So, I've been watching some IFL games since they appeared on my recommendations on Youtube over the holiday weekend, and truth be told it's been an entertaining experience. Sure, maybe the overall moment to moment action isn't the greatest, but considering the clown shoes effort of AFL 3.0, it's certainly a lot more stable, and truth be told, the IFL at least has no delusions of grandeur of what it is, and what it's ultimate goals are.
Suffice to say, that leads to this video:
And specifically this comment:
And the more I think about it, the more I feel like the broad strokes of that comment feels like the ultimate end game for the AFL 3.0, and any new arena football league that starts up in the ashes of it.
We're in the boom period of sports gambling in the US, and more and more state governments approve it believing that there is basically no drawback to it much like taxing cigarettes and alcohol (completely ignoring the ticking timebomb of gambling addictions and lack of substantial support in general to combat this problem that has already reared its head in the UK with gambling addiction rates, and that will crop up as citizens have less buying power and less outlooks for steady employment) gives a lot of leagues, and especially these fly by night operations the supposed golden ticket to profitability considering how much money is placed on football in general, even during offseason. The route to potentially being a spring competitor, or even an official minor league to the NFL has closed with the UFL, and really, it was closed for a long time considering how often leagues rammed their heads against the wall trying to make spring football a thing when it wasn't really, and that's compounded ten fold by the NCAA effectively dropping the façade of student-athletes in CFB and acknowledging the mini-NFL it fully morphed into.
I guess what makes this feel like a useless endeavor is...what's the overall endgame when that tap can run dry at any moment, and your goal of endless new leagues and trying to wedge into communities is done? Again, at the very least the IFL is able to be honest with itself and have no delusions of grandeur about what it is as a sports league, and as an effective inheritor of the AFL 2.0's overall work and legacy.