Yet another misstep by the UFL

The best part of my job is getting email press releases from all of the teams and leagues I cover. that is except for a lot of the stuff that the United Football send my way. It is often unclear, and just leaves me asking more questions, it happens so frequently that I am starting to wonder if that is the goal of their PR department. My wife said something to me today that was pretty profound, we were looking over the new uniforms for this league, and she said, “this is a league that cannot afford to make these kinds of mistakes.” Being smarter than I, she is absolutely correct, and that was before I got a very questionable press release from the folks at the UFL.

Now some say I am too negative about this league, but the people who run it have to know that we live in an instamatic society. The very moment the release something to us, it is on the net somewhere. Today I was sent a listing of rules changes for the 2010 UFL season that was hard to read, and not very well thought out.

Now to be positive they did put up a PDF file on the league official website clarifying the difference in this league rules over the NFL and college football. However the release I read talked about “Interference with opportunity to make a fair catch after muff.” I have been around football a long time and I have no idea what that is suppose to mean. I don’t see any way a kick returner can fair catch a ball after he has muffed it.

Worse than all of that is the things left unsaid. Will teams have to run a 4-3 defensive scheme in year two? Will blitzing still be limited? I also found it weird that there is no tuck rule in the UFL and they want to make a big deal out of that, but wasn’t the tuck rule game in 2002? I mean is that still an issue in the minds of football fans? I don’t know why the league chose to emphasize that one so much.

Related Links:

•The Business of the UFL
•UFL News reservation for six.com
•MTR Football.com