Due to NFL support, Alliance’s chances improve
SAN DIEGO — Say this for the little Alliance of American Football heading to its launch Saturday:
The Alliance had the good sense to team up with rather than challenge the NFL, a $14 billion Goliath that either has absorbed or squashed all comers.
In fact, the two leagues are informal partners who collaborated to get the jump on a potential rival, the XFL, which is set to open in 2020.
What does the NFL get from the relationship?
Alliance co-founder Bill Polian, the former NFL talent man, said the minor league will provide vital training and game competition for players who are on the NFL’s fringes. For football scouts, executives and medical personnel it’s a developmental outlet as well.
Quarterbacks and offensive linemen in particular stand to benefit from the NFL-level tutelage, said Mike Martz, a former NFL coach who heads the San Diego Fleet and has overseen some 30 practices over the past five weeks.
Think of the Alliance also as a football lab, where the NFL can test ideas.
This will be football with less foot — no kickoffs, onepoint kicks after touchdowns or onside kicks — and foot-
ball with more flow, due to fewer commercials.
Alliance exhibitions last month, for example, ran just two hours and 30 minutes — some 40 minutes shorter than the average NFL game, while the total of snaps from scrimmage exceeded that of an average NFL game.
Teams have to try for two points after touchdowns. In lieu of late-game onside kicks, they can try win the ball back by converting on fourth-and-12 from their 28.
Two other football wrinkles are meant to aid the league’s offensive linemen and quarterbacks, positions of qualitative scarcity in the NFL.
Cornerbacks and safeties can’t blitz, and no more than seven defenders can amass in “the box” that spans two yards beyond the tackles and five yards from the line of scrimmage.
This is still 11-on-11 tackle football, played on NFL-sized fields.
The addition of a “sky judge” who can instantly correct officiating errors is another wrinkle.
The Alliance is touting an app that will list odds of successes ahead of the down. Fans who predict outcomes correctly can pile up prize points (and gamble, if and when gambling is legalized in the states that are home to Alliance teams).
Data from chip sensors lodged in the football and shoulder pads will create an animated version of each play on digital feeds.
Martz said he has no clue what to expect from the game Saturday against San Antonio.
“Neither one of us knows anything about each other,” he said Thursday.
Sports books are bearish about the Fleet, listing their championship odds anywhere from sixth to dead last in the eight-team league. A chunk of the pessimism no doubt stems from the Fleet losing quarterback Josh Johnson, its top draftee, to the Washington Redskins.
The football-consuming public’s devotion to a pair of annual offseason events — the NFL scouting combine and the NFL draft — fuel Fleet Personnel Director Dave Boller’s claim that Alliance games will lure a decent audience between the Super Bowl and the draft.
“If you’re a diehard fan,” said Boller, who worked in the NFL for 17 years, “I don’t know why you wouldn’t turn us on.”
San Diego resident Troy Polamalu, the former Steelers All-Pro safety and an Alliance exec, suggested that “football fanatics” are needed to sustain any pro league, and that “pockets” of these folks still dwell in San Diego County in the aftermath of the Chargers’ relocation.
Said Martz, a year-round resident of Mission Hills who attended Madison High and Mesa College: “It’s good football, it’s real good football. I hope they watch.”
Polamalu, speaking to the quality of play he expects to see, noted NFL teams get far more preparation going into a season, “and you still make very unusual mistakes earlier in the season.”
He praised the Alliance’s commitment to its players, citing the league’s hires in the fields of sports medicine, sports psychology, nutrition and strength and conditioning. But he also termed the past several months a discovery process. “The nature of start-ups is, you always want more time,” Polamalu said.
On multiple betting lines, the Arizona Hotshots are favored to win the Alliance title. Their talent man, Phil Savage, is a former Cleveland Browns general manager who ran the Senior Bowl for several years. Coach Rick Neuheisel played three games for the “Re-Chargers” in 1987 and later compiled an 87-58 record as head coach at Colorado, Washington and UCLA.