Football fans around the world can’t seem to get enough – especially in the offseason – and the Alliance of American Football is looking to quench that thirst. The Alliance of American Football league is set to kickoff in February 2019 – shortly after the Super Bowl is played – and it’s going to generate a lot of attention. Sports like baseball, basketball and hockey have longer seasons, and golf and tennis go virtually all year round. Football is arguably more popular than any of them, so it will be interesting to see how it fares.
The model of the Alliance of American Football is quite simple. For starters, they’re looking to fill that void where there’s no football after February until September. Secondly, they’re tapping into college players, CFL or players who aren’t good enough to make the cut in the NFL, to build a league. Lastly, they’re making some minor tweaks to the game. We’ve seen this concept before with the XFL and NFL Europe, but this feels different as some big names are behind it. Charlie Ebersol, one of the most powerful men in television, is one of the founder, and Bill Polian and Troy Polamalu are in the league’s front office. They’ve also landed a broadcast partnership with CBS. Let’s take a closer look at the league, who is involved and how to bet on it.
How To Bet On The Alliance of American Football
Betting on the AAF will be quite similar to betting on any other type of football. It will take some adjusting to betting on it as there is far less kicking (we’ll go over that in detail below) but for the most part, the game should be played similarly to the NFL and college as we know it.
When you’re looking at the lines, you’ll see two main types of odds: the point spread or the moneyline. With a point spread, that’s a margin of victory. What that means is that a team has to finish within that margin to win. When you see the odds, there will be a minus or a plus sign in front of the odds. If the team is -3.5, that means they need to win by four or more for you to cover. When a team has a plus sign in front of the odds, that means they are getting points. If they are +3.5, that means they can lose by three, two or one, or win the game, and you still win your bet.
In terms of the moneyline, you might see odds like -200 or +150. The minus sign indicates how much you would bet to win $100. In this case, a $200 bet at -200 would return $100 in profit if you won. On the other hand, a plus sign denotes how much you’d win if you bet $100. In this case, you’d win $150 if you bet $100 and won your bet.
These are the basics of betting on any type of football and that should apply to the AAF once we start seeing the lines pop up on the board early next year.
AAF Teams
The AAF will begin with eight teams. As of now, four team names have been announced and four other team names are still to come. All of the teams have announced stadiums where they’ll be playing. They’ve also announced head coaches. As you can see below, there are some quality names in terms of coaching talent. Mike Martz, Brad Childress and Steve Spurrier were all well-respected offensive minds in their time. It’s a bit surprising to see that they’re not in the NFL or college game but this will help the AAF with visibility. Spurrier, in particular, could surely have a college football head coaching job if he wanted.
In terms of how the teams are constructed, each will have 50 players on the roster. There will be territorial draft to kick things off where each team will be assigned five colleges, a CFL team and four NFL teams that they can choose from their region. We’re likely to see a mix of known college names that didn’t make it or former NFLers, like Trent Richardson, who is looking for another shot. Players are expected to be signing three-year, non-guaranteed contracts worth $250,00 per year. The contracts are expected to have escape clauses if players manage to perform well in the AAF and then get a shot in the NFL.
Atlanta Legends
Stadium: Georgia State Stadium
Head Coach: Brad Childress
Birmingham Iron
Stadium: Legion Field
Head Coach: Tim Lewis
Memphis Express
Stadium: Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium
Head Coach: Mike Singletary
Orlando Apollos
Stadium: Spectrum Stadium
Head Coach: Steve Spurrier
Alliance Phoenix
Stadium: Sun Devil Stadium
Head Coach: Rick Neuheisel
Alliance Salt Lake
Stadium: Rice–Eccles Stadium
Head Coach: Dennis Erickson
Alliance San Antonio
Stadium: Alamodome
Head Coach: Mike Riley
Alliance San Diego
Stadium: SDCCU Stadium
Head Coach: Mike Martz
AAF QB Draft
As we get closer and closer to the kickoff of the inaugural AAF season, we now have some details on the rosters after the inaugural quarterback draft.
Remember that dozens of players have already signed up with the eight franchises, so this draft was solely focused on quarterbacks. The teams had the opportunity to either protect or pick one quarterback per round, meaning that they could keep a quarterback that was allocated to them, or draft another one.
The top four picks in the draft were protected as the San Diego Fleet protected Josh Johnson, the Atlanta Legends protected Aaron Murray, the Memphis Express protected Troy Cook and the San Antonio Commanders protected Dustin Vaughan. The first pick in the draft was Luis Perez by the Birmingham Iron.
There were some familiar names taken in the draft, including Christian Hackenberg, who was selected with the seventh pick of the second round by the Memphis Express. As you might recall, Hackenberg starred at Penn State and was eventually