Ok, lets break down what the UFL is.
The UFL is the ‘brainchild’ of Mark Cuban and a few other rich guys. The UFL is a new Professional (American) Football League. Essentially, Cuban believes that football fans desire their sport so much that they would watch it year round or (on Fridays?) during the fall. Personally, I agree with this idea in the context that I want football year-round. Arena Football simply isn’t football. And Canadian football?…please.
The problem that NFL Europe and the XFL (the football league sponsored by the WWF/WWE) suffered from was a lack of being taken seriously by most people, and rightfully so.
However, I see a possibility for the UFL to exist if no where else but in the hearts and minds of gamers everywhere. While the NFL has done everything possible to encourage monopolies of the sport of football in its foundation and in the video game industry; the UFL can take steps to combat this.
How can this be done?
2K Sports. This company was essentially a victim of a broken market economy in video game licensing. EA Sports bought the rights to everything NFL. This crushed 2K’s chances of making a licensed football video game for the next 5-6 years.
However, in 2007 2K gave every gamer hope for the future. They released All Pro Football 2K8. While this game included former NFL Legends, it contained little else. It was stripped down and lacked the features that many NFL 2K fans and Madden fans alike had come to expect in football games. This was primarily “Franchise Mode”.
2K basically said their reason for not having a Franchise mode revolved around the fact that their game had no way of having a ‘history’ of a league. They figured that it would be silly to make another version of Blitz: The League. That made sense.
However, I believe that if Cuban were to spearhead a sponsorship campaign for 2K Sports UFL Football there would be a little more popularity for the game in reality and in virtual reality.
In this first installment, you could open up many options for the game itself. Sense the UFL doesn’t exist besides in the minds of dreamers like Cuban and myself, it would open up creativity in the video game. APF2K8 allowed the gamer to create a team from colors to the City and team name. However, this lost a lot of luster once you realized that the league you joined only lasted a year. You got to use Legends, which got old pretty quick (no pun intended). There was really no replayability in the game itself. If you played online, you may find a few good games and maybe a good league to join. When all was said and done, the game was really a half-hearted attempt to bring interest back to 2K football. Interest came back, but people were soon disappointed when there was no Franchise Mode.
If 2K wants to make a smart business move, they should contact Cuban about the UFL. The game could revert back to the Franchise mode and presentation of NFL 2K5. However, there will be a pool of thousands of players to choose from (all of them fictional) when you create your team and the UFL. There would also be the option of bringing this option online.
Once online, there would be multiple leagues where you have the option to Draft an Expansion league where everyone picks their own players from the pool; or start from Default Rosters. The Default rosters could be pre-assigned teams and cities already filled on the game.
The possibilities are endless.
