No man, You Eff Ell

Recently I happened upon a broadcast of a football game. This is unusual because my television has 3 channels on it so the odds of finding a game, especially out of football season is rather slim. But with as new league come new possibilities.

So here are my notes. Fist off, the announcers kept touting that the attendance of 42,000 was a new record for "modern spring football." That's a lot of qualifications and I'm still not sure what each word is coming to include or exclude.

Then I hit the "info" button on my remote so I could see what I was watching. The game was said to be covered live but was also scheduled from 8-11. The final play was at 10:59. Was it really live (this was not advertising itself as an editted replay)? Weird.

A big element of the UFL seems to be its embracing of sports betting. The over/under, the winner, the individual stats -- everything was up for discussion and display on screen. Except it makes no sense. For there to be predictions that have any value, there has to be a past upon which to rely. The history of a team helps establish the tendencies and possibilities. Computer models need data - a league with no past can't have reasonable predictions for the future. How can you figure an over/under if the players have no track record? How can there be odds, or a spread if the bettors have no previous games to use as a basis for a guess?

As for the game, itself, it is similar to "modern fall football" but it seems to be a minor league version with rule changes to make for excitement. Everything is reviewable (except reviews...) the clock runs differently, there is no kicking a PAT and a whole bunch of people are mic'ed up for the sake of transparency. It was certainly a nice diversion but I didn't see much that inspred my interest in some less-than-small market team and a third rate player who doesn't even have the good sense to be famous already.