What @Stickweld21 said, so to speak.
Once the two leagues merged in 2023 for the 2024 season, I had figured there was much promise given all that backing.
As we had followed at the old place, the lack of promotion for the 2024 was most baffling, which after the 2025 was a mistake that Dany Garcia finally admitted before the upcoming 2026 season. Oh well, we sure have not heard much from her since I read about that interview just after Mike Repole was brought on to overhaul the business of the league and it turns out four new markets, yet it has turned out to meddle also in all personnel down to the players.
Five total teams were moved after the lacklustre 2025 season that did not show overall or strong growth and quite likely lost more money, including one from Arlington to Dallas in that large media market in Texas.
But it’s been so obvious via all the preferential promotion during NFL games and air time on free TV and even that lease of Ford Field that the NFL Godfather has placed its big butt on the scale all along.
In my opinion given the developments in PRO college football since 2021, reading the tea leaves early and here we are now, the NFL’s heavy interest has been no doubt to secure a feasible flow of players to fill in for special teams and not to have to deal with all those Big Men on Campus with heavier financial demands before going to the NFL, beyond any players drafted in perhaps the Top 120 or so each season in the first four rounds.
Of course the NFL also gets a stronger flow of specialty players such as kickers, punters, long snappers, and the occasional return specialist, as now the latter is back in the NFL game after the reform of the kickoff that began in 2024.
Meanwhile those fanboys think this could be a quick self-sustaining success in financial terms, some fools longing for defunct teams to return or for teams that did not even play where named in 2022 and 2023, and even YouTube videos for expansion plans for 32 teams for spring football!
That pandemic sucked ass on too much of YouTube too, but that era has passed as well too much the other way now with far too many corporate or hack videos, but that’s another thread.