Lakewood Ranch-based Major League Football again delays opening of training camp
Lakewood Ranch-based Major League Football has delayed the opening of its preseason camp again, but a high-ranking official insists the league will not fold.
Frank Murtha, senior executive vice president of MLFB, said some problems that are operational in nature have occurred that necessitated delaying the start of training camp. He said league officials, including general managers and coaches, are meeting in Tampa this week and hope to announce a new start date for the league.
"The league is not in jeopardy of not going off," Murtha said. "We have a lot of flexibility in our schedule, and our equipment is coming in. There was just a whole bunch of things happening, and we wanted to do this the right way."
The league has incurred problems with hotel space and flight reservations because of the Easter holidays, and the task of giving physicals to the 600 players who were expected to be in the area next week to train had to be worked out, according to Murtha.
"Some of the hotels in Bradenton and Sarasota could not take all of the players on one team and we didn't want to split them up," Murtha said. "We believe things will be a lot easier after next week. We are trying to see if there is a better solution for those kinds of problems."
Murtha said the league has signed lease agreements with venues that would house each of its 10 teams. He said he could not name the cities because MLFB is a publicly traded stock, but he would not refute that the Florida team was going to play in the Citrus Bowl in Orlando.
"We have notified the players that we are delaying the start of training camp and that
we are conducting meetings for the next three days to determine when we are going to bring them in," Murtha said. "The latest (opening day of camp) was April 4 for some players. We have to postpone that and no new date has been set.
"We expect to have a new date coming out of our meetings this week. We finished up our venue leases, but we cannot announce them now. We have always wanted to do this right, but we are running short on time."
MLFB was originally scheduled to begin training in early March, but that was pushed back to March 31 when the league announced it had lost a $20 million financial commitment from Clermont Investment Group LLC.
On Feb. 17, MLFB announced it had a $100 million line of credit funding agreement with Asian Global Capital Ltd., which also purchased $20 million in common stock in the league. Murtha said the latest delay has nothing to do with money.
Alan Dell, Herald sports columnist/writer, can be reached at 941-745-7056. Follow him on Twitter @ADellSports
This story was originally published March 29, 2016 at 11:23 PM with the headline "Lakewood Ranch-based Major League Football again delays opening of training camp ."