't know this is from I mean I would trust
this and the conference championship will pay. The top two teams are the best
records and their respective conferencesgainst each other, which would obviously put you in the
second place in that division. Right, Well, then somebody's gonna lose out
and there's gonna be a really pissed off third team if they have a better
record. We're gonna be in the same boat we were last year. Yeah,
Shark serious says maybe they changed it back. I mean, this is
the press release today, so whenever Beck third, And that's why I did
not Like there's sometimes like I might like talk about something on a show if
I've heard something, but I'm not necessarily like putting that out in the ether
like on Twitter, right, and there's like I saw the back to the
interview and I saw that, but I wasn't retweeting that, like well because
this is from that, so that will be the top two and ease that
way you guarantee yourself an X develo versus usfl Yes, yeah, okay,
Well, like I said, we might be back to the same controversial point,
which means, to Beck in his battle Hawks, they better win the
division or get the top two and not have the same problem happen again.
You know, if you finish seven if too, you know, if two
teams finish seven to three as wild card teams behind, you know, the
Defenders or something like that again, and you're the last of the seven three
teams, then you know, tough luck you got. You got to make
sure you beat the teams that you beat. And that's the thing. Like
I would have said that to the BattleHawks fans last years, like, sorry,
you lost the wrong games. You lost the wrong game to the to
the Sea Dragons, you lost the wrong games to the DC Defenders. Sorry,
like that sucks. But you go one and three against the biggest teams
in your division and you're in your setup, Like that's just that sucks,
but like you lost the wrong games. Yeah, so we'll get let's talk
here, championship, we'll get some comments and we'll get out of here.
I think I want to keep this under two and then Andy's got to get
to work and stuff like that. Obviously, tvd UFL Championship. R J.
Young putting out in his article on Fox, and we've seen that before.
Remember they have the incorrect Fox numbers for the Michigan Panthers game and then
they changed that. But at least I checked and I have the screenshot that
they they He is saying the game is going to be in Saint Louis.
Let me see if I can pull that up on Can I drag that into
white browser? Here we go, look at that, Look at this technology.
The championship game will be in Saint Louis. UFL recognizes how strong streaming
football has been in Saint Louis, the Battle Hawks and dry whatever, and
they will be playing there. They were talking about the last two. I
know Mike reached out to XHL brass. They have not officially announced that yet.
I don't know if they're happy with RJ. Young or not. At
least I'm not blocked on Twitter anymore by him. But thoughts on that because
it makes sense. I know Pat's kind of down on it because he thinks,
like safety concerns around the dome, but like it makes sense if it
ends up transpiring that way. Sure, I mean, that's great, awesome
for them. I hope that the same information is being fed to Arjie,
that's being fed to the XFL. I don't want to have miscommunication here,
but that's something that's important to keep in mind here who's being in the loop.
But if it is indeed in Saint Louis, yes, that's great.
That's a fantastic place to play a championship game, and we've seen the potential
for how how fporacious the crowd can be. Obviously, if you're the league,
you would really love for Saint Louis to be in that game because then,
oh my god, that is an insane home field advantage. But if
they're not, then I think you'll still draw decent numbers. You know,
the Alomodum I think did a decent job of hosting last year the xporld Championship
game. I had decent numbers. I think Saint Louis could do the same,
if not better. So I appreciate that that's an idea. It's not
official yet, But if that's the case, great, And if you're Saint
Louis fan and that's the case, fantastic. Now you have a real goal
to reach for and really hope to achieve. A couple of questions here,
which network while the championship game that's on Fox. We just showed that on
there, and we'll go back to this I to do in Philip had a
question why I have a conference championship just take the top four teams because you
want to have Accio val versus USL in the championship game. Fill up,
like, keep up, keep up. This is why we're doing this.
This is what we want because we want to have it in the opening game
and then we want to crown because then, and I'm sure nobody on any
Twitter spears will freak out when it's either the exit ho or the USVILL champion.
