On Saturday night we had my folks over to see the kids and my dad and I decided, during a game of kid's Monopoly, that we would check out the new "pro" football league, The American Alliance of Football. I had only recently remembered that the league was a thing because I follow a lot of Michigan football stuff on social media, and a few of their notable players, mainly Denard Robinson, are on some of the teams. Unfortunately for me, none of them played during the one quarter of the one game that I watched this past weekend. With that one quarter of play, I made a few observations.

Now, I have seen a few articles since Saturday saying that the viewership was very high, and that this is the "perfect cure for anyone that is already missing football". First off, I get that viewership was high. Football is now America's pastime. It is the most popular sport. It has surpassed baseball, and even though I may think it is a better, and more fun sport to watch, the NBA is not even close in popularity to pro football. That all makes sense. But, to call this the "cure" for football fans. I highly disagree. I don't get it. One, the Super Bowl just happened a week ago, and it was a trash game. It's not like we have been without football for a month or 2. We didn't miss any football in fact. There was zero break.

Secondly, as far as the "cure" for what ails football fans, this was a garbage product. This was not even high level college football fun. This wasn't even Pro Bowl fun, in that the Pro Bowl is just a stage for the NFL's all star's to dick around. In fact, I would rather watch the skills competition that the soon to be pro players do, or even watch something like the Senior Bowl, or any of those other college football all star games. I found the one quarter of the AAF game I watched to be very, very low level "pro" football. I'm sure it will be better than the return of the XFL, because the XFL is so dumb, but not by that much. I did not recognize a single name of either player on either team Saturday, and I do watch a ton of football, mostly college football. The AAF should have been right in my wheel house because I should have been able to recognize someone. I did not. And sure, I saw the highlight of the big hit on the QB in the very same game I watched, but that type of hit happens in every NFL game, and in pretty much every college football game.

The people that want this league to thrive were grasping at straws trying to make this opening weekend seem like this league will be legit. I mean, I don't even remember the teams that were playing. All I remember about the game was that it was played at the Alamaodome, so I would assume one of the teams is based in San Antonio, and that Mike Martz is either a head coach or coordinator of one of the teams that was playing Saturday night. That's it. And that is not a good thing, at least in my opinion.

As far as the on field stuff I saw, I, clearly, was not impressed. It was all shot gun. It was all read option football. It was like watching Oregon or any other Pac 12 team, except it wasn't as good or fun. The run games were non existent. The QB's were downright dreadful. I have no idea who the skill position players were. Save for that one big hit, the defenses were very, very vanilla. Needless to say, I was pretty underwhelmed by the AAF. I did watch because I am a football junkie, but the fact that I turned it off after a quarter, and my dad didn't gripe at me for this, should speak volumes. We were more than happy to watch the Thunder complete a 26 point comeback win over the Rockets. We also stuck closer to the Duke-Virginia game, and a few other college basketball games. We did not need low grade football.

Football is a great sport, and I love to watch it, especially college football. But, at least for me, the AAF, after one week, was a big time disappointment. It can always make a revival, but I doubt it. This was some low rent football. There is no questioning that.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. Ty does not remember the USFL at all. As a matter of fact most of us only know about the USFL because it showed us that even in the 1980’s, Donald Trump was a terrible leader.

Follow Ty on instagram and twitter.

SeedSing is funded by a group of awesome people. Join them by donating to SeedSing.