holy AI response
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There’s a possibility that they move to a 16 game season with 12 teams, especially if they start the season early enough but otherwise agree that FOX and gambling are tied together.
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You are right but still wrong. Not even all eight of the current teams are stable.
Mind you the creator on that channel agrees with not just me on this front, as noted above.
There are quite a few milestones to address before expansion.
Just because something is a good idea does not make it a good one to execute at the wrong time via a good means.
Mean Titanium Ted laid out the rational approach. I have laid out the challenge with training up more available players to a certain standard. They are not abundant yet.
That’s not to say some strong egos and tall foreheads won’t go forward early with a decent idea or go forward with a bad idea.
The “entshitification” of experiences and products like shared desks at work, streaming video, and new models of certain cars are examples - modern experiences are not better but worse, but at some point those numbers looked great in presentations in board rooms met with brotastic approval.
Plus it does not help when you have that faction of fanboys reverting back to 32-team fantasies, which pervaded social media a few years ago, let alone any reversion to some stupid hub league.
I informed many of them since day one in 2022 that the operation of the USFL 2.0 via single hub and then four hubs was a supremely shitty idea, and in the end they lost, but only after they clung to the idea that it was viable.
I don’t presume for a second that they won’t revert to that bullshit just to have more teams, for they already swallowed that flawed premise before.
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We’re not actually disagreeing—you’re arguing whether it’s a good idea, and I’m just laying out what I think the TV guys over at Fox/ESPN are going to do and how they’ll justify it. From their seat, this isn’t about football purity or whether all 8 teams are rock solid. It’s a portfolio problem. They’re looking at the UFL as cheap live inventory and asking how to stretch it across as many windows as possible without blowing the whole thing up. That’s where expansion even enters the conversation—not as a reward for success, but as a way to unlock more usable content. Bigger content library.
This is what I think it looks like — from their perspective. You go to 12 teams, now you’ve got more games, more combinations, and more flexibility. You don’t pretend every game is good—you sort it. Like sorting and grading lumber. Best games go on FOX and ESPN, decent ones on FS1 or ESPN2, and the dogs get shoved onto FS2, streaming, or whatever back corner of the cable TV dial they’ve got. That’s basically product grade separation. Nobody expects every board at the hardware store to be “select grade”—you just make sure the premium stuff is what people actually see. Some stuff gets turned into particle board and plywood.
Then you layer in the other piece nobody wants to say out loud—volume matters, especially for gambling and engagement. More teams means more variability, more lines, more stuff to bet on, more reasons to tune in even if the matchup isn’t elite. So the internal pitch probably looks like: expand, increase inventory, tier the games, bury the weak ones, let the top end carry the revenue, and let the middle get juiced by betting and casual viewing. I’m not saying it’s the right move—and yeah, you can absolutely enshittify the whole thing if you rush it—but if you’re reading the board from their side, that’s the logic they’re going to use get to ten or 12 teams.
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Since the end of training camp for the UFL one year ago, 52 players with pro football experience have showed up and decided, “To heck with this shit.”
And then those with CFL and/or NFL experience retired.
Some only had minimal spring football and NFL training camp experience and are reported to have retired. You can’t retire if you hardly had a career Patrick Rifino you fanboy!
Final cuts were made no later than Saturday 21 March.
Oh yeah, you bet that the UFL 5.0 is now all the more the young player development league in the early stages, in which fewer of those with pro experience will play, and that’s the way Repole wants it too.
But the UFL won’t sell it that way and instead are going with this “college town players” and “regional draft” business for branding.
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Just wondering, have you ever tried punting. I rather enjoy it. Kicking and Returning 
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yes i have. it’s dumb. would rather have another throwing or running down and no punting.
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The feel of connecting with the perfect punt is like the feel of hitting a home run.
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I read something years ago about the NBA—after about year three, you are what you are. Shooter, defender, role guy — very few dudes totally reinvent themselves after that. And from where I sit that mindset is bleeding into the NFL/UFL ecosystem. At some point the Godfather (NFL) looks at a guy and says — we’ve seen this movie – we know what you are and what you are. So instead of running the same fringe vets back for the 5th or 6th lap, the play shifts to a churn-heavy model - slash and burn, bring in new blood, and take more swings.
