Keith Strudler: Too Much Football

For the Association of American Football, eight is enough. That is eight weeks and eight games, which is how long the nascent professional football league lasted before abruptly shutting down indefinitely this week, which came as a surprise to pretty much everyone, including the players, coaches, and certainly anyone with the misfortune of owning tickets to a game. The inaugural spring football season was to last two more weeks, followed by a championship game in either Frisco, Texas, or Las Vegas, depending on who you ask. Which also means that in the annals of history, of which the AAF is now a part, the Orlando Apollos will finish with a league best 7-1 record and, as now former Orlando head coach Steve Spurrier pointed out, can now call themselves league champions. Let the parade begin.

The AAF is one of two new football projects attempting to extend the playing season across the entire school calendar. While the NFL plays from September to February, which feels like an eternity, the Association of American Football and the upcoming reboot of the XFL run from February until summer. Or whenever they go bankrupt, whichever comes first. And yes, the XFL is take two of the highly unsuccessful former league that brought us worst of football and professional wrestling in one evening. The XFL will launch next spring, apparently free of competition now that the AAF has left town. Which is good, because I’m fairly certain this world only has room for one failing spring football league at a time.

It would be hard to pinpoint exactly why the AAF failed like the Hindenburg, especially since there did seem to be a few things going its way. The league aired on CBS, a real television network, which gave it some credibility. There were a couple of high profile athletes, including Johnny Manziel in his latest comeback effort. They had an affiliation with the NFL, positioned as a feeder instead of a competitor. And it had the financial backing of sports billionaire Tom Dundon, who essentially bought the league by promising $250 million to keep the lights on.

None of that seemed to matter, giving the AAF the shelf life of a Kardashian marriage. Contrary to popular belief, America does not have an unlimited appetite for football, even if we do consume it in copious amounts. We love the NFL, concussions and all. And we do love college football, in all its amateur glory. But at least for the time being, Americans won’t drop everything simply to watch large men in pads fight over a pigskin. And mind you, some 400,000 people did watch each week. Then again, I’m guessing nearly that amount would watch a test pattern if it were on the right network.

Which perhaps brings us to the key question. What makes people watch sports? Or maybe better put, why do people watch sports? The answer is probably both simple and complex – but what isn’t.

I’ll take myself as an example. I watch a decent amount of sports, both live and on TV, or whatever device I can sneak into the Temple or the Opera. My viewing right now tends to fall into a few camps. On the one hand, I really enjoy watching high level, meaningful sports – things like the NBA playoffs, or the College Football Championships. Places where athletes have risen to the top of their field and play games that matter. In other words, they’ll be really upset when they lose, and really happy when they win. Along those lines, I also really enjoy things like the Olympics, or World Championships, or things like the Tour de France, where individuals have put their entire being into possibility, where the last several years culminate in something of a final exam against people who’ve done the exact same thing. And third, the sports I like to watch the most right now are when my 9 and 11-year-old boys are playing. So currently, I watch a whole lot more travel soccer than Premier League. And I’m fine with that. The pros will always be there. My kids won’t, at least not at this age.

So what do those all have in common? They all mean something significant, at least to me. Whether it’s for a gold medal, the Super Bowl, or Elliot’s last basketball game, I care really deeply about who plays and what they’re playing for. That’s why we watch the Final Four – not because it’s the best basketball players, because that’s the NBA. But because everyone watching has a reason to care.

For what it’s worth, it was hard to care about the Association of American Football, even if the quality of play was pretty good. So even though some people decided to watch, not a whole lot were compelled to care, not even for one whole year. That should be a lesson for all the other emerging sports leagues that think that there’s an audience, or that sports fans will always want more. At least for now when it comes to pro football, eight seems to be enough.

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