I don't care. I think the Stallions are a great team. I
have my USFBLL twenty twenty two championship t shirt. But that is why we
are doing that. So that is hope that makes sense. Sure, you
know, like I said, I hope whoever ends up winning or losing in
the situation, somebody's going to complain about something like somebody's gonna be on the
outside looking in. That's just the fact of the matter. It's just there's
not enough teams involved here that you're gonna be able to diverse find get everyone
into the dance that you think should be in the dance. But I think
this is what's going to happen. No, so we again, so we
we have Andy here and we have Spring Football News, both talking. No,
this is this is why when coaches go on and do interviews and then
people take this as this is from their press release. The conference championship will
put the top two teams or the best records in their conference against each other.
Andy, it is not the conference top team plus three Walker, this
is the press release anything you have heard before today. This is from the
UFL. It is the top two teams in each conference. It's the same
issue we had before where you could be the best the second best team in
the division and then you still don't make the playoffs because there's a whatever team
and the other like this is this is how whatever it's going. I was
just talking about the Saint Louis home. Yeah, that that illustrious Saint Louis
hometown, our home field advantage where the Sea Dragons went in and won,
and then that's why that's why the battle Hawks weren't in the playoffs. So
yes, that's crazy home field advantage. I again, this is why I
get a little bit irked at the fact that there's all this kind of like
lack of being on the same page with both if anybody, all these players,
all these coaches, and they're just saying, well, this is how
it is, this is what I heard. It's like, yeah, you
might have heard that. Now that's probably going to change, and you can
say it is gospel, but it may not necessarily be the same thing,
Like it's going to change as we go along and as a transpires, because
guess what, the executives they make their decisions, the owners, they make
their decisions. They have all the power here. They could snap their fingers
and be like, no, actually it's not like that anymore. We're doing
this because they have all the power. So I appreciate the idea of getting
some of this information out from people who are at least related to the league,
but they don't always seem to know what's going on. I mean that
goes for both sides. I don't think there's always a same page methodology here
where everybody has the same message or is able to give the same information,
Like one person says one thing and everybody goes with it like it's gospel.
And that's clearly not the case. I mean, that's it's just it's the
fact of the matter because there's all these different varying reports and there's all these
different ideas. Like you know, June Jones gets on a radio two years
ago and he's just like, Oh, here's where the league's gonna go is
what's gonna happen. It's like, June, you're not even like coaching right
now? What's going on? Like why are you saying this? You know,
but everyone says, oh, this is June Jones said it. It's
like, well, yes, but that's not he's not in the league.
Like as if you're not like one of the top top top percentage of people
who's actually running the league, all bets are off. I'm just gonna say
that right now. Like there's there's people we that Mike talks to, there's
people that you talk to. There's people that like seem to know what's going
on, but there's not. Again, it's not gospel and information changes.
That's why you have to be careful about putting it out well. And this
is why like I you know, like I love branding, but this is
like why like I don't go crazy like posting videos like the second like someone
says something in an interview like I have respect and he works really hard and
like it's it's great and Brandon and I are friends, but like you can't
like this. Again, this is from the press release today from the league.
This is what it is now. They can come out later and say,
well, okay, we're making an update and tiebreaker whatever, like this
is what we know now. So this is why, uh andy, you're
still on this. I've shown you the text, like I don't. I
don't know what else you want me to show you that Like, I don't,
I'm done talking about this in this because it's getting to be redundant.
But this is why I operate on this. And this is why when we
have even all that it's going to be these teams and it's going to be
the roughnecks in the era they're gamblers. Well what it's the gamblers, but
it was therect Like this is why we kind of wait until all this stuff
comes out sometimes to do this. And like first market isn't always necessarily correct
exactly, and that's why that information is sown. It's it's fluid, it's
not really set in stone all the time. Again, this is a press
release that just came out today. There wasn't really a solidified indication that this
was going to be the playoff forma going forward because of what we had heard
from other people, but it wasn't sett in stone clearly. So I don't
know. Like, I know, you want to take things as gospel again.
