Football 101: aka "Can You Fight NFL Hall?"

Watching Monday Night Football again, mostly to see the return of football to New Orleans. Lots of emotion, and a great storyline to follow. As with Houston, football belongs in New Orleans, and I'm glad it's back.

Getting back on topic from earlier...

The first thing a new league would have to do is establish its size and first-year cities. With a new league, I think you've gotta go after a combination of big media markets and cities that will be likely to pack the house - not one or the other. Also, you've gotta start off manageable in size - ironically, that's one of the few things the XFL did well, since they had just 8 teams to start. 8 is a good number. I like it - it's even, and it's an easier number of teams to maintain financially without worrying about a bunch of teams going bust (which other leagues, like the USFL and Arena Football League, have been plagued with).

So here's where I go football dorkish (too late). I'm going to drop a list of ideas for cities for this new league, along with available stadiums in said cities. I'll group 'em in two categories, those with stadiums that don't have football (Definites) and those that could have football, but already have teams (Maybes). Here we go:

DEFINITES
New York - Shea Stadium
Washington - RFK Stadium
Portland (OR) - PGE Park
San Antonio - Alamodome
Houston - Astrodome
Dallas - Cotton Bowl
Birmingham - Legion Field
Orlando - Citrus Bowl
Detroit - Tiger Stadium (Yes, I know it's getting torn down. But not yet.)

MAYBES
Los Angeles - LA Memorial Coliseum/Rose Bowl/Home Depot Center
Miami - Orange Bowl (U. of Miami (FL))
Boston - Alumni Stadium (Boston College)
Atlanta - Bobby Dodd Stadium (Georgia Tech)
San Francisco - AT&T Park (*)
Las Vegas - Sam Boyd Stadium (UNLV)
Nashville - Vanderbilt Stadium (obvious)
Memphis - Liberty Bowl (U. of Memphis)
Chicago - Ryan Field (Northwestern)
Philadelphia - Franklin Field (Penn)
Cincinnati - Nippert Stadium (U. of Cincy)
Seattle - Safeco Field (**)
Salt Lake City - Rice-Eccles Stadium (U. of Utah)
Louisville - Papa John's Cardinal Stadium (U. of Louisville)
San Jose - Spartan Stadium (San Jose State)

(*) Yes, I know Name-Of-The-Week Field is a ballpark. As in, a baseball park. But it hosts a college bowl game, the Emerald Bowl, every year. So it's possible.

(**) See above. Safeco Field hosted a bowl game once too - the Seattle Bowl - though it doesn't anymore.

Plus, assuming this league doesn't get off the ground for a couple of years, you've got a couple of NFL stadiums that'll be opening up as their teams move into new digs:

EX-NFL STADIUMS
Indianapolis - RCA Dome
San Diego - Qualcomm Stadium
Minneapolis - Metrodome

(Giants Stadium and Irving Stadium are both getting torn down once the new stadiums get built, so they're out)

So there ya go. The next thing is to get a big-buck TV contract, which is a lot harder than you'd think. The NFL has done a really good job of locking down all of the major network media companies in some way through their TV packages - CBS has the AFC (mostly), FOX has the NFC (mostly), NBC has Sunday Night Football, and Disney (ie, ABC's parent company) has Monday Night Football through ESPN.

ABC might want to get in on the football game on Sundays, though, to add on to their sports profile. (It's worth mentioning that the reason why they dropped MNF was because of the NFL's price tag and TV programming politics, not because they weren't interested in football.) For the right price, a new league could get them to buy in to a two-game package, with games set up by region (sorta like FOX's Saturday MLB game). Then you get a cable network (ie, Spike TV, TBS, or Versus) to do a Sunday night game and maybe a Thursday night game.

Easy? No, but it could be done. Question is, would the cash from that be enough to keep a new league going? I don't know - leave that to the accountants. But the fan support would be there.

Someone needs to do this, before the NFL makes sure it won't happen.