Bowl Games And Amateur Sports

[Lehigh Football Nation]

I think I cracked after watching the Michigan/Florida game:

http://lehighfootballnation.blogspot.com

[andy7171]

"40 meter dash"?
You Patriot League guys crack me up! :D

[Lehigh Football Nation]

"40 meter dash"?
You Patriot League guys crack me up! :D

Fixed. What next? "This great Lehigh recruit weighs twenty-odd stone..." :D

[roberb7]

OK, I gave your piece a read.

NFL Europe was a football minor league. It went away because the NFL was no longer willing to pay for it.

I've seen several other football minor leagues come and go over the past 40 years. I can't remember the names of any of them, but long-term football fans in places like Orlando, Wheeling, and Roanoke probably can. (I do remember that the team in Wheeling was called the Wheeling Ironmen.)

They all had the same problem that NFL Europe did.

The 1960's AFL permitted a baseball-style "farming out players under contract" arrangement. This came to an end with the AFL-NFL merger. The 1969 Super Bowl Champion New York Jets had a significant number of former minor leaguers on their roster. In order to remove this competitive advantage, the NFL owners voted to ban this practice. The teams that had minor-league affiliates were simply out-voted by the ones who didn't.

[Lehigh Football Nation]

Points well taken, but it's easy to see why NFL Europe failed (the NFL was paying for players to go overseas). Domestically it would be a much more sensible arrangement.

I didn't know the NFL banned the practice, they should do the opposite: encourage it.