You want to be able to just go with what somebody's saying and be
like, Okay, this is how it's going to be. But in this
space, that clearly is not the case. Like there's very few people who
actually have information or inside sources on this, and this is why we wait.
You know, this is the same thing like for me, I know
we haven't gotten to this level yet, but this is why in the NFL,
I wait for information to come out. People can say rumors or this
or this or this until I see schefter, rapaport, pla sorrow. When
they start all tweeting at the same time the same thing, then I'm like,
Okay, that's now we're in motion, like this is really gonna happen.
Before that, I take everything with a grain of salt, and that's
how I have to take things here. Sometimes yeah, I get there.
If you have any other questions, pop them in here. I have a
couple and then we'll get out of here because Andy's got work and other things
going on. I did like this comment. I hear it's a rock still
any ending to open and day heard these two busies dealing Cody Road China wrestlerman
have for you, So I do I do like that. But you know,
in an ideal world, like I said, you have the Rock on
wrestling on I guess he'd be on SmackDown every week on Fox promoting and the
Fox and the synergy in the US felt like that's a good situation. He
just it's a really bad Andy. It's really people are really bad like for
this. I know you don't care, like people are a big, big,
big mad about this. No, I'm not saying people don't care.
I do think people care. I just wonder if that's the audience they're going
for, if if they're trying to appease to the wrestlers and look yeah again.
Ox had a couple of duds, some movies, some of his some
of his alternative ventures in recent years having gone the same way, but still
a brand, still an identity, still has a lot of cachet, so
I don't know if it's necessarily going to be severely affected to the way that
people think it is. But I mean, I'm sure some people would disagree
with me and say they're being up in arms and be like, yeah,
no, he's losing he's losing his cachet, and it's like, okay,
fine, But I just don't think from a casual standpoint, it really makes
that much of an impact. Yeah, Jared here says, I think it's
a solid schedule Saturday sending only decent start times, getting out it works.
Now, I just need the champion games. We called the United Ball bring
back the Mega Bull that was my favorite. Shark Here said, do you
think this is fring football last? Oh? Yes, we needed it,
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes we needed a home right.
Yes, sorry and thank you? And you need to fall his last nance
workcase. This is final opportunity. Yes, this is for at least the
time being. This is the last chance for all of this. Any thoughts
on that end, You know, I thought about this question actually about a
week or two ago, and to be honest, from the standpoint of it
being a entertainment and profitable venture, yes, now for now, I don't
say last chance. Ever, and here's why. Again, there's so much
football that's played in this country, and there's so much potential to bring in
these market numbers. I mean, the numbers just keep continuing to go up
and up and up and up and up. I mean you just set conference
a conference championship game record and the divisional playoff rating record in the NFL.
Now. I know a lot of that has to do with Taylor Swift,
but like it shows you that market growth is potential, it's there. I
think people are still going to look at these numbers and be mesmerized by them
and say, hey, I have a way to get it that nobody else
understands, and I'll do it differently than all those other leagues do. Everyone's
gonna go through that same mistake. I think what will happen is if this
doesn't work, you're still gonna have people who are going to start leaks.
That's never gonna stop. People are still gonna start leagues and say, hey,
I want to have a developmental league. I want to be able to
give these players a chance. I think we should put something on TV.
I think what would happen ultimately is I think you would see something more like
the Spring League. I think the Fox Channel or somebody would just say,
hey, you know what, We're gonna have a developmental league and just run
it for really cheap and just have players get taped, not really pay anybody,
and that'll be the end of the day. And I think that's ultimately
what could happen if this doesn't work out. Now. Again, I don't
know if that's gonna stop anybody from wanting to go big or go home,
like we've seen with some of these leagues. But again, they're trying to
thread the needle right now. I don't know if that's gonna work, but
I think that somebody somewhere is still going to get the bright idea that they
can start a league everyone wants because they all see that market share. When
there's that big of a piece of the pie, everybody thinks that they can
get in on the game. And I don't think it's ever going to stop
where somebody is going to completely eradicate the idea of spring football. It's going
to continue because it's the biggest four in this country and it's a lot of
people who are involved in it that's huge. That's unless the market starts to
decline, you're still going to get people who are going to try it.
