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Birmingham city council to meet with USFL

Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 6:24 pm
by 4th&long
https://abc3340.com/sports/more-sports/ ... birmingham

>> BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBMA) — Birmingham City Council President William Parker announced he wants to bring one of the eight newly relaunched United States Football League (USFL) teams to Birmingham.

Parker plans to meet with league officials in the next few weeks.<<

While I think Birmingham is too small a city to drive the needle for the USFL to go there... it generates buzz and who knows? It is busing distance from St Louis...

Re: Birmingham city council to meet with USFL

Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 8:29 pm
by MGB01
Except Parker leans mostly towards Legion Field, which is death. Randall Woodfin on the other hand, lobbied the XFL more with Protective Stadium in mind.

From a logistical standpoint, might be worth it to do Legion Field for a year because, much like the GLP experiment with the Renegades, you could have first-year issues that you would have otherwise planned for if you had somebody else testing it out first. By the time UAB and the Birmingham Bowl have happened you're in January, you're not gonna be announcing a team that plays in 2-3 months (at least if you aren't an indoor league). But seeing big a factor gate will play in what year one looks like you're kind of playing with fire with 15,000 tops at Legion, where as potentially 20-25,000 at Protective is significantly better.

Unfortunately they'll suffer like the Iron did, even if they come back as the Stallions (not sure that was trademarked, I saw Dallas/Austin Stallions but no Birmingham). And the Iron didn't lack for talent, but it wasn't enough and this was also one of the cases of the territorial system kind of working against them because Trent Richardson clearly wasn't the same name he was seven years earlier.

There needs to be an army of investors at the ready we don't know about. Otherwise FOX isn't going to totally subsidize the league, which I wouldn't expect them to do if they were a majority owner, much less here.

Re: Birmingham city council to meet with USFL

Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2021 1:22 am
by GDAWG
Why would the USFL pass over the newer state of the art stadium in favor of a dump if they went to Birmingham?

Re: Birmingham city council to meet with USFL

Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2021 7:34 am
by johnnyangryfuzzball
GDAWG wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 1:22 am Why would the USFL pass over the newer state of the art stadium in favor of a dump if they went to Birmingham?
Price would be the first thing that comes to mind.

But even so, usually when a new stadium like this is built, they immediately close the old one as soon as the new one opens and set plans for its demolition (Orlando is one exception to that).