Other AAF - Alliance of American Football League

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Sep 6, 2005
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it's not over yet. tho dunden has pulled out, theyre looking for another investor to finish out the year, apparently will cost $20m to finish four games....and then look for a long term investor next year

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Bill Polian: AAF was well positioned for future success
Posted by Josh Alper on April 2, 2019, 4:17 PM EDT
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The Alliance of American Football suspended operations on Tuesday as a result of majority investor Tom Dundon’s decision to cease funding the upstart league eight games into its inaugural season.
Dundon had come on board with a $250 million investment after the first week of games and there have been reports about the league’s uncertain future for the last couple of weeks. Despite those reports and Dundon’s own signals that he was considering pulling the plug, league co-owner Bill Polian said in a statement on Tuesday that he felt the league was positioned for better days in the future.
“I am extremely disappointed to learn Tom Dundon has decided to suspend all football operations of the Alliance of American Football,” Polian said in a statement. “When Mr Dundon took over, it was the belief of my co-founder, Charlie Ebersol, and myself that we would finish the season, pay our creditors, and make the necessary adjustments to move forward in a manner that made economic sense for all. The momentum generated by our players, coaches and football staff had us well positioned for future success. Regrettably, we will not have that opportunity.”
The XFL will relaunch next year in a bid for the lasting success as a spring football league that eluded both the AAF and the XFL’s first iteration.
 
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Steve Spurrier: We were led to believe AAF could play three years
Posted by Mike Florio on April 2, 2019, 7:23 PM EDT
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Legendary coach Steve Spurrier had his Orlando Apollos poised to win the Alliance of American Football’s first championship. That now won’t be happening, because the AAF has suspended operations en route to a seemingly inevitable dissolution of the league.
“Everybody wanted to play out the season and everybody is disappointed,” Spurrier said Tuesday, via Mike Bianchi of theOrlando Sentinel. “Everyone was led to believe that the Alliance was well funded and we could play three years without making any money and this, that and the other. Obviously, everything that was said was not very truthful.”
It wasn’t truthful, because the investor who saved the league’s bacon earlier in the inaugural (and only) season has exercise his prerogative to cook its goose.
“When the new owner came in, we thought we had financial backing and we’d be able to at least play out the season,” Spurrier said. “We never thought it would end like this.”
Few did, including those who founded the league. However, once the founders of the league handed the keys to Tom Dundon, they assumed the risk that he’d choose to park the car, permanently. And he apparently has.
 

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Just can’t find a reason why an investor would want to plough hundreds of millions of dollars in this. It would take time and plenty of money before it pays itself off, if ever.
 
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Tom Dundon doesn’t own the AAF’s gambling technology
Posted by Mike Florio on April 3, 2019, 1:27 PM EDT

There’s speculation that Tom Dundon bought the Alliance of American Football so that he could shut it down and walk away with the league’s next-level gambling technology, which placed sensors on players and delivered real-time movements to cell phones with a delay in the milliseconds. Per a source with knowledge of the situation, that speculation isn’t accurate.
Dundon doesn’t own that technology, and his investment in the AAF doesn’t give him the ability to abscond with it.
The ultimate explanation for Dundon’s decision is much simpler. As one source with knowledge of the dynamics explained it to PFT, Dundon signed on to kick the tires. Once he realized how expensive it was to own and operate a sports league, he initially tried to cut costs. But that resulted in a cutting of functionality.
He then pinned the league’s future to a deal with the NFL for permission to borrow its bottom-of-roster players. The NFL Players Association has received the bulk of the blame for the inability to strike a deal. The more logical position, however, is that the AAF wouldn’t have been significantly better off with low-level, largely no-name NFL players, and that the issue ultimately provided P.R. cover for Dundon having a basic, bottom-line-driven change of heart.
That change of heart won’t make him the owner of the gambling technology, which may become the thing for which the AAF is most remembered.



