A New Haven-based startup pro football league plans to concentrate its inaugural season in the football-crazed Southeast and Midwest rather than in Connecticut, where college basketball is still king.
United National Gridiron League CEO Marvin Tomlin said that while he gave Connecticut some consideration, he was convinced by advisers to hold off on adding a Nutmeg State team for at least a few years.
“Because we’re from Connecticut, we wanted a team here,” Tomlin said. “But when we put the idea out there, it wasn’t as well-received as we thought it would be. We decided to consider markets that have a strong football background.”
All of the eight teams playing in the UNGL’s first season are located in the Southeast and Midwest, home to some of the country’s most devoted college football fans. Tomlin said his league can piggyback off the fans’ devotion to college teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten Conference.
And though the University of Connecticut’s football team has emerged as a Big East Conference competitor over the past couple of years, UConn men’s and women’s basketball remains the state’s most popular spectator sport, which presents one of several challenges to launching a team in Connecticut.
Tough Draw
Another challenge is the state’s divided allegiances to the New York Giants, New York Jets and New England Patriots.
Tomlin asks, “You’ll get Connecticut fans to travel to Massachusetts and New York to view games, but are you going to draw fans from New York and New Jersey to come to Connecticut?”
Tomlin doesn’t have to look too far to discover that Hartford is a tough draw for sports teams. The popular Arena Football League, which canceled its 2009 season because of financial troubles, brought franchises to the Hartford Civic Center on two separate occassions during the 1990s. However, both lasted only two seasons before bolting Hartford for another city.
The Hartford Wolfpack, the New York Rangers’ American Hockey League affiliate, averages 3,913 fans per game, ranking 19th of 29 teams. That’s compared to its first season, when it drew more than 7,000 per game in 1997, the year the National Hockey League’s Hartford Whalers skipped town.
Even UConn men’s basketball attendance slumped last year, drawing an average of almost 13,500 fans to games played in the XL Center, down about 3,000 from the 2004-05 season.
One bright spot has been the Connecticut Sun of the Women’s National Basketball Association, whose average attendance increased from 6,025 per game in 2003 to 7,644 last year. Formerly based in Orlando, the franchise moved to Connecticut based on the popularity of the UConn women’s basketball team.
WNBA Model
If the United Football League — another startup professional league that will have a Hartford team — was similarly able to recruit former UConn standouts, that could generate interest in Hartford, said Janet Fink, a UConn sports management professor. Still, with the UFL playing on Thursday and Friday nights during the height of the NFL and college seasons, football fans may already have their fill of the sport, Fink said.
“I don’t see how they compete,” she added.
Gil Fried, chairman of the Sport, Hospital and Tourism Management department at the University of New Haven, questioned whether the UFL could establish a following, even if it attracted former UConn players. Fried, who was involved in the marketing of several failed professional leagues in the 1980s, maintains that fans of the college game are more devoted to the team than to specific players.
“College fans’ allegiances are with the program, not individual athletes. When a player graduates, it’s like, ‘You’re gone, so what’s going to happen to my team next year?’” Fried said.
Michael Huyghue, a former National Football League executive and now commissioner of the startup UFL, isn’t dissuaded about Hartford’s prospects. His league plans to kick off its inaugural season in October.
Huyghue, a Windsor native who said there is potential for a professional sports team in Hartford, believes that the New England Patriots missed an opportunity when they scrapped plans to move to Hartford a decade ago. “I think it was the best place for the Patriots to go,” he said. “I know abundantly clear how thirsty Hartford is for good quality sports.”