And the numbers seem to back that up. Roughly 23–30% of NFL rosters are undrafted guys, and you’re talking about 500 +/- UDFAs sticking on Week 1 rosters every year. That’s not a rounding error — that’s the system — The league already runs on volume and churn. And look at where those players that stick on the roster come from: WR ~31%, DL ~31%, OL ~27% – that’s real production coming out of the college football scrap heap. QB development for undrafted guys is basically a dead end (+/- 3–4% or so), but everywhere else? There’s juice there if you cycle enough bodies through. So from the Godfather’s perspective, a churn-heavy feeder system actually makes sense—keep the pipeline moving, because the next usable piece probably isn’t the guy you’ve already seen three camps in a row. You are taking college football linemen both D and O-line and giving them reps and teaching them the basics of NFL systems. Same with Wide receivers.
That’s not a contradiction – that’s part of the model. The Godfather has the league shifting younger and more developmental, the fringe vets are going to bail anyway. They’re not signing up to be part of a tryout carousel. So yeah — the talking heads and people selling tickets are going dress it up as “regional draft” and “college town vibes,” but underneath it looks like a system built to cycle players fast, take more shots, and feed the Godfather what he actually values—cheap, replaceable depth with occasional upside hits.
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UFL is for young players who just got out of college and want to take a shot at getting into the NFL. After a couple of years they start looking for stability and move on to the CFL or another job.
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An unstable development league is what the UFL 5.0 is now as it will try to become a larger and stable developmental league.
UFL 5.0 = NFL Developmental League (NFLDL)
Of course just saying that won’t work for promotion and branding, so we have the college town spin as well as that lofty expansion talk by the fanboys when not even the 8 teams, with 5 of them rebranded if not new all-around, have proved themselves.
Then there is a shit market like Birmingham that is a charity case to even still be around after Repole had initially wanted to move that team too, but I am not sure the league cares about their performance and attendance simply because Birmingham is a convenient location at the heart of pro college football anyway. Birmingham is not and never has been a pro sports town though.
Of course don’t any of you go about sharing any of these current facts so as to confuse any of those 
fanboys and their imperial yearnings since even the days of the shitty AAF in 2019!
Once that expansion talk starts, it always leads to takeover and merger talk, which was seen clearly in 2021 in the discussions between the XFL 3.0 and the CFL, and then in the “Unrest of 2023” when the USFL 2.0 trash hub league fanboys wanted to merge with the XFL 3.5 even though they had a shitty concept, which they only gave up after the leagues finally did merge after their seasons and after both losing a ton more of money in 2023.
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Here’s more on proceedings with the NFL Network by the new owner since February 2026, ESPN:
ESPN’s NFL Network Integration Still in Progress
ESPN’s ownership of NFL Network became official more than a month ago. But the full integration is still months out. NFL Network staffers are not expected to become ESPN employees until next month. The channel may not join ESPN’s direct-to-consumer platform until the fall.
No additional UFL games are currently planned for NFL Network this season, though that could change. NFL Network could serve as a spillover option for ESPN and ESPN2 when programming conflicts arise. The channel has a history of carrying college football regular season and bowl games, making it a natural landing spot for additional football programming.
It’s probably a better move for the league to have “spillover,” as in “low ratings” or “low interest” games, on the NFL Network versus on Dogshit Sports, also known as FS1.
I think otherwise that games on Tubi would also be a better move, if not instead on the NFL Channel FAST channel, than anything on any ESPN app.
We’ll see if they figure this out or screw things up too all the more with the likes of Dogshit Sports, which thankfully they have moved away from more this season.
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Been working on the BTG branding a bit over the last 2 days and spent way to much time working on templates in Canva.
Here are the UFL’s Specialist Rosters with Jersey Numbers!
Feel free to let me know what you think 
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Opening night in Louisville is going to look night and day different than the ghost town in Houston last year.
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nice work
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while waiting for football to return to tv, I have been getting my football fix watching yet unseen nfl games from last season on DAZN. It helps
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Hoofing a ‘Perfect’ Punt? I did that ONCE… when I was in my early 20’s.
My three year old J5V was getting thin and the wind was at my back so maybe it doesn’t count, but that day one of my punts went way over the returner’s head and kept on going. It was a real jaw dropper.
Funny thing, my foot didn’t FEEL like it hit the ball any harder than usual.
Must’ve been a fluke.
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at least we get some friday night football this week 
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It sounds already like it will be a good atmosphere and better than opening night in 2025.
The people have been hungry because they are starting too damn late, including as the weather is finally about to break for the better. Dumbasses.
They better not screw it up.
And the halftime better not be corporate speeches either or too brotastic, with Repole of course going to have his time to speak.
Keep it positive and motivational, but not delusional, Mike!
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