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AAF executives thought there was a 2-3 year plan to be an NFL minor league
Posted by Michael David Smith on April 3, 2019, 1:08 PM EDT
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The Alliance of American Football abruptly went bust this week, surprising many of the league’s top executives.
Scott Brubaker, president of the Arizona Hotshots, said on 1580 The Fanatic that when Tom Dundon said last week that he could pull the plug if the NFL Players Association didn’t agree to allow players under contract to play in the AAF, it came as a shock.
“That was the first time he ever painted a picture that we might be in trouble,” Brubaker said.
Brubaker said the AAF always intended to have a relationship with the NFL and NFLPA, but team executives were under the impression that there was going to be time to build that relationship in the years to come.
“Part of the business model of the Alliance was always to have a relationship with the NFL and the NFL Players Association,” Brubaker said. “But that was something we understood was going to have to be proven out over at least two seasons, maybe three.”
Brubaker said the league had a good relationship with the NFL and had assembled what he called a “tremendous football apparatus” that easily could have become an official minor league, where NFL teams would identify young players who need more experience and put them into the AAF.
There may still be room for the NFL to have an official minor league some day. But it’s not going to happen with the AAF, it certainly won’t happen with Vince McMahon’s XFL, and if it happens at all, it’s likely more than two or three years away
 
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AAF players finally receive authorization to sign with NFL teams
Posted by Mike Florio on April 4, 2019, 1:32 PM EDT
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The NFL had instructed all teams to not sign AAF players. NFL teams can now sign AAF players.
The AAF has announced via its Twitter account that players officially have the ability to sign with NFL teams.
The standard AAF three-year contracts included a provision allowing players to exit for NFL opportunities at the conclusion of an AAF season. Although the AAF’s season as a practical matter concluded when it suspended operations, the NFL opted to wait until official documentation was obtained authorizing NFL teams to sign AAF players.
It’s smart business by the NFL. Any other approach would create potential liability for tortious interference with business interests.
 
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CFL teams scrambling to get to AAF players
Posted by Darin Gantt on April 4, 2019, 2:53 PM EDT
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There hasn’t been (and may not be) a land rush from NFL teams to sign AAF players, now that they can.
But their personnel counterparts north of the border look at it differently.
Via the CFL’s official website, Canadian personnel departments were in a rush to stake a claim to some of the AAF’s players after the league ceased operations this week.
“[Tuesday] was a crazy day in the CFL. The status reports that came out were loaded,” Hamilton Tiger-Cats football operations consultant Jim Barker told CHQR radio.“Every team [was] dropping six and seven players and adding six or seven players.”
A few CFL players defected south to play in the start-up league, and any players with CFL experience who played in the AAF are free agents now. The rest will go on negotiation lists, where teams squat on the rights of players. Those transactions aren’t publicized.
“You had to be fast. We lost two players to a team that beat us to the call,” Barker said. “It was a crazy day in the CFL in personnel offices across the league. I think everybody was prepared for it but it was a crazy day. I believe you’ll see maybe 20 players that were in that league [come to the CFL].”
Even with NFL rosters at offseason limits of 90, it’s unlikely that anywhere near that many will find jobs on NFL rosters.
 
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AAF player says his personal credit card was charged for stay at team hotel
Posted by Michael David Smith on April 4, 2019, 2:56 PM EDT
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We’re continuing to see evidence that when the Alliance of American Football pulled the plug on its season this week, it did so in a slipshod manner.
The latest comes from Adrien Robinson, a former Giants tight end who was trying to get back into pro football by playing for the Memphis Express this season. Robinson wrote on Twitter that his personal credit card, which he presumably gave the front desk for incidental charges, was charged $2,500 for his stay in the team hotel, and the team has given him no indication that they’ll take care of the matter.

“I woke up to over a $2500 charge pending on my account from the Sonesta hotel our team stayed in,” Robinson wrote. “I called the bank and Memphis team president. My only option is to dispute the charges on Monday. The same thing happened to other players on our team.”
It’s one thing for AAF chairman Tom Dundon to decide he couldn’t afford to keep subsidizing a money-losing league any longer. It’s another thing to treat employees in such a shabby way, as we’ve been hearing all day examples of players being left in the lurch after the league folded. The AAF’s players deserved better.
 
