UFL’s survival might depend on gain from NFL’s labor pains

Jerry Glanville was named coach of the United Football League's Hartford Colonials on Monday, which might have solved all of the league's problems, provided he wrote checks instead of expecting one.

With former NFL coaches Glanville, Jim Fassel (Las Vegas) and Dennis Green (Sacramento) on board, perhaps soon to be joined by Marty Schottenheimer, provided something better doesn't come along, coaching is the least of the UFL's concerns.

Players, even if you haven't heard of most of them, are second-least among UFL concerns.

Losses of $32 million in its startup season and another $45-50 million in 2010 are primary UFL concerns. So is the $6 million owed its creditors.

But the UFL stimulus package -- otherwise known as the 11-day-old NFL lockout -- might provide the league with a hook on which to hang its helmet.

This is the light at the end of the tunnel league principals saw when they started the UFL from scratch, as the economy was foundering like the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior.

That light might not still be shining in August when the UFL begins its third season, or shine long enough to help the league from an exposure standpoint. But it's shining now, and so were the smiles of league executives at a ring ceremony honoring the two-time UFL-champion Las Vegas Locomotives at Green Valley Ranch on Monday night. (The free cocktails also might have had something to do with it, and one couldn't help but think who was paying for them. Or, considering this was the UFL, who wasn't paying.)

"We knew without question that the third year was going to be important for us, and it just happened to coincide with the NFL labor negotiations," UFL commissioner Michael Huyghue said. "We didn't have a crystal ball. But there's no question that if we got two good years under our belt, and then a work stoppage, then obviously we could benefit from that."

During the monthlong 1987 NFL strike, games were played with replacement players, providing Sean Payton with his NFL baptism as quarterback of the Chicago "Spare Bears" and, later, Keanu Reeves with an acting gig in a movie called "The Replacements."

During the 1982 strike, which lasted 57 days, CBS resorted to showing Division III games pitting the likes of the Baldwin-Wallace College Yellow Jackets against the likes of the Tigers of Wittenberg University.

Baldwin-Wallace won, 16-14, on a late field goal by Steve Varga, the son of a Yugoslavian immigrant.

That won't happen this year, because Yugoslavia no longer exists and because the UFL does -- albeit tenuously -- to provide alternative pro football programming if the networks think they'll be needing it.

Huyghue said the money being discussed won't erase what the UFL owes. But from an exposure standpoint, replacing the NFL on one or more Sundays would be more valuable than signing three Jerry Glanvilles, regardless of how many tickets they leave for Elvis at Will Call.

Something has to happen and happen soon, because even the normally optimistic Huyghue said the league can't go on with suspicious minds wondering if/when they will be paid.

"I think one of the (potential) revenue streams has to start hitting or it will be difficult to continue," Huyghue said.

"I'd love for them (NFL) to get back ... just not right away."

Fassel said he thinks the sides in the NFL labor dispute are dug in but doesn't foresee loading up the Locomotives' roster with NFL players -- past, present or future -- looking for a paycheck. Not a bad strategy, considering how Jeff Garcia played in Omaha last fall.

But without a Dr. Jonas Salk-sized shot in the arm,  Fassel -- like Huyghue -- doesn't see how the UFL can stay afloat in this tsunami of red ink.

When asked how long the league could survive without generating new revenue streams, Fassel was succinct.

"Not long."

Locomotives linebacker Brandon Moore, a former Oklahoma Sooner who has played on practice squads for the 49ers, Patriots and Cardinals, admitted to having mixed emotions about the lockout. On one hand, the potential exposure will benefit the UFL if the lockout continues. On the other, he says one of the UFL's mission statements is to have all that former NFL coaching talent preparing guys like him for their NFL opportunity.

"There's so much the NFL brings to everybody," Moore said. "There can be only one NFL. Without it, everybody loses."

But without it, even for a little while, the UFL might not lose quite as much.

That's the plan, anyway.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.