The CFL will find next year to be a bit of a challenge when it comes to recruiting talent for the eight (maybe nine if things fall into place in Ottawa) teams of the circuit.
A new American league is about to set up shop, financed by some heavy hitters of the American business establishment. Bill Hambrecht, a Wall Street executive who, along with partner Tim Armstrong of Google are the creators of the United Football League.
Mark Cuban, the perennial thorn in the side of NBA higher ups is one of the first on board as franchise owners, with plans to be in the loop when the first pre season game takes place in August of 2008.
Subscribing to the theory that there is much more supply than there is demand, the latest would be football tycoons are looking to fill a void in American entertainment, providing the national obsession for football with one more night to catch some ball.
The league will play its games in many cities that currently have been ignored or abandoned by the NFL, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Antonio and Orlando. Cities where past football leagues such as the WFL, USFL, XFL and CFL have all attempted to find success butwith the exception of LA, for whatever reason never quite made it to the ultimate step of the NFL.
The member franchises of the UFL will not be led astray, they have no design on toppling the NFL anytime soon, they are just hopeful to find a television network that will be ready to show their Friday night games on a weekly basis. A night traditionally given over to high school football in many parts of the USA.
The league will have a salary cap and will try to sign players from the Canadian Football League, the Arena Football League and players cut from NFL training camps, which will make the mid season air lift of talent to the CFL a much harder operation to mount. In fact, depending on the kind of money that they plan to throw around, the league may take many of those that would normally head for Canada's wider and longer pastures.
It's not the first threat to the CFL and most likely won't be the last, the UFL could affect American television exposure as well, as the various cable networks anxious to fill their programming blocks might very well take a flyer on a league that offers Mark Cuban's theatrics on a regular basis.
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