The new football league is already off to a rough start…

One month before the kick off of its inaugural season, the All American Football League publicly posted a plea for a new majority owner. And a TV deal.

Now, as a football fanatic, I really want the AAFL to succeed. (By the way, I can’t help but pronounce “AAFL” as “awful” — they might want to consider their name. In addition, when spelled out, it’s heinously boring and too long to type into a web browser.)

First of all, I’m already going through football withdrawal, to the point that I’m hungrily consuming news reports about off-season offensive lineman signings. The Arena Football League doesn’t do it for me, because it’s like watching someone play a video game — too much scoring, not enough strategy. I’ve also lost interest in all other sports, and I consider baseball to be slow torture.

So when I first heard about the AAFL, I was psyched. I also thought the concept constituted brilliant marketing. First, it would run in the off-season, thus avoiding confrontation with the NFL while feeding us football-starved junkies. Second, its teams play in hardcore college-football states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Tennessee and Texas — and are named after the states, not the cities. Some of the teams even share the colors and stadium of the predominant college program in that state. Its players include former college stars who never quite made it in the NFL, such as Eric Crouch, the former Heisman winner from Nebraska.

The timing also couldn’t be better.

The NFL recently folded its summer European league — Europeans apparently took to our version of “football” about as well as we took to theirs. (Note to NFL: remember that pro football didn’t take off here until after high school and college football had become integral facets of American culture. The same process is probably required in Europe.) In addition, the NFL is currently undergoing scrutiny by Congress because of an alleged cover-up concerning illegal videotaping by the New England Patriots. Other blogs are covering this controversy to death, so I’ll just mention that it’s stirred up talk of the NFL’s anti-trust exemption being eliminated. And if that happens, the NFL could be forced to help finance a rival league… such as the AAFL.

But the new league has already fumbled the snap. Its primary woes are currently financial: as it says on its own website, “Since inception, the League’s finances have been indirectly tied to the $300 billion federally guaranteed student loan asset backed securities market. In August, the sub prime mortgage crisis began spreading into other sectors such as municipal bonds and federally guaranteed student loans. The situation, which was considered to be temporary at the time, has continued to worsen.” Oops. I guess that makes someone else being screwed by the student loan mafia — I mean — industry.

Then there’s the marketing angle.

The new league did a good job with PR, landing stories with most of the major media outlets, from CBS News to Sports Illustrated. It also secured deals with New Balance and other corporate partners — albeit, most of the partners are not exactly household names: Schutt Sports, anyone? One of the purposes of corporate partnerships is to share brand equity, so that the affiliation boosts both companies. How much of a boost did the AAFL get from Schutt?

Second, the AAFL website is pure amateur hour. Many of the links are dead. (Gee, that inspires confidence.) Its layout is circa 1996. And it lacks many of the requisite Web 2.0 (or even Web 1.0) communications to spread the word and build a following. For example, there should be a sign-up for an AAFL e-newsletter so that interested fans (like myself) can be kept posted on all developments.

And that brings me to my last point: where’s the L.A. team?

Los Angeles hasn’t had a pro football team since the Raiders left in 1994. (We won’t count the execrable XFL, which overhyped itself into a laughing stock.) Instead, my fair city has become the largest college town in the world. No other city in the U.S. features two major college football teams (though it might be a stretch calling the UCLA Bruins “major”). On some Saturdays, nearly 200,000 fans flock to see USC and UCLA play. Now how cool would it be to have a pro team that featured both former Trojans and Bruins?

More importantly, L.A. is a major media center. TV networks and advertisers are not going to be excited about reaching Arkansas and Alabama. (Maybe the AAFL should partner-up with Wal-Mart.) In fact, you’re not even allowed to buy a good microbrewed beer in Alabama. How is that a good place for football? L.A. should have been the AAFL’s first location.

If a new majority owner can’t be found, the league might not start play until 2009. And perhaps they should wait. As the XFL proved, you don’t want to come out of the gate with a bad product. We Americans have too many entertainment options, so we usually check out something once, and if we don’t like what we see, we’ll turn to something else and never come back.

Unfortunately, that something else is called the United Football League (another lame name). One of its founders, Tim Armstrong, is a Google exec, so search-engine optimization is probably the only thing it has going for it. The UFL plans to play during the NFL season. On Friday nights. (High school students? Who needs high school students as fans?) The UFL is dangling Los Angeles as a potential site, but in order to “help your city win a team,” you need to reserve a seat now for $5. That’s right — buy a ticket now for a team that might not exist. I also hear there’s a Nigerian prince who needs help getting money out of his country.

Go AAFL!

Update 3/7/8: The AAFL updated its homepage today, and states that the league will kick off on April 12. I’ll be watching…

Update 3/13/8: Just a week after saying they were going ahead as scheduled, the AAFL postponed its inaugural season until 2009. I’ll believe it when a kicker’s foot actually connects with a ball on the first play of the first game…