Three years after the XFL and USFL merged into one league, the United Football League just wrapped its third season, and this one looked nothing like the first two. Half the map changed overnight. Three brand new franchises replaced three familiar ones, and by June an expansion team was hoisting a trophy nobody expected it to touch.
New Cities, Old Stakes
When Mike Repole took over the league’s business side in early 2026, he inherited a decision nobody had made yet: what to do with three struggling markets. He chose relocation over patience. The Michigan Panthers, the Memphis Showboats and the San Antonio Brahmas were gone within months of each other, and three cities with no spring football history suddenly had a team to root for.
Spring football has always struggled to hold a national audience against baseball and the NBA playoffs, and european bookmakers have quietly tracked these short seasons for years precisely because so few American bettors bother to. New rosters in new cities only made the games harder to call. That kind of uncertainty tends to be good news for anyone pricing the odds rather than betting on gut feeling.
Ted Ginn Jr., a name most fans know as a wide receiver rather than a head coach, took over in Columbus. Anthony Becht, who had built his reputation in St. Louis, moved south to Orlando instead. Neither man had a single game of shared history with his new roster. Starting from zero is a strange way to open a season that actually counts.
The Standings Told Three Different Stories
Not every relocation played out the same way. Orlando opened with four straight wins, a run strong enough to make it the best team in the league by the time the regular season ended.
- Orlando Storm finished 8-2, the best regular season record in the UFL
- Louisville Kings finished 6-4 despite an 0-3 start
- Columbus Aviators finished 3-7, the league’s worst mark in its debut year
Columbus never found its rhythm. The very first play from scrimmage in franchise history was a fumble on the opening kickoff, and that tone hung around longer than anyone in Ohio wanted it to. Ask any Aviators fan how week two felt, watching DC hang 44 points on a team still learning its own playbook. A brief two-game winning streak in April offered some hope, but crowds under 9,000 for three straight home games said plenty about how fast a new fanbase can lose patience.
Louisville’s Run Nobody Predicted
The Kings lost their first three games and looked like a footnote in the making. Then something clicked. Six wins in the final seven weeks carried Louisville past Columbus and St. Louis in the playoffs and into a United Bowl matchup against DC, the two-time reigning contender.
On June 13 at Audi Field in Washington, quarterback Chandler Rogers threw two interceptions and still walked away a champion. Running back Ian Wheeler and a defense that forced two fumbles in the fourth quarter did the heavier lifting instead. Final score: 27-20, in front of what official counts put at just over 19,000 fans, though gate figures for spring football rarely match ticket sales exactly. An expansion team won a title in year one. Sort of unbelievable, honestly.
The Old Guard Had a Rough Year
While the new teams grabbed headlines, the league’s most decorated franchise quietly had its worst season on record. Birmingham missed the playoffs for the first time ever, finishing with a losing record under new head coach AJ McCarron after three straight titles under Skip Holtz. Different coach, different results, though calling it just a coaching change feels too simple.
DC Defenders looked like the league’s best team through five weeks, riding a five game winning streak behind quarterback Jordan Ta’amu. Then Ta’amu tore his ACL in week eight, and Washington closed the regular season on a four game losing streak before somehow reaching the championship anyway. They lost that one too. Repeating as champion is hard. Repeating without your starting quarterback turned out to be impossible.
Three teams built around continuity instead of reinvention still ran into trouble this season, and the reasons were not identical.
- Birmingham lost its head coach and its playoff streak in the same offseason
- DC lost its starting quarterback in week eight and never recovered
- Columbus lost its early games and never built enough momentum to climb out
None of that was in the plan when the season kicked off in March. Football rarely follows the plan anyway.
