With the flurry of news surrounding Mark Cuban at the announcement that he has verbally committed to purchasing a UFL team, he felt like he should offer some insight as to exactly why he made that decision. Clearly the failure of previous leagues is fresh on everyone’s mind with the one-and-done season of the XFL in 2001, but Mark is not Vince McMahon and where Vince played on the XFL’s “Entertainment” factor the United Football League will be a better structured business. Simply based upon my early findings it’s clear that these guys don’t intend to lose money. Let’s face it when Cuban bought the Mavs he was ridiculed and told that was a horrible investment; who’s laughing now?

Unlike the XFL, the UFL players will earn a substancial income; initially it will be the middle tier players, not the NFL stars but not the NFL scrubs either. The beauty of their plan is to go after those good players that will most likely be cut because as the NFL star players earn more, more low cost players must be left on the roster to accomodate the salary cap. Other decisions like the choice to go after cities that currently do not have an NFL team, but have the facilities and capacity to accomodate a team makes perfect sense - no sharing the market. Finally, the choice to play on Friday night is the perfect move; sure high school football is big but I and millions of other football fans out there don’t have kids in high school and could not care less. Give me a great product on a Friday night and I’ll be glued to the set.

Starting a new football league; sounds ludicrous considering the numerous failures of other leagues of the past but that’s just what Bill Hambrecht intends to do.

After years of stirring things up out on Wall Street with his unusual tactics, Bill Hambrecht is once again causing a ruckus. At the youthful age of 62, retirement is not on his agenda as he looks to establish a professional football league that is second only to the National Football League, with the hopes to one day rival the NFL. To stay on track he’s partnered with the likes of Tim Armstrong who is a senior executive with Google, and they’ve already put up $2 million each to hire a C.E.O. and C.O.O. with strong roots from the National Basketball Association. While things are still very preliminary at this point the have chosen the name: the United Football League.

At this point no official decision has been made on which cities will have teams, but speculation is that it won’t be any current NFL cities; current proposed cities include San Antonio, Las Vegas, Mexico City, Orlando and (of course) Los Angeles. Another major key in the success of the league will be that of the ownership which will be 3 fold. The league will own 1/3 of each team, and a major owner owning a second 1/3. The final 1/3 will be owned by the fans themselves who can purchase stock in the teams; the UFL leaders feel as though this will be a major advantage over the NFL as fans will have a vested interest in the success of their team. As well, the contributing parties will provide $30 million each giving a cash flow of $90 million for each team. As of yet the only potential owner to be named is Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.

A great deal of speculation currently surrounds the leagues chances based upon the failure of other football leagues; my guess is that great businessmen understand the risk and if they didn’t see a nice upside then they wouldn’t be taking the chance.