I don't know if they're going to try it on this scale again for quite
some time unless someone has a new revolutionary idea of how to present it and
immediately get people hooked in. But I do think something more akin to like
I said, the Spring League would be around. I think that would still
be a concept, a proof of concept that would still be around in some
format. So no, I don't think spring football is going to die,
but I do think the idea of presenting a full fledged league as an entertainment
product probably would take a back seat for a while. If this doesn't work
out. Again to blast you some comments and then I want to do Andy's
home rank home field rankings before we get out. David, this is our
last best hope. Fill up here. This league will work, Gary,
our big friend. This is it for me a time miss and on my
side, Kerry, don't say that, David. Until Brian Woods draws his
last breath, the will always be the full starts. But this is the
last fance of all that. If this fails, it will never be on
networks again ever like that, and then whereas it oh, David's asking the
rule buck where we were supposed to get rules, So maybe we'll get them
later this week. We'll figure that out. I thought I had one more
funny comment, but I do want to d championship game at cashmin Field,
so that would have been all XFL for one hundred years. All right,
Andy, let's get to any other comments you have. Leave, but I
want to get to Andy's this is funny. The Professor's home field, the
damage power rankings. Now that we have the eight teams here, Andy,
I'll give you the floor. Okay. So I thought about this going into
the scheduling matchup, and I know I'm probably gonna get a lot of feedback
and criticism on this, but this is how I feel about our home field
advantage rankings right now. So one, Saint Louis Baalahawks obviously biggest numbers,
latist arena, craziest fans in some capacity. They have the clear number one
spot, and they are going to be able to continue to build on those
numbers. I wonder if the four hundred level, if they're going to span
out and start to put more sections in there, if they're gonna let even
more people into the battle Dome. I mean the biggest number we've seen so
far is about thirty eight thousand. Are they you'll be able to expand that
even further remains to be seen, but that would be fantastic if they were
able to do that. So yes, that is the clear number one marker
on this DC defenders number two. Look, we know about the beer snake,
we know about the lemon tossing. Those people are crazy. They've never
lost at home. Ever, that homefield advantage is real because they truly have
shown that they can hold It. Doesn't matter if it's the twenty twenty version
of the twenty twenty three version. They just are able to dismantle teams when
they come into DC and Audifield's great, fantastic atmosphere, great fan experience.
I've talked to DC fans. They love it. And I think now that
they were playing more in the spring season and won't have to be worried about
inclement weather as much. So I think that's fantastic for them. Really great
thing here for DC Birmingham. So again, I want to see this market
really start to push push forward and really put more fans into the into the
stands. They've won a Ton at home. Obviously, they not really lost
much. I believe maybe one or two games at the double check, but
they haven't really lost much at home in their two years there. Obviously,
they have to championships in the USFL, so they've shown to be pretty proficient
at home. And I just want to see more of the fans show up
and really show that support, because again I see the online support. I
just want to see more people in the stands and really give it that flavor.
But Birmingham has been, you know, pretty good for their iteration their
two year stint. The Bramas. I put them here because I still believe
in the San Antonio market. We saw it with the Commanders back in the
AF. I mean they were able to really put in some serious numbers there
the Bramas fans. Hopefully the schedule work out a little better for them,
maybe they get the San Antonio market involved. I really like the idea of
San Antonio. Maybe they can have a chance to jump with Stallions if they're
able to put more support behind them. But I like San Antonio is in
market. I like the Alamodome. I think you can create a distinct advantage
there. The Panthers again Let's see where that enthusiasm goes for Michigan football.
Let's see if you can really carry over all the Detroit fans, all the
Lions fans. Can you put some more of those people in the stadium and
really start to reinvigorate that market. If you're able to do that, great,
then you can utilize port fields. Fordfield is so loud during the playoffs.
