On Monday, Donald Haig took to the podium at the swanky Ritz-Carrollton Haig Tower in San Francisco and proclaimed the UWFFL was back (and "better than ever") after a seventeen month hiatus. He had in his hand a worn, folded piece of paper which he said was a "power of attorney" that gave him controlling interest of Sportpuck Media General, the congolmerate that owns the UWFFL and four radio stations in the Bay Area. He was asked if his authority was permanent, he only responded that "as of right now, legally the control rests here, with me."
As previously announced, he confirmed that the UWFFL will be returning for the 2016 season, with 12 teams competing in the Premier League, 40 teams in the 4 Division II Leagues, and also announced that this February's UWFFL Bowl will be played in Santa Clara, at the home of the San Francisco Reign Fire. We also heard plans, for the first time, of the Continental League, a new Divison II league which will operate apart from the other four. The Continental League will consist solely of teams that have won UWFFL or TBFFL Championships or other past teams that have been invited by the Commissioner's Office to join. These teams will be designated "Charter" teams. New expansion teams will only be permitted to join the existing Division II leagues: The Eastern Assocation, the Metro South Conference, the Central League and the Pacific Coast Conference, while Charter teams will be eligible to join the Continental League.
For a current non-charter team to become a Charter team, they must win a UWFFL Championship in the future, or be invited to the Continental League by the Commissioner. Once invited, a team will be designated a "non-champion" Charter team. These will be necessary to ensure there will always be an even number of teams in the Continental League. There is no limit to how large the Continental League may grow, but non-Champion invitees will generally be limited to at most one per year. After promotion and relegation after a season, if there will be an odd number of teams, the league will either extend one invitation or revoke the Charter of the lowest-finishing non-Champion invitee (Charters held by past Champions are permanent and non-revokable) to balance the number of teams. For this inaguaral season of the Continental League, additonal invitations will be extended to bring the amount of teams to eight.
Three teams will still be relegated from the Premier League, but now only two Division II Champions, the two winners of the two National Semifinals, will be promoted to the Premier League. The Champion of the Continental League, will receive the third promotion spot back to the Premier League.
"We want to take care of the legacy of these historic champonship teams that came before us," Haig said. Past championship teams such as Anchorage (2014 Champions), Minnesota (2013 Champions), San Francisco (2010 & 2012 TBFFL Champions), Atlanta (2006 & 2011 TBFFL Champions) and Detroit (3-time TBFFL Champions - 2005,2007,2008), will now know that for as long as they compete in the UWFFL they will not be in danger of dropping entirely out of the league, they will always have the Continental League to fall back into.
Among past champions that are no longer in the Premier league, but would appear to be eligible to compete in the Continental League this season are: The Miami Cougars (3-time TBFFL Champion - 2002,2003,2009), Tampa Terror (2004 TBFFL Champion), Connecticut Convicts (2001 TBFFL Champions), Oklahoma City Superbeasts (who won the 2000 TBFFL Championship as the Seattle Superbeasts) and the Texas Timberwolves (1999 TBFFL Champions). Of those teams Miami and Texas were relegated in 2015 and Oklahoma City went 8-4-1 in the Central League in 2014-15. Both Tampa and Connecticut finished below .500 in their 2014-15 campaigns and were in danger of not returning to competition. Other teams such as the Chicago Cyclones, Dallas Outlaws (who were charter TBFFL members in 1999) and the St. Louis Slaughter (who were a 2001 expansion team) would seem to be among those considered for invitation into the Continental League for the inaguaral season. Dallas went 11-2 in the Central League in 2015, St. Louis was relegated from the Premier League and Chicago finished below .500 in the Central League.
In the future, when a "Charter" team faces relegation, rather than be relegated to a Division II league, they will be offered a spot in the Continental League. So the ultimate goal for a franchise is to win the Premier League and receive a Charter. For non-charter teams in the Premier League, such as Hartford (which reached the Championship last year, but lost to undefeated Anchorage) or Birmingham, for example, if they were to face relegaton, unless they were to receive an invitation to the Continental League, they'd be sent down to Division II. Other non-Charter teams competing in the Premier League this year will be: Little Rock, Pontiac, Youngstown, San Diego and British Columbia. Of those teams, San Diego was a 2002 TBFFL expansion team, while the other six teams have all joined the Premier League since the formation of the UWFFL in 2013. Therefore it seems that if San Diego was to face relegation again (it narrowly escaped relegation in 2015 by defeating St. Louis in the Relegation Bowl) it would be a likely canidate to receive a non-Champion invitation to the Continental League.
The forty teams that will compete in the four Division II leagues must complete the season at .500 or better to be guaranteed of returning in the following year. The ultimate goal for a franchise, new or existing, therefore, is to reach the Premier League and win a Championship and receive a Charter to thereby be assured of remaining in the UWFFL permanently.
