Tombstone
Formed: 2007
Disbanded: October 20, 2012
First Game: October 8, 2009
Last Game: October 19, 2012
Seasons: 3.5
States: 7
(California, Connecticut, Florida, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Virginia)
Leadership
Trophy Case
Background
The UFL formed in 2007 with big-budget dreams of establishing a triple-A caliber professional football league with a nationwide footprint. The league’s original named investors were San Francisco investment banker Bill Hambrecht, Google executive Tim Armstrong and investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. (Cuban would subsequently back off, instead loaning money to the UFL and then suing it after the league defaulted on repayment.) Original plans called for an 8-team launch in 2008, but this was ultimately pushed back to a 4-team debut in the fall of 2009.
Since the formation of the United States Football League in 1983, every upstart football league had attempted to compete in the spring, sparing itself head-to-head competition with the NFL and college football. The UFL played in the fall…and got hammered. The tiny league lost a reported $100 million during its first two seasons of play, despite staging a mere 32 games during that time.
In April 2012, league investors Bill Hambrecht and Bill Mayer declared to the press that the UFL would return for a fourth season in the fall. The league returned with the same four teams that took part in the 2011 season (Las Vegas, Omaha, Sacramento and Virginia) for a planned eight-game season. However, players went unpaid, attendance was worse than ever, and the league suspended operations after four weeks and eight games.
Hambrecht claimed the UFL would rise again in spring 2013 to pick up where the aborted 2012 fall schedule left off. Nothing further was heard from the UFL and it sailed on into the crowded graveyard of minor league football ventures.
United Football League Franchise List
| FRANCHISE | YEARS ACTIVE | UFL CHAMPIONS |
|---|---|---|
| California Redwoods | 2009 | Never |
| Florida Tuskers | 2009-2010 | Never |
| Hartford Colonials | 2010 | Never |
| Las Vegas Locomotives | 2009-2012 | 2009, 2010 & 2012 |
| New York Sentinels | 2009 | Never |
| Omaha Nighthawks | 2010-2012 | Never |
| Sacramento Mountain Lions | 2010-2012 | Never |
| Virginia Destroyers | 2011-2012 | 2011 |
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4 Responses
Nice recap of the UFL teams and the notable players. It was tough to find anything that this league did right from the business standpoint, so hopefully any new league one day will learn from this one’s failures.
All 4 games at the Rent in E Hartford. What a great time and Wiz Khalifa too.
When the league folded I had Destroyer season tickets. Loved the games. However, there were 2 home games I paid for that didn’t get played.
How do I get my money back?
I watched several of there games on Versus and the 2010 championship game live on YouTube, and I enjoyed it. Apparently, a lot of others did also, based on every team in the 2010 season averaging over 10,000 fans a game. But I read that the league was incompetently run, and that they went ahead with the 2012 season despite not having the money, which obviously turned out to be a super disaster. In fact, the last game in league history, Sacramento at Virginia in week 4 of 2012, had such poor attendance, the figure was never released. And a game in Las Vegas that season had attendance of 601. I hope that the XFL works out! I’ve been enjoying it so far!