Your Virginia Destroyers! *

Only several hours old, the United Football League's newest team,the Virginia Destroyers, is already awash in controversy. Former TD Ameritrade chairman, Joe Moglia, has been announced as the team's head coach and president.

If there are some bells going off in your head, dear reader, there should be. It seems like too strange a coincidence that next year, the Omaha (where Mr. Moglia currently lives) Nighthawks will be moving into the brand new TD Ameritrade park, or that a man whose last coaching position, as a defensive coordinator at Dartmouth college was twenty-seven years ago, would be given the keys to a football team when his only recent experience has been as an adviser to the head coach of the University of Nebraska's Cornhuskers in 2008-2009.

Moglia was apparently hired directly by commissioner Huyghue himself, which can be taken as either a supreme vote of confidence or as an asset-motivated move. Destroyers GM Doug Williams apparently had no say in the hire, which seems strange to say the least.

Did Moglia buy himself a position with the team? I'm not going to answer that one. What I will do is speculate on the consequences of the move. It's been argued that no publicity is bad publicity, and this will certainly make some waves in the sports world. But even if there hasn't been any sort of collusion, the situation can certainly be spun that way, and the league may have see a loss of credibility either way. If there was a monetary gain, I hope it was enough to offset the negative publicity, or that said publicity was worth it.

That's to say nothing of the product on the field. Can a man with no experience as a head coach and almost no recent experience in the game successfully lead an expansion team? It's hard to say. Even if the Destroyers are sunk in their first season, a brand new team is a tough deal in any league. Even if Joe doesn't make a serious splash in his first year, I think he'll be given the benefit of the doubt. He'll need to come out with guns blazing to silence any doubters however, and I think that burden is now squarely on his shoulders.

Update: For what it's worth, in an interview with CNBC, Moglia has stated that he has not invested any money in the Virginia Destroyers. Whether this will turn down the volume on the critics remains to be seen, but he still has a tough road to hoe as a head coach.