The game that I wrote about a few days ago with the Hotshots defeating San Antonio has turned out to be the final game in AAF history as it appears the man that the league brought into the AAF to shore things up a bit after two weeks has decided six weeks later to shut the league and more than likely end its existence.
Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon was trying to work out a deal with the NFLPA to bring a few lower level players from each NFL team to help shore up the league's rosters and threatened to shut the league's doors without an agreement.
Why this couldn't have waited until the final two weeks of the season had been concluded is one of the biggest questions that I have about all of this?
If the AAF needed this agreement with the NFLPA so badly, why immediately?
I may have understood if there were six or eight games to go, but only two?
And if the league financial situation was so dire, signing an NFL agreement wasn't going to change things for this season, so why eliminate these games?
My biggest question of all is this- If the league wanted to continue as claimed, couldn't the league have canceled the final two weeks, held the Eastern and Western finals as Orlando and Birmingham had clinched spots in the East and Arizona and San Antonio were two games ahead of San Diego and Salt Lake with those two weeks to go, so it wouldn't have been unreasonable to match the Hotshots and Commanders for their title out West.
Wouldn't a league that wanted to survive would have been better suited to claim the season a success with growing pains to play the two divisional finals and title game, even if it meant canceling the ninth and tenth weeks of the season?
Plus CBS had picked up the championship game for prime time viewing and look at the exposure that would have given the league.
The most plausible answer to all of this that I have seen that Dundon had no interest in the AAF, but he was more interested in the league's app which had gambling software that could be quite a money maker with gambling and fantasy football built into it.
If that's the case, I can understand Dundon wanting that software for its eventual value, but what doesn't make sense is why an owner of an NHL team would willingly muddy his name so quickly in sports?
Dundon's behavior in this has been reprehensible and he deserves to be the largest villain.
The league didn't draw live crowds in big numbers, although San Antonio did the best job in supporting their Commanders and in my opinion, should be considered as the first XFL expansion team or even immediately, if one team that is currently in their plans drops out.
The television ratings were decent enough and the league may have made a mistake giving the networks the product for free in order to prove themselves.
The idea sounded good, but whatever the networks would have paid would have helped somewhat in staggering to the end.
Reports are beginning to roll in about unpaid bills, players and coaches on their own to return to their home and other problems, so things were bleaker than presented, which more often than not is the case with new leagues, but the league did some positive things.
I loved the Sky Judge to overrule the awful call that none of the on-field officials see and since the NFL has made the onside kick so difficult to recover, their one play "4th and 12" to keep the ball seems interesting to consider.
I thought the play was better than most expected, although the long term was going to depend on how many young quarterbacks would play in the league to lift the quarterback talent because there just wasn't enough talent in the eight-team AAF at quarterback right now, let alone considering adding the XFL teams next year.
I'm not sure that the league will produce any future All-Pro's, but I'm sure there will be some alumni sprinkled around the NFL next year.
I'll miss the league and the Arizona Hotshots.
It's always fun following these leagues and teams, even if they are destined to break your heart when they don't work out.
I suppose it's now time to carve that Arizona Hotshots gravestone and set into the cemetery of TRS defunct teams that meant so much as they join the likes of the Southern California Sun, Chicago Blitz, Arizona Wranglers, Memphis Showboats, San Francisco Demons, Kentucky Colonels and Cleveland Crusaders in a place where only memories reside.
Now, it's a matter of deciding what XFL team I'll be covering in ten short months.
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