Missing football already? More is on way
Are you ready for some (more) football? You see, there’s no reason to take a break from the gridiron just because the NFL season is over.
A host of second-division college teams are practicing for their winter/spring season — snow-covered fields and all — after sitting out the fall because of the coronavirus pandemic.
And if you’re really looking for something different: a fan-controlled league is launching this weekend, a sort of video game meets professional wrestling meets arena football that allows viewers to call plays for none other than Johnny Manziel.
That should be at least as entertaining as watching Tom Brady wobble off the boat after Tampa Bay’s aquatic Super Bowl parade.
“If the fans call it, I’m gonna roll with it,” says Manziel, the former Heisman Trophy winner and first-round NFL draft pick whose downward spiral of a career has left him content to assume a sort of a player-coach role in the upstart Fan Controlled Football league.
Do you remember all those college teams that passed on the chance to play in the fall because of the pandemic?
Well, they’re preparing to finally take the field.
The Football Championship Subdivision will begin its abbreviated season Saturday, with teams playing anywhere from four to eight regular-season games. The 16-team playoff follows in April, culminating with a mid-May national championship game in Frisco, Texas.
OK, so it’s not quite the level of the Alabama Crimson Tide, who claimed another big boys’ national title back in early January, but the FCS provides an exciting brand of football for those willing to look beyond the marquee names.
Of course, it comes with some enormous challenges.
For one thing, the pandemic still looms large.
There’s nothing they can do about the weather. For schools such as New Jersey’s Monmouth University, which is very much miscast as a member of the Big South, these early practices and perhaps even some games will likely be conducted in truly brutal winter weather.
Winter won’t be a problem for Fan Controlled Football, which begins its inaugural season with four teams playing a seven-onseven version of the game at an arena in suburban Atlanta.
It’s the third straight year that a league has attempted to launch in this time frame — neither the Alliance of American Football nor the XFL2 made it through even one complete season — but this is a far different venture.
FCF games, which began Saturday night, will be broadcast on the gaming-focused web site Twitch (ask your kids if you have no idea what that is).
Instead of shouting at your TV to pass instead of run, tech-savvy viewers will have a say in everything from play calling to which players make the roster to rules changes they want to see.
To put it another way for all the boomers out there, imagine a real-life video game, but with the chance to control actual players — including Manziel — instead of cartoon characters. “I think we’re on a totally separate track that merges the space between video games and traditional sports,” said Sohrob Farudi, the league’s co-founder and CEO.
It may not be your parents’ football, but at least it’s something to help get us through these cold, dark days before the NFL draft.