MKRob Sports

UFLAccess.com

Michael Huyghue is a busy man these days. He has guided the United Football League for two years now and the league is now less than three months from kicking off. They haven’t yet announced their schedule, all of their venues, the rosters of their teams, or team names so a lot of pieces are still coming together. The NFL, the giant of the sports world, is about to kickoff training camps and dominate media coverage. Yet Huyghue seemed to be both relaxed and confident.

“Each team has extended contracts to about thirty players, we’re just waiting on those to come back,” said Huyghue when asked about the UFL player pool. He said that those names will be released soon along with some of the “protected” players who should be announced between now and the end of the first week of August.

Asked about the criticism of player salaries being “low” the Commissioner pointed out that practice squad players and UFL players would be paid at roughly the same rate. Perhaps most importantly these players will be scouted by NFL scouts, televised nationally, and get the chance to leave their mark on football. Huyghue said, “We’re giving these players an opportunity and we want to be able to do so for a long, long time to come. Had we come out and offered a ton of money to street free agents people would have criticized that.”

The teams will add names soon. Huyghue declared that, “Branding is a marathon, not a sprint. We had to make sure that intellectual property rights existed for the team names – both here and abroad. We wanted to go ahead and start the logo making process in private as well. The team names will be announced very soon and we’re happy with our branding efforts.”

Along with those branding announcements we can expect ticket sales and marketing efforts to kickoff around the first week of August. The UFL announced that the Leffler Agency was on board to help market ticket sales for year one. Huyghue told us tonight that local PR firms have also signed on to help tailor the efforts to the local fans. He also mentioned that the UFL advertising campaign will be a multi-million dollar effort.

The schedule will be announced soon, perhaps ahead of ticket sales. Huyghue brushed off the talk that the UFL might not play at AT&T in San Francisco this year. He told us, “We’ll do what we need to do – move around the games, what have you.”

Rule changes, however, have already been announced and received well thus far by the media and fans. The one issue that has arisen has been the change to the grounding rules. The Commissioner also waved off that criticism saying, “I don’t think the grounding change will be overly significant. If you look at the NFL safety rules that have been put in place haven’t changed the game for the worse, in my view, and that will be true for us. We want to try to avoid career ending hits on the QB as much as possible. We don’t want our players coming in and getting dramatically injured as that will make us less attractive to NFL players. This isn’t going to be flag football but we won’t let them get destroyed out there.”

He went on to say, “The Competition Committee met several times and talked more frequently on the phone. They know the game of football and we’re happy with the rule changes.”

VERSUS is the first television partner and the main one for the league. Marketing efforts on behalf of the UFL by VERSUS are anticipated to begin in August or September. The network will likely support the league by doing more than just showing the game each week. Huyghue promised us that the broadcasting talent is top notch and that production will be high quality.

He also announced that a second television partner has agreed to terms with the UFL, likely meaning all thirteen games will be televised nationally. This would mean that all thirteen games would also be webcast more than likely.

Michael Vick would lead to higher ratings on those two television partners based off of the attention that the UFL has received just based on the potential of Vick heading to the league. Asked about a time line Huyghue said that he anticipated the NFL making a decision shortly after Vick comes off of house arrest, at which point the UFL will make a decision as well.

Some have argued that Vick’s controversial background could impact sponsorships. That, however, does not seem to be a worry of the UFL. “We have a number of sponsors on board, a number of interested parties. We’re going to exceed our projections. Telecommunication firms, hotels, airlines, tech companies, and others are going to be involved – although some will be “barter” deals. We will have several multi-million dollar sponsors.”

Huyghue also said that he anticipates those sponsors to get a feel for the league this year and ramp up their spending for 2010. He told us that, “Each day we’re making progress. We’re looking at this as a premiere season but we’re excited about 2010 already. We’re happy with potential investors, media recognition to date and what we think it will grow to in year two, potential sponsors, and more.”

2010 will bring expansion as well. Huyghue said that he was one hundred percent confident that at least two teams will be added, meaning kickoff will happen in September next fall. He said that his European trip went “very well” and that London and Germany seemed particularly receptive. One interesting side note was that American based investors could very well be the owners of an international expansion franchise.

Expansion is certainly far from international only. Huyghue mentioned, as always, that interest in the UFL exists in Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Hartford. The newcomers to the equation, however, were the NFL cities of Detroit and Chicago and the dark horse candidate of Omaha, Nebraska. He said that beyond those six cities interest is coming from several varied markets. Huyghue mentioned that, “If we were to only add two teams I feel like at least a few markets would be disappointed.”

The coming months will prove to be very interesting for fans of the United Football League and everyone involved with the venture. At the close of the discussion we asked Huyghue what his definition of success would be at the end of year one. He paused for a moment and then said, “If people are excited about the games, impressed about the quality of football. You know, if the quality of the broadcast is good, we have decent attendance – then we will be in good shape. A niche exists and that is what we need to prove. Not just during our season but by players moving up to the NFL. And then expansion interest after the season. We’re incredibly excited.”