The UFL and its failure of leadership

I don’t think there is any way to spin what is going on with the United Football League. Many highly important things fell through the cracks, and it seems the league was relying on their Head Coaches to not only run the team on the field but on the business side as well. This league has also handled the transition from a centrally run operation to more of a single entity system poorly, and even more highly important things seemed to have fallen through the cracks. Now the teams are working locally to repair the damage with the creditors, and save this fledgling league’s reputation.

The bad news here is it looks like this league lost some 50 million dollars in 2010. That loss is a little hard to explain. The average UFL player made 50k in 2010, and the five starting QB’s made 200k each. That means payroll was about 14 million dollars. We also know that the Hartford Colonials paid 90k per home game for use of their home field. That likely means the league paid out something like 19 million for the use of the fields. That gives us 33 million dollars explained, so how did this league lose 17 more?

It seems to me that the UFL ran every game in 2010 at a deficit. We do not have access to their cash flow records but if the league lost this much money it seems pretty clear that this league produced very little revenue in 2010. There is a story floating around that a 7 million dollar charge the league was not expecting for Workers Compensation Insurance costs sapped the leagues cash reserves and led to all of the shortages and vendors lining up to sue this league.

Regardless of all that is seems the UFL failed to prepare itself to move forward in 2010, and simply hiring a Head Coach and having him run the team was a failure. That failure lays squarely at the feet of UFL commish Michael Huyghue who every day seems over matched for the job is has signed on for.

Related Links:

• The Business of the UFL
• Joshua Lobdell.com