United Football League: 3 Cities That Would Succeed in League

Since the announcement of the Virginia franchise, I've heard several of the names being throw around as potential homes for the next UFL expansion team.

Some of the more obvious suggestions I do agree with, but there are a couple of cities that have great potential to help the UFL expand.

Here are the top three in no particular order.

This one really is the most obvious and the easiest case to support.

Like many other cities that have been passed over by the NFL, San Antonio has had pro ball before. The city had the original Texans during the short-lived CFL South Division (Canadian) and the Gunslingers in the USFL.

So why should they have a UFL team?

Well, I'm going to address the failure of the Gunslingers first. The failure of this football team was mostly due to ownership and the structure of the USFL expansion at the time.

The Gunslingers were doomed from the start by the shallow pockets of the owner and the short term thinking of the USFL.

The Texans franchise in the CFL was not a failure, however. In fact, the team was excluded from the list of teams to be dissolved in the collapse of the Southern Division.

Also on that list was Jim Speros' Baltimore Stallions, Norfolk’s new expansion owner. In the end, Speros decided the best thing to do was move his franchise to Canada. Had the the Baltimore Stallions not moved to Montreal in the face of NFL pressure in their city, there might not be a Houston Texans franchise.

Here is another state void of pro sports with a strong college football following.

While the state was passed up by the CFL and USFL, the city of Little Rock had a team in the Continental Football League called the Diamonds. The team, along with the league, folded in 1969 after five years.

In 2000, the AF2 brought arena football to Little Rock and the team would thrive for nine years before moving to the IFL. War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock hosts various college and high school games and would work well for a new UFL franchise.

An Arkansas franchise would also provide another team in fly over country that would help close the gaps between the coasts.

For starters, there is no major league team of any kind in Alabama.

Besides some minor league baseball teams, most people are fans of the state's collegiate teams. Alabama has had a team in every upstart league since the 60s, including the Stallions in the USFL and the Barracudas in the CFL.

Legion Field in Birmingham was the home field for both those teams and would be more than adequate. Currently, the facility houses the UAB Blazers from Conference USA and the PapaJohns.com Bowl.

While the owners of other teams did have to contend with a drop in attendance during the college football season, this is not something that can't be overcome.

Now all of this is contingent on the following criteria.

First, the UFL needs to retain its sanity and continue to expand cautiously. Second, only owners ready for the financial commitment are granted franchises instead of those with assumed fortunes. And lastly, if the UFL takes advantage of the scorn some cities have towards the NFL they might find a loyal fan base.

When the CFL expanded to the south, they used the anti-NFL sentiment from it's loss of the Colts to energize the citizens of Baltimore. If the UFL fills in the gaps left by the NFL and if they avoid direct competition, they could have the formula that works.

So until the next city is announced and we learn the fate of Hartford, we can only watch the Destroyers develop this season and see how the citizens of Virginia respond to their new franchise.