Luck to visit UH with league’s start year away
Oliver Luck was back on familiar turf Tuesday, greeting friends and taking meetings in his new role as commissioner of the XFL within walking distance of two buildings he helped become reality as CEO of the Harris County Houston Sports Authority and president of the Dynamo.
Luck’s visit to Houston this week comes on the cusp of one year to the day from the XFL’s February 2020 launch with eight teams, one of which will play at TDECU Stadium at the University of Houston.
He will spend Wednesday at UH, speaking to a class and meeting with athletic department officials, before attending the second annual Houston Sports Awards at the Hilton Americas on Wednesday night.
Luck’s visit also precedes the opening weekend of play for the eight-team Alliance of American Football, which has a team in San Antonio and has two of its eight teams in NFL markets. The XFL, which is owned by World Wrestling Entertainment chairman Vince McMahon, has seven of its eight teams in NFL markets, including Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.
The 1980s United States Football League, which included the Houston Gamblers, was the last U.S. outdoor spring pro football league of note, but Luck said he is confident there is room for both the XFL and Alliance.
“I hope the AAF does well,” he said. “People love football. There are 32 NFL teams and more than 700 college teams in the fall, and people still can’t seem to get enough. With eight teams in our league and eight in the other league, I think there’s room.”
Luck said he attended Gamblers games when he was playing for the Oilers in the mid-1980s and said football could be a considerably different game had the USFL elected to remain a spring league instead of trying to move to the fall, which led to its demise.
“If the USFL had stayed in the spring, they probably would have 18 teams now and be a valuable sports property and they would be doing a bunch of things differently from the NFL as an alternative league,” he said.
While the Alliance plays its inaugural season, Luck said he expects the XFL within six to eight weeks to announce its head coaches, the nicknames and color schemes for its teams in Houston, D-FW, St. Louis, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Tampa and Washington, D.C.
He said the league also will announce its broadcast schedule, which will include two games each week on an over the air channel and two on a fully distributed cable channel. Several outlets have reported that the XFL is in talks with Fox and ESPN as its television partners.
While the XFL will not play games until 2020, Luck said the eight teams will begin limited workouts with a core group of players this fall. Early preparation, he said, will help the league avoid the ragged play that hampered the original XFL in 2001 and NFL Europe, in which he served as league president.
“We will start to bring them together, not all 40 or 50 but maybe a group of 10, with quarterbacks and skill players, and begin installing offenses and defenses,” he said. “We’ll get guys comfortable and do it differently than we did the first time around.”
Luck was the first president of the city-county sports authority from 2001 through 2005, a time frame that included the opening of NRG Stadium and Toyota Center.
As president of the Dynamo beginning in 2005, he also was involved in the launch of BBVA Compass Stadium, which opened in 2012.