Well alrighty then. Last year’s league MVP Bryce Perkins signed a CFL Contract just last week.
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Indeed
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I say harumph.
on second thought… make that a double harumph my good sir.
Harumph harumph.
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Well I think you are doing a very good job in this thread now too.
Look at your initial post and how you, you Overgrown Beaver, barged in with such a fine point.
Hurrah too. Carry on.
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A fine point indeed.
Huzzah! (that’s a ‘harumph’ on steroids)
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So in the last week, there has been a flurry of news on coaching moves. It turns out one of those 5 changes named above, Anthony Becht, is moving from St. Louis to Orlando and not leaving the UFL 4.5. I had heard a month ago that he wanted to go to the University of South Florida, which is actually not in what is modern South Florida but in Tampa and surrounded by a concrete jungle of dumpy strip malls. And so it appears Becht wanted to go to Florida anyway? Right now here in the winter is definitely good timing to move to Florida.
Now the only surprise as the league goes to inexperienced coaches, who are former players often locally where they are coaching in this regional draft bullshit era of the UFL 4.5, is Rick Neuheisel, who is a seasoned veteran with quite a resume! Interestingly, Neuheisel played quarterback in the USFL 1.0 for the San Antonio Gunslingers. 
Aye, it was a different time.
I guess maybe in retirement from coaching and in the off-season for college football that Neuheisel wanted something to do?
Now I’m sure for many reading here now that sitting on the front porch for most of four or five days in nice weather, TV hooked up too with your phones, grilling, eating, smoking, drinking, and farting around in the fresh air sounds very appealing, but hey try it first and then get back to us. As a wise man once told me, “You can only eat so much ice cream.”
I don’t blame Neuheisel at all, and he continues in his role as a college football analyst with our CFL forum friends at CBS.
Now on to see what they really do with the players.
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hey anyone remember when folks thought it was a good idea for the CFL and XFL to merge? 
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Ha ha ha the Pandemic Unrest of ‘21, when the old site somehow drew all those spring football fanboys of a trash hub league and all their expansionist dreams and basement ambitions, and well their voices here and on Facebook were enough to convince me not only “NO, but OH HELL NO, I’m not watching spring football anywhere near the likes of YOU ALL 
!”
Peeling back the curtain with regards to the later Unrest of ‘23, the league was so ashamed of the forum, due in no small part to all that nonsense, that the league wisely created the Secret Garden for access here, though that was not the only reason.
And The Rock? Well he no-showed for a game last season due to some “travel mishap,” for the scene was lame anyway like most games on Friday nights on Fox, and The Rock has not been heard from hardly publicly ever since with regards to the UFL.
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So Chris Redman is now a professional head coach after spending the last decade bouncing between mouthguard startups, recycling ventures, and some vague “partner” roles in wound care? Yeah I pulled that off his LinkedIn page. His recent football gig was QB coach at a high school in Texas. No college or pro coaching experience, just boom—UFL head coach. That résumé reads like a LinkedIn midlife crisis, not a launchpad to professional coaching. He might be a solid locker room guy, and sure, his dad was a coach—but this smells like brand-name nostalgia and budget cuts. No clue as to what the hiring process for this league looks like.
Meanwhile, actual football minds like Neuheisel or even Sumlin—guys who’ve won at the FBS level and run real programs are back in the game. Rick Neuheisel, who’s taking over in Dallas, or Kevin Sumlin, back for round two in Houston. Those guys have scars. They’ve recruited nationally, taken teams to bowl games, and worn the headset under real pressure. Yeah, they’ve been fired—but they’ve also won ten games in actual FBS football. That said I don’t know where I am with those hires - roll the dice and let’s see what happens.
Anthony Becht quietly racked up a 22–10 record (.688) in the UFL—a respectable mark by any standard. My guess? The league slid him over to Orlando to stabilize the expansion effort. It’s a new market, and if Becht can keep them near .500, that’s a win from a branding and optics standpoint. Nobody expects a title run; they just don’t want another dumpster fire. That said, the league blew up all the rosters again, so even the “veteran” coaches are starting from scratch. He’s got familiarity with the league’s chaos—probably why he’s getting the nod in a volatile launch zone.
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Meh, boring news, but here they go starting on Friday.
And here are some roster numbers:
4. Maximum Number of Picks
UFL teams may select a minimum of 60 players and a maximum of 62 players in the Draft, which includes three quarterbacks, a maximum of three college allocations, and a maximum of 12 Reserve List players.
UFL teams may sign additional free agents following the Draft; the training camp roster limit is 64 players.
