S.p.f.l.

[Boris Karloff]

The SPFL could be the next alternative football league, and may affect the CFL
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The SPFL logo, from their November presentation:

http://media.zenfs.com/en/blogs/sptc...perts/SPFL.jpg

Deadspin's Tommy Craggs had an interesting piece this week on plans for a new American football league, based off a November confidential summary (PDF) he was able to obtain. The new league, termed the Spring Professional Football League for the moment, is very much a rough draft at the moment and isn't planning to start until 2013, but it has several positive elements that could make it more than one of the myriad NFL competitors that have sprung up and failed over the years, most notably playing in the spring, having centrally owned teams, not directly challenging the NFL and incorporating former executives from the NFL, USFL, XFL and other leagues. As such, if it does manage to get off the ground, it could become a potential competitor to the CFL for talent.
Sure, many leagues have tried and failed to take on the U.S. stateside before. That doesn't mean the CFL has nothing to worry about. Having talented players is crucial to selling your brand of football, and the CFL's doing quite well in that aspect at the moment, luring some of the best Americans who aren't snapped up by the NFL and combining them with plenty of Canadian talent. The CFL should generally have an edge drawing Canadian players against minor American leagues, but the situation is reversed for U.S.-born talent; if everything else is equal, American players are most likely going to remain south of the border to be closer to friends and family (and not have to deal with the winters in Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg).

The few American leagues that are still around, most prominently the Arena Football League (spring, indoors) and the United Football League (currently four teams and a short fall season), have grabbed some players who might have wound up in the CFL under other circumstances. If and when it gets established, the SPFL would likely do the same. The supply of football talent is vast, but it isn't inexhaustible, and more competition for it doesn't make life easy for the CFL.

There is some question if the SPFL will ever get anywhere, as plenty of others have brought forward similar ideas before without finding tangible success. However, from the documents Craggs posted, there may be some reason for optimism with the SPFL. For one thing, there are capable and experienced football types involved, including president and COO Michael F. Keller (a former Michigan linebacker/defensive end who's worked in the NFL, with the XFL, with NFL Europe and with the USFL) and vice-president (football operations) William C. Baker Jr, who's worked as an NFL scout and with the USFL, XFL and AFL. For another, the basic premise of a small centrally-owned league that doesn't want to duke it out with the NFL directly has potential; many other leagues' problems have come from attempting to go head-to-head with the NFL juggernaut or from being unable to find enough reliable owners. They're also only looking for $100 million as initial capitalization, which it isn't necessarily hard to see them landing.

Spring is a relatively dead time in the football world, so the SFPL concept is anything but a bad one. There's a lot of ground to cover before it gets anywhere, but if this league does come to pass, it may wind up stealing talent from the CFL. That's something not to take lightly, even if it's a long ways off at the moment.

--By Andrew Bucholtz.