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AAF players left stranded with nowhere to live
Posted by Michael David Smith on April 4, 2019, 5:49 AM EDT
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Many of the players who signed on with the Alliance of American Football were in temporary housing arranged by the league, and when the league pulled the plug they had nowhere to go.
Understandably, players who were signing on for a 10-week season at relatively modest salaries didn’t buy houses or sign year-long leases in the cities where they were playing, and some of those players say the hotels and apartments the AAF arranged for them kicked them out just as soon as the AAF canceled its season.
Rich Ohrnberger, a former NFL player who was working as a radio analyst in the AAF, wrote on Twitter that “Players in Memphis came back to their hotels after news came down, and had their personal items waiting in the lobby. Kicked out of their lodgings.”
Memphis fullback Anthony Manzo-Lewis wrote on Twitter that he had already been kicked out of his hotel room and had no idea where to go. Teammate Brandon Silvers replied that he had a few more days at his Airbnb and would let Manzo-Lewis crash with him.
Ohrnberger also wrote that the players who suffered injuries are now on the hook for their own medical expenses going forward. Gionni Paul of the Salt Lake Stallions wrote on Twitter that he’s concerned after breaking his arm in the AAF. Some players indicated that they’re looking into filing workers’ comp claims.
That the AAF is folding so abruptly, with so little consideration for the players, does not speak well for chairman Tom Dundon or founders Charlie Ebersol and Bill Polian. The league needed a better plan in place for how to survive — and how to handle it if the league couldn’t survive.
 

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As Baz said, the league would have to be funded by the NFL forever, purely to develop players. Since when do the owners actually give a * about the fringe players? They won't be pumping money into something with no return.

Vince turning it into a gimmick league with completely different rules is it's only hope.
 
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MGM eventually will own the AAF’s gambling technology
Posted by Mike Florio on April 8, 2019, 6:00 PM EDT
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PFT reported last week that Tom Dundon’s $70 million investment in the AAF didn’t secure ownership of the failed league’s gambling technology. So who owns the device for tracking players in real-time and transmitting data regarding their movements within a matter of milliseconds to cell-phone devices?
According to Darren Rovell of TheActionNetwork.com, MGM will claim ownership of the gambling technology once the AAF folded, via a lien that gives MGM priority over that specific property as the assets of the AAF are divided via bankruptcy proceedings.
While that may not provide much solace to persons and entities who may find themselves stiffed by the AAF, MGM apparently dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s necessary to protect itself in the event that the league went belly up, which it did.
If the AAF had survived, the tracking technology and the related app would have facilitated in-game betting with minimal lag, regardless of when or if the issue of latency is ever cured for TV broadcasts. MGM can now continue to develop that technology and market it to other sports.
 
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AAF implosion spawns multiple class-action lawsuits
Posted by Mike Florio on April 10, 2019, 11:10 PM EDT
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The AAF is gone, but it won’t be forgotten. Because its name will continue to be involved in litigation, indefinitely.
Via ESPN.com, a pair of class-action lawsuits already have been filed against the AAF. One lawsuit, pursued on behalf of all players, was filed in California state court. Another lawsuit, filed by the Birmingham Iron’s director of community relations, was filed in California federal court.
The civil action filed by a pair of players (on behalf of all players) targets the AAF, Legendary Field Exhibitions, Tom Dundon, co-founder Charlie Ebersol, and the Ebersol Sports Media Group as defendants. The other lawsuit targets the AAF, Legendary Field Exhibitions, co-founder Bill Polian, MGM Resorts International, J.K. McKay, and former NFL players Troy Polamalu and Jared Allen.
As to the AAF, the litigation will automatically be stayed in connection with inevitable bankruptcy proceedings. To the extent that viable claims can be made against the individuals named in the lawsuits, the veil of protection provided by the AAF as a business entity may not matter.
The lawsuit filed by the players includes a long list of legal theories, including breach of contract, breach of the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing in contractual matters, failure to pay wages, fraud, and false promises. It alleges that the various named defendants “concealed and suppressed a material fact about their intentions for the long-term viability of the Alliance of American Football,” that they “intended to conceal the fact that the league was insolvent,” and that they “made promises to the plaintiffs and class members regarding the long-term longevity and health of the league.”
The other lawsuit seeks a variety of wages and other payments to which league employees allegedly were entitled in connection with their employment and the abrupt termination thereof.
These lawsuits could be the very tip of a legal iceberg arising from the fundamental premise that the AAF created the impression that it was fully funded for one or more football seasons when, in reality, it didn’t have enough cash on hand at the start of the first season to finish the first season
 
That's a really good run down by UT for people like me who didn't take a whole heap of interest in the AAF, what s**t show off field, Polian showing why he's been out of the NFL as a gm for years now.
 
Sep 6, 2005
144,460
94,368
AFL Club
Fremantle
That's a really good run down by UT for people like me who didn't take a whole heap of interest in the AAF, what s**t show off field, Polian showing why he's been out of the NFL as a gm for years now.
Drd23's video post just a few posts above is also very good analysis. They dont believe the "need NFLPA help" line at all.
 

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