All eight UFL teams to be headquartered in Arlington, Tx

[Starman]

As much as I know about UFL player (and coaching) contracts, I believe they are all owned by the league and can be reassigned as they see fit.

Memphis and San Antonio sucked (combined record 3-17) so there's no particular reason to keep those rosters together.

Now Michigan was 6-4, and I suppose it would be an interesting storyline to have the former Michigan franchise move to Columbus and battle into contention for UFL playoff glory, but i doubt they care very much about that.

Common sense says it would be bad for the league to have multiple awful non-competitive franchises stinking up the teevee screens so basically I would guess they'll just reshuffle the deck and cook up three new rosters.

 

[Starman]

Why would a MLS franchise want a football team tearing up its pitch?

 

[dixiehack]

View attachment 20905

Of which the UFL presumably doesn’t have a lot to spread around, since it just had to chloroform more than a third of the membership.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Why would a MLS franchise want a football team tearing up its pitch?

Different season, the stadium is sitting empty in the spring.

 

[justgladtobehere]

Why would a MLS franchise want a football team tearing up its pitch?

They don't have any say in the matter. They don't own most of the stadiums. I think only Louisville is private.

 

[nickp]

Soccer specific stadiums is what helped the MLS and Almost wonder if eventually each MLS team will have a UFL team

 

[Batman]

Playing in the smaller soccer stadiums, and second-tier pro cities like Louisville and Columbus, is exactly what all of these leagues should have been doing to begin with.
If you draw 15,000 people a game to a start-up spring league, that's not bad. But in a 70,000 seat stadium it looks terrible on TV and is a horrible in-person experience. All of these leagues, though, felt they had to have stadiums in the big markets to seem legit, which leads them to play at college and NFL stadiums where they fall right into that Catch-22. It looks minor league, which immediately leads to the lazy "this league is a joke" column that every single national writer has on a template ready to send so they can take off on a Friday afternoon in April.

But if you draw 15,000 to a 20,000-seat soccer stadium, that's perfect. The place looks, if not sold out then at least full, on TV. You get a lively crowd, throw in some nice spring weather, give them a fun in-stadium experience and it becomes a fun weekend event. Think of how the Washington team in XFL 2.0 was starting to get some buzz like that until COVID shut everything down. That's what the UFL or any spring football league ought to have as a goal for at least the first five years before they even think of trying to play in a college or NFL stadium.