Haig also announced that the league was instituting the "Curtis Peddle" Rule. It dictates that an owner may only own one team in each of the four basic Division II leagues beginning in 2017. There will be no limit to how many teams an owner may own in the Premier or Continental Leagues. So for owners that own multiple teams, like Curtis and Andrew Seagraves, relocations or transfers of ownerships may be necessary, should they have more than one team set to compete in a Division II League, come 2017. More details on how that may play out will be available in the coming months. Haig said that it shouldn't be that big of a deal. "Look, under this system Curtis - the owner who is potentially affected the greatest by this rule - could potentially have nine teams in 2017. Connecticut may be in the Continental League, Pontiac and British Columbia in the Premier League, and if two of his current Division II teams win the promotions to the Premier League, he could then still have four other teams, one in each Division II league in 2017. But if it looked like he had, say, five teams that were finishing above .500 in Division II, but they didn't win promotions, they'd be returning to Division II, say two in the Eastern Association and one in each of the other three leagues, only one of those two teams in the EA would be eligible to return. In another example, if somebody had three teams, for instance, two in the Eastern Association, one in the Metro South, but had no teams in the PCC, then they'd just have to petition the league to move one of the teams to a suitable city out West, to the PCC for 2017, and of course, all relocations and ownership transfers must be approved by the Commissioner's office."
It was also announced that 970 KDSF Sportstalk would be returning to the airwaves on September 4 and that sometime before then he would sit down and do an exclusive 60-minute interview with Sports Talk Radio legend Dick Schaefer who will be anchoring afternoons on 970. He will answer any questions and explain further details about how the league will operate, as well as detail exactly how he came to control the UWFFL. No mention was made today of exactly how the games will be contested, however they have announced previously that fan voting for uniforms will no longer be a part of it, however uniform combos will have an effect on game outcomes.
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
UWFFL Returning? New 970 KDSF Sports Talk Poster Spotted In San Francisco
BY GREG DICKMAN --Former 970 KDSF flunky and sometime intern for the UWFFL's media relations team
Someone in the twittersphere (if that's still a thing), sent us this snapshot (please scroll down for a closer look at the poster). We have not been able to verify it's autheniticity, however if true this leads to lots of questions:
- Is 970 KDSF reverting to it's old call letters and the sports talk format? We all know the ratings have been very low for "Muy Calienta Salsa la 970", the estacion de musica hispana that took its' place on the dial in mid-2015. They expected a low share due to the size of the Hispanic population in the Bay Area. But even as low as expectations were, the ratings have been even lower. Has the Trump anti-Hispanic rhetoric gotten so bad that the Sportpuck Media Empire doesn't even want a whiff of anything latino permeating it's lily white - politically correct conservative-leaning media empire?
- Does this mean Dick Schaefer is returning to the airwaves? The nonagenarian announced when he left 970 KDSF at the time of the format change over a year ago that he would never return to broadcasting "No. Never. Full Stop." Did boredom and an opportunity to get his old job back cause him to change his mind? Did Sportpuck throw a lot of money at him? Is Social Security not bringing in enough to pay his bills?
- The biggest nugget, as far as I am concerned, is that the ad mentions the "Reign Fire"... does this mean the UWFFL is also coming back? It was no secret, among those in the know, that the Sportpuck Media Holdings Company owns 48% of the league (including it's trademarks, logos and they also control majority or minority shareholder status in 22 of it's franchises across UWFFL Premier, the four Division II leagues and La Lega International). If they are moving back into sports radio (and why wouldn't they, considering their name), they'll need something to cover.
- If the UWFFL is coming back, how come we haven't heard anything about it yet? Will Uni Watch be involved with uniform voting again?
- What will the AAIFA think? Or do? Their market share has grown by over 600% since the UWFFL ceased operations sixteen months ago. Will the shared (for the most part) fanbase that the UWFFL and AAIFA shared return to a league that forsaked them last year, or have they, for lack of a better term..... moved on?
- Which UWFFL teams and owners will return? Will it be a leaner, more focused operation? Some say it was the expansion into a Division III in 2014 and a poorly planned execution of the ill-fated 2015 Developmental League that doomed the operation. A new UWFFL, in my opinion, will have to be leaner and trim off the excess fat.
- No mention of the Federation? Are the 2013 FSL Champions (who were relegated out of the FSL in 2014) no longer part of the San Francisco-area sports scene? By the way, what happened to FSL Tonight? Was it cancelled?
- What happened to Rob Holecko? Who's steering this ship? Is anyone steering it?
- Can I get my job back? (...if that is at all a possibility, please disregard any comments I may have made above about the politically correct conservative-leaning Sportpuck Media Empire.)
- Finally, is this an actual poster, or is it merely some sort of a scam, fake or photoshop job? I guess only time will tell!
A closer look at the actual poster:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)