It was previously reported that Charlie Ebersol, the son of longtime NBC Sports Executive Dick Ebersol and Director of the 30 for 30 documentary about the original XFL his father created with WWE’s Vince McMahon, recently announced that he plans to launch a football league next February. The league is called the Alliance of American Football. This means that the upcoming XFL won’t be the only alternative football league to the NFL hoping to seize Americans’ attention.
The AAF will feature eight 50-man teams playing a 10-game schedule that begins on February 9, the Saturday after next year’s Super Bowl. Funding for the league will reportedly come from The Peter Thiel-led Founder’s Fund, Barstool Sports investors The Chernin Group, former Vikings pass rusher Jared Allen and others.
The league’s inaugural game and championship game will be broadcasted on CBS and one regular season game per week will air on CBS Sports Network. It promises a new kind of broadcast, wrapping up games in two-and-a-half hours and without TV timeouts.
The league is hoping to draw talent from the wealth of high-level college players who couldn’t make the NFL. Teams will have the right to draft players who played college football in their local market, similar to the territorial pick system that existed in the early days of the NBA.
Ebersol’s league has a more detailed vision for what it will be than McMahon’s new XFL. As Vince McMahon announced, the revived XFL would launch in early 2020 with eight teams of 40 players playing a 10-game schedule. Details beyond that, such as when the games would be played or where they would be broadcast remains scarce at the moment. McMahon did repeatedly hint, however, that players in his league would be required to stand for the national anthem.
Below are the main differences as well as some similarities between The upcoming XFL & The AAF:
– The XFL will relaunch in 2020 at the end of the NFL season, while The AAF will launch in February 2019 also at the end of the NFL season.
– Both leagues are said to have eight teams in cities still to be determined.
– Both leagues will be having 10 games per season.
– The XFL will be having 40 players per team, while The AAF will be having 50 players per team.
– Both leagues are said to have faster games, which is about roughly two to two and a half hours per game.
– The XFL is said to have nothing to do with political and social activism, while no details have been given for The AAF.
– Vince McMahon said that players with criminal records will not be allowed to play in The XFL, while no details have been given on who are illegible and non-illegible to play in The AAF.
– The XFL is said to be totally different from The WWE and there will be no WWE crossover, while The AAF is yet to give out details on the structure of the league.
– Personalized jerseys might be allowed once again in The XFL, but we do not know if it would be the same for The AAF.
– The new XFL will have two years to prepare, while The AAF will only have one year to prepare.
It will be interesting to see how the two leagues will compete and how different it will really be to the NFL.