That was such a great atmosphere. I hope they're able to get more
people involved and be able to kind of revitalize it and bring it back into
fruition. So the Panthers again, like the Brahmas, I think I have
a chance to really jump up here in the rankings. Memphis again, I
like the Memphis market. I think they did a good job in their first
year. I don't want to see them just sitting on one side of the
stadium. I would like to see, you know, start spread out a
little bit. But I think Memphis and Tennessee in general having a team I
think is good. It's really close between them, the Panthers, and maybe
even the Brahmas. I think there's some leeway for them all to kind of
work on themselves. The renegades, we've been to that stadium. It's a
baseball stadium and it's kind of retrofitted. I'm not crazy about the setup.
I think it's still funny that you can still see the Texas Rangers logos on
the trash cans when you walk through the lower area. It's kind of funny.
But like as a stadium for football, I don't know if it's really
my favorite, and I don't really feel like they have an advantage. Arlington's
kind of whichever team plays in there. It feels a little bit neutral,
so I'm not huge on that. I mean, yes, I get they're
defending champions, but Arlington itself is fine as a venue, but I kind
of want I want to be more done with it. I kind of wish
they played a different area in a different stadium, to be honest. And
then finally, the Roughnecks, and the reason I have them here is because
they're moving to a different stadium that seems different. The coaches are different,
the players are different. Is that crowd that was at Houston in the University
of Houston? Are they going to be able to transfer over to Rice Stadium?
This is the biggest question mark. Hopefully it's better than we expect,
but I just don't know what to expect right now because we haven't seen the
proof of concept. So that's why I put them right there at eight.
But they have a chance to jump the Renegades, of course, and this
is kind of where I'm at right now. But I think overall the reason
I make these rankings is because I think this is still showing that there are
still good markets here, and I think these are really good proofs of concept
as to some of the strongest markets that you had from the XPL and some
of the strongest that you had from USFL. Obviously, the team's actually played
in their home markets, so for me, it's still good. Overall,
it's a strong list. I just I hope that the work is being done
to really make some of these teams stand out more than they have in the
past, and even the teams that are at the top, like the Defenders
in the Milehawks, I still think you can even do it more to really
get people involved. So that's where I stand with my power rankings. You
know, I was looking at this, I got the markets. I don't
don't disagree with this list. I was looking at this. I think battle
high again, but this this this elusive home field advantage and then losing,
losing to them, I keep put my hands up and then my camera wants
to like track my hands. Defenders there. I might put defenders above because
I would sell. Let me disagree with that. Defenders. Like you said,
undefeated Batlllehawks lost the pivotal like win and get into the playoffs game with
the Big. Now. I know they have the show, but I would
put that. I would put Defenders over Ballahawks and then the BattleHawks Stallions.
I think you have to put you can't have a top three without the USFL
team in there. Panthers were kind of mixed smash. I would put them
below the Brahmas, and then you have the Huge. The Roughnecks are kind
of a question mark at this point. Renegades. I think their fan base
is really good, and when we were at the kickoff game, you have
a lot of them. But like you said, yeah, it's still in
the stadium. It's kind of the leftover remnants of you know, the Rangers
game. It's field is next door now, and it's a weird. It
works, it's funky, but it doesn't it's not perfect. Yeah, it's
it's a bit of a weird setup. And again, I would rather they
play in an MLS stadium. I think that's what everybody wants, but that
seems to be a pipe dream. I think everybody's concept of wanting to play
in an MLS stadium isn't necessarily there, so it's not really going to happen
for the foreseeable future. And look again, the Panthers. The thing that
I just like I said, I want to know. I want to know
the numbers. I want to know the attendance numbers for the for the Panthers
and for the show boats and for the stallions. But we've seen we've seen
what three of these in person, No, you've seen four of them in
person. Sorry, you've been the out of fields, so you know what
that's like. So it's we have a good concept of what these stadiums are
like. Hopefully I get out to more of them and I get to really
see them. But again there's I think the margin is the difference between a
lot of these is actually pretty thin. That's what I'm saying. The Defenders