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I’m going to cross-link this here for those like Dave Naylor who might be buying into that “pro college football to pro in the UFL pipeline” and “younger players not coming to Canada because…” BULLSHIT that he trotted out a few months ago at the old place. He can now be joined perhaps by spring football fanboys.
As Naylor pandered is simply not reality in the US. The UFL 4.5 is farther away in profile from the CFL than since The Spring League in 2021 before the USFL 2.0 trash hub league was launched in 2022. EAT IT YOU EVIL WITCHY DAVE NAYLOR.
It’s up to the UFL 4.5 to shore things up here in 2026, or to basically become a higher-budget trash hub league to basically outshine the low standard of the USFL 2.0 via FOX in 2022 and all the pull of the NFL Godfather to promote it on such a high profile on free TV on weekends then on Fox and on NBC, at the expense then of viewers of other sports, despite being a trash hub league with largely empty stadiums back then.
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I’m amazed that this league is backed by Fox Corp, The Rock, Disney, and Co and looks as awful as it does on the outside looking in.
If only the CFL could have a quarter of the broadcasting opportunities these guys have…ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, Fox, FS1, ESPN+, Fox Sports App, Disney+, DAZN.
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This UFL thing — isn’t a finished product—it’s a pipeline. The CFL can only carry ~190–200 American players due to ratio rules. The UFL can push nearly double that—around 380+ U.S. players—through a spring schedule that ends just in time for NFL camps. — Ten games is basically a college season — It’s not about attendance or merch; it’s about trench warfare reps, live bullets, and body-of-work film against grown men. That’s why IMHO linemen especially benefit.
The CFL won’t bend the knee to the NFL, but the UFL already functions like a defacto farm league. @Paolo_X has been going on about the “godfather” for the better part of 4 years — Say what you want about the branding chaos, but from a systems-level view, the UFL serves a purpose the CFL physically can’t or won’t.
And yeah, it’s nuts that a league with backing from Fox, Disney, Dwayne Johnson and more still looks like a hot mess dumpster fire. Meanwhile the CFL would kill to get half that broadcast reach—ABC, ESPN, FS1, ESPN+, Disney+ — yet still looks sharper. — Go Figure —
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Given the alleged “Americanization” of the CFL by the Commissioner, some would say the CFL is bending more than the knee and puckering up too 
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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.
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Reading some tea leaves from the announcement of the agenda from the CFL winter meetings here,
let’s review an additional bit of this spring football league history and some thoughts.
Now via the launch of the USFL 2.0 hub league, the NFL had its cake, as in eliminated liability and no prospect of long-term payments to as many players in its pool, from which it could eat as well, via a cheap-ass venture to build an alternative pipeline of more affordable players for special teams and so forth.
As the pandemic finally began to end, the time was especially relevant since these new Rich or “Rich” Men on Campus, since the summer of 2021, were going to be weighing more options than the NFL Draft in their later years of eligibility (with now the ongoing discussion of a potential 5th year for Division 1 and 2 college athletes), and well five years after NIL was available to all young adults in college, here we are already.
The NFL still has this cake, though the spring football experiment has cost their proxies vastly more than budgeted and whatever the NFL has made good via other payments and arrangements with its partners in the NFL media and RedBird Capital.
As discussed, however the UFL will attempt to dress things up, the UFL is overhauling via a cost-cutting effort and looking more and more like a temporary employment agency for the NFL by the week.
The CFL smells the opportunity, especially given the adverse experience of 2023, as cited.
Now it’s the NFL’s move. The NFL can continue to try and have their cake and eat from it too. Or as it’s the NFL, they can weigh in large now behind the scenes to jolt the UFL anew, as in to make it more lucrative to the players than ever before.
We shall see.
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Here’s a fine article about six former UFL players, each with various time spent in the NFL last season, who now have a route into the NFL already for the 2026 season.
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Not sure where I land with the UFL lately. On one hand, there’s a new guy at the top and maybe that brings stability—or at least a clue. But then again might be a bigger dumpster fire. But let’s not sugarcoat it—Danny Garcia and Moose Johnston didn’t exactly crush it with their stadium picks or team setups. Some of that stuff was straight-up amateur hour. Hard to say who owns the blame. Some days I think the new leadership is cleaning it up and finally getting it together. Other days it’s like, what the hell are y’all doing? Still watching, still hoping, but not blind to the dumpster fire situation.
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Cross-link - staying in school is paying off more already.
And there is absolutely no exodus to any pro league other than the NFL, including especially NOT the UFL.
Did you hear that, Dave Naylor?
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