Alliance of American Football Set to Kick off in 2019

Besides the soon-to-be resurrected XFL, a whole new football season is set to kick off after next year’s Super Bowl dubbed, the Alliance of American Football. The new professional league, which was created by Charlie Ebersol — the son of longtime NBC Sports executive Dick Ebersol — announced Tuesday that he plans to launch the Alliance of American Football’s inaugural regular season on February 9, 2019.

“This [spring football] is a massive gap in the market,” founder Charlie Ebersol said in a news conference. “This is a marketplace of tens of millions of Americans who have been telling us for decades that they want to see high-quality football longer than the football season.”

The league will feature eight 50-man teams playing a 10-game schedule. The league’s inaugural game and championship game will be broadcasted on CBS, while one regular-season game per week will air on CBS Sports Network. The league promises a new kind of broadcast, wrapping up games in two-and-a-half hours and without TV timeouts. “The game will only stop when it naturally stops,” said Ebersol.

Players on the 50-man rosters will mostly be recruited from high-level college teams, those who don’t make the NFL, and those from other professional football leagues, such as the Canadian league. Funding for the league comes from the Peter Thiel-led Founder’s Fund, Barstool Sports investors and the Chernin Group, former Vikings pass rusher Jared Allen and others. Let us know if you’re excited for the new football league below.

Back in January, Vince McMahon officially announced the XFL would return in 2020 with eight teams of 40 players playing a 10-game schedule.