Over the past couple of days it snowed around here. A lot. When I went to clean off my car this morning I took one look at the pathetic red snow brush I'd taken out and tossed it into a snowbank by the car. The stuff on the roof was piled so high that it was easier to just pick up huge clumps of it and toss it into the empty (of vehicles at least) space adjacent.
Seems like that's pretty much what the week has been like for the UFL and its fans: the skies opened up and a ton of news dropped on us, and none of it good. Between Joe Moglia being inserted into the Nighthawks head coaching job, the folding of the Florida Tuskers and Mark Cuban's impending lawsuit for the five million dollars he apparently only loaned the league, things are looking rough, and it's hard to say if the fledgling UFL will be able to dig its way out of all of this.
Few fans I've heard from are fond of Moglia as the coach of any team. Understandable, given the Joe's last coaching experience came in 1983. Assuming that there still is a 2011 season, the Nighthawks will be playing in TD Ameritrade park, so named for the multimillion dollar brokerage firm where Moglia was once a chairman. The situation looks as if the former businessman bought his way into a head coaching job, and fans are not happy.
With the Tuskers closing up shop, it's looking possible that 2011 could end up being played with only five teams, with six still a possibility, but eight--which the UFL brass seemed confident they would have for this year--looks like a dream. The Florida franchise recorded the league's lowest attendance in the 2010 season, and perhaps it was an unfortunate necessity to remove it rather than spending even more money developing a market that wasn't receptive, but contraction is never a good sign and still feels hard to take.
Mark Cuban has been one of the league's most vocal supporters, or at least, has seemed like such in the early days. With the recent development that the $5 million dollars he invested in the league was merely a loan, and that said loan is now past due, it not only spells financial distress for the UFL, but could indicate the loss of a very valuable investing partner in the future.
What should we take away form all of this? 2011 should be the year that finally tells us whether or not the league is truly viable. Scarcely two weeks in, the forecast is looking grim. I'll continue to be a UFL supporter even should the league melt away, but I hope it'll stay solid for a long time yet.
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