one, like, yeah, I would put them number one. It's just
it's the sheer numbers. It's like the pure numbers of the Ballahawks. But
you're right. The defenders have defended their terror. They literally showcased home field
advantage and have It's never been proven wrong, So I understand why you put
them at number one football fan here. I love Irelandon. Hopefully they don't
section off those front seats like they did. I think they have to for
the site lines. I think because it's baseball, but they need to put
a tarp there. We need to get We need to call up the USFL
tarpie manufacturer and say, hey, can we get some of these for the
Renegades becausey yeah, it's a bad look because it just looks like no one's
sitting there where you had tarps going there. You're like, oh, okay,
well then it was like when they did COVID. It was like during
COVID and they would have they would have like you wouldn't have people that close
to the field and you would have they had some tarps in some of those
places. So I think they should do that, right, I'm just looking
here, anyone else have anything? Rice Stadium is a rundown down. People
will not want to go to games there isn't that where the Spring League Wasn't
that their spring league right where all that was. Grayy. San Antonio is
a wonderful place for football. Abdul Memphis is renovating their STADIU. I think
the one title would be like that for the next year and maybe the year
after that. Anything else, andy, we're at two hours. Anything else,
we'll get out of here. Like I said, I'm I'm just glad
the scheduled out finally, so we'll see where this goes. But just a
note for everybody, be careful about where this information comes from and who's putting
it out there, because it's it's nice that we have people like coaches talking
the space, players talking in the space, but you know, it's not
always it's not always what's actually happening in the space. Just keep that in
mind going forward. A lot of things are going to continue changing over the
next two months. You know, same thing with players, player performances,
players that are in training camp, players that are actually on the rosters.
That's all fluid and it's all going to change. So just keep that in
mind going forward. But I'm really excited about, you know, us getting
the training camp and finally starting to kind of ramp up. I think everybody
will really start to get into it once the super Bowl's over and once that
whole thing is finally transpired this Sunday, then we'll really be able to get
in and focus on this. Yeah, I appreciate everyone. Like I said,
David says, thank you for the great SHI appreciate that. You know,
again, like my frustrating and we're too late now in the show.
Maybe I made my frustrations at the top, but like it just kills me
where like I want this to succeed and I want them to. I want
this to do as well as it can and we can all do well in
the space if the league does well, and the more people and sports illustrated
it's and all the people like covering this. But like when Andy and I
were talking yesterday and we were trying to figure out, like hey, like
what time are we going live? And I'm like whatever, it like makes
the least amount of sense for them to kind of put all this information out
is probably what they're gonna do. And that's what it was, and we
made the best of it. We still have almost one hundred people watching here
two hours in, so I appreciate that. I assume everyone here is subscribe.
If you're not. Like I said, think about being a channel member
buck a month. It looks good in the analytics. I get the track
like who's a new member here, and you get like fancy things when we
put your comments and stuff up. Super appreciate. Andy is always taken a
lot of time today for all of this. If we get rules this week,
maybe we'll do something. But again, I think we're still kind of
out of the pre record and all of that stuff. I know, like
I said, Hussy and Evan and I will do a sea about free agency
show I think next week after the super Bowl, but there's going to be
a lot of super Bowl noise here leading up, so I don't know if
we get anything else this week, and anything else from you not for me
to read. Thank you has always always loved to be on here, A
lot of fun. We didn't realize it's really been around since New Years,
since last time we did a stream, so I kind of forget how how
much time passes. But thank you again for having me on. And we'll
see what happens. Yeah, I know people hate the live shows, but
this is a lot more fun, get a lot more interaction that way,
so we'll see. But you know, if you it's either like live show
or nothing. Sometimes I would do the live show, so I we'll see
you guys next time. I take care and don't get into any arguments on
Twitter about all this stuff. Just remember both of these leagues view you as
just an audience member and it's not worth getting in fights about. Thanks guys, thirty Times