UFL PREPARING FOR INAUGURAL SEASON - Ingles

Are you ready for some more football?

The hope of the fledgling United Football League is that fans not satisfied with just prep, college and NFL football have room in their schedules for more pigskin action on a weekly basis.

The upstart UFL plans to have professional teams in Orlando, New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas with their underlying premise being to serve booming, football-starved areas untapped by the NFL.

The league has assembled an impressive management team, features the financial backing of Wall Street investor Bill Hambrecht, former Google executive Tim Armstrong and Paul Pelosi (husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) and has already secured a stable of proven NFL coaches.

Even as a league that will try to complement and not antagonize the all-mighty NFL, the UFL is trying to make it where so many have failed before. The AFL, World Football League, USFL, Arena Football League, NFL-backed World League of American Football and the XFL attempted to give fans more football through the years. But none are in business today.

Can the UFL stand the test of time and stay the course, even in a horribly slumping national economy? The UFL's leaders certainly think so.

"We're funded very well and we have all of the elements in place," UFL commissioner Michael Huyghue said.

"People who love football will see that the quality of our product will be better than what most people think of developmental football," Huyghue continued. "And the coaches that we've hired should speak to the quality that we'll have. Jim Fassel and Dennis Green aren't coaching in the Arena Football League. And we're built to attract some great talent because the NFL doesn't have room on all of its rosters."

The UFL is planning to play a six-week "premier" season with a championship game being held on Thanksgiving weekend in Las Vegas. (That championship game could move to Orlando's Citrus Bowl in the near future, Huyghue said.) Games will be played primarily on Thursday and Friday nights to avoid going head-to-head against the NFL and college football. Huyghue said the league hopes to avoid the conflict with high school football by hosting games in their stadiums and conducting clinics with area coaches.

The rosters will be stocked primarily of players cut from NFL rosters or stuck on practice squads. Huyghue (pronounced "Hewg") sees the league as an opportunity for fans and players alike. Tickets will have a $20 average price point, making the games relatively affordable compared to NFL games. Team salary caps will range from $12 to $20 million, much less than the $115 million NFL rosters.

Huyghue knows a thing or two about start-up operations. He was the first general manager of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 1995 and he helped the franchise reach the AFC title game in just two seasons. Huyghue also began his own representation firm and he's worked as an executive for the NFL.

He is confident that the UFL can survive even in bad financial times because of the league's sound business plan.

Said Huyghe: "Our owners are financial people who are very credible and look at this first and foremost as a business model that makes sense. They're not just doing this for kicks. I think that speaks volumes as to why our league is going to be different than the others."

Credibility in coaches

The UFL took a major step in building some credibility as a professional football product when it landed four coaches with strong NFL ties.

Jim Haslett (Orlando), Fassel (Las Vegas/Los Angeles), Green (San Francisco) and Ted Cottrell (New York/Harford, Conn.) have worked previously in the NFL as head coaches or top coordinators.

Haslett was previously a head coach in New Orleans and was the interim head coach of the St. Louis Rams for the final 12 games of last season after Scott Linehan was fired. Haslett, the 2000 NFL coach of the year, hired former Orlando Predators coach Jay Gruden, brother of ex-Tampa Bay head coach Jon Gruden, as Orlando's offensive coordinator, and Haslett is promising to bring an exciting style of play to Central Florida.

Haslett is excited that Orlando's franchise has territorial rights to players from the NFL's NFC and AFC South Divisions, meaning some of the team's players will be instantly recognizable to fans of the Bucs and Jaguars. And Haslett has big plans to fill the roster with talent from the Florida Gators, Florida State Seminoles and Miami Hurricanes.

"There will be guys out there like Kurt Warner and Jake Delhomme who fell through the cracks," Haslett said. "There are a lot of young guys out there on the street who are good enough to play in the NFL, but they don't get the opportunity for one reason or another. Our league will give those players a chance."

Fassel led the New York Giants to the Super Bowl in 2000, one they lost to the Baltimore Ravens. He has a history of working in football's developmental leagues. Back in his playing days as a journeyman quarterback, he threw the final pass in the World Football League before it folded and he coached briefly in the USFL before it met a similar fate. A strong structure and realistic goals will keep the UFL from going under, Fassel said.

"We're not looking at this as a minor league. We're our own league and we're going to have very good players," he said.

Green, a head coach in the NFL with Minnesota and Arizona, has become somewhat of a strong mouthpiece for the league, throwing his support behind what he thinks will eventually be a wildly popular venture. He points to players such as Warner, Super Bowl MVP James Harrison and David Patton as examples of players who went undrafted, yet eventually became stars in the NFL. Those overlooked players, Green said, will get their first chances to shine in the UFL in years to come.

And Green thinks it's important that the UFL will play in the fall.

"Americans like baseball in the summer, basketball in the winter and playoffs in the spring and football in the fall," he said. "We just think there is plenty of room for high school football, college football, the NFL and the UFL."

Cottrell is the posterboy for the "league of opportunity," as Huyghue calls it. Cottrell long established himself as a top defensive coordinator, but he was never able to secure a head coaching job in the NFL. He was somewhat emotional when he talked about that opportunity finally coming in the UFL.

So this "league of opportunity" boils down to giving fans another opportunity to see professional football. Will they embrace it? UFL officials certainly are hoping so.

"There was a poll taken a while back that asked if fans would be interested in the NFL if it expanded to 10 more cities and almost unanimously those fans said, 'Yes,' " UFL chief operating officer Frank Vuono said. "We want to be able to bring that kind of football to fans who aren't already in NFL markets. We're confident this is going to work."

Additional Facts
History of pro football in Orlando
Professional football and Orlando haven't always been a winning combination. Here's a look at the history:
TEAM: FLORIDA BLAZERS
Year: 1974
League: World Football League
Result: The Blazers made it just one season in Orlando before being relocated to San Antonio.
TEAM: ORLANDO RENEGADES
Year: 1985-86
League: United States Football League
Result: The league showed some legitimate promise and lured some stars away from the NFL, but the league eventually folded. The 1985 Renegades were just 5-13 and coach Lee Corso was the biggest star on the team.
TEAM: ORLANDO THUNDER
Year: 1991-92
League: World League of American Football
Result: The thing most memorable about this charter team of the WLAF: Those hideous lime-green uniforms.
TEAM: ORLANDO RAGE
Year: 2001
League: X-treme Football League
Result: The league created jointly by WWE founder Vince McMahon and NBC died a horrible death after just one season. Some would argue that was too long. Orlando's team did start the season 6-0 under head coach Galen Hall and quarterback Jeff Brohm. This article was written by John Denton and appeared in Florida Today.