Commentary | Festive atmosphere greets Major League Football at new home
LAKEWOOD RANCH
They stood under a makeshift canopy selling a dream, and everyone was thankful it didn't rain.
Major League Football was grateful it had a place to call home when it made Manatee County its official headquarters in a less-than-posh setting Friday at the Premier Sports Campus.
It felt like the first day of spring training when everyone sees things through rose-colored glasses under a tsunami of optimism.
If you closed your eyes, you could see former Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon, the eternal optimist, talking about making it to the last supper, his name for the World Series.
The folks who run MLFB are about to sit down for their first breakfast. Whether they make it to dinner is anybody's guess.
So where do we go from here?
Only certain thing is that we should proceed with caution.
We hope it works.
Excuse some of us for being skeptics, but we can't forget the hockey arena that came here and was going to create a new world for Lakewood Ranch, bringing professional hockey and Arena League Football.
It ended in a pile of rubble.
The folks who run MLFB have dreams and deserve a chance, but you need money to fuel the dreams.
They claim they have it and the current picture presented in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission are not accurate. Michael Queen, MLFB executive director of finance, said the company's annual report due out July 31st will put concerns to rest.
"The debt on our balance sheet is all going to be converted into equity so there isn't any debt, but you wouldn't know that by the SEC filings," Queen said. "We look to be ahead of the game in the fundraising side and have had tremendous interest in what we are doing. I don't see us being in a debt situation. I don't think you are going to see anybody lending us money,"
To keep costs from spiraling out of control, which sent all those previous spring leagues to their demise, MLFB will own all the teams.
All players will have basically the same salary, which will be around $30,000 with head coaches and general managers getting six-figure contracts, according to MLFB founder and CEO Rick Smith.
"Every player will get that all the way through. It's pretty much a standardized salary out of the gate," Smith said.
"They get a stipend when they come into actual training camp in Lakewood Ranch, which will be February, and then will officially be on the payroll the last week of March until the season ends in June or unless they make the playoffs. We will try to give them some type of stipend for housing,"
The highest-paid player won't necessarily be a quarterback. Each team will have a "face of the franchise" player who will sign a personal-services contract. He will be selected in the league's territorial draft during which each team may select players from its area or who played college ball in its region.
"If you wanted to take advantage of a player who played collegiately in a team's area, we can assign them to that team as a 'face of the franchise' player," Smith said. "Tim Tebow would've been a great example of that (for the Orlando franchise). We are going to have about 1,200 players who won't be in the NFL but are good players."
Just to push the anxiety level up a notch, there is an elephant in the room.
The USFL has risen from the dead and has announced plans to start a spring football league. Donald Trump is not part of this group as he was for the previous league that folded in 1987, but there are some good football names such as Cleveland Browns Hall of Famer Paul Warfield.
MLFB officials have definitely gotten a head start and say they are not worried about the other league.
"The more the merrier. I wish them a lot of luck," Smith said. "It's a tough thing to do as anyone will tell you. We think we hit it at the right time and at the right place. The interest is there, and television has changed."
There are NFL coaches who would welcome a spring league because they keep saying they don't get enough time to develop young players due to the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players union, which severely limits practice time.
"We are going to work with the NFL and have a good rapport with them," Queen said. "We are going to play hard-nosed football and play the best and certainly could (be a developmental league) for them. On the USFL, we know there are not that many stadiums out there, and if someone is coming in after us, good luck getting those places,"
Frank Murtha, senior executive vice-president of MLFB, says his league will be successful because of multiple reasons that just add up to common sense.
"There are more good football players than leagues and, for us, profitable crowds would be in the 15,000 to 20,000 range," Murtha said.
Alan Dell, Herald sports writer, can be reached at 941-745-7056. Follow him on Twitter @ADellSports.
This story was originally published June 6, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Commentary | Festive atmosphere greets Major League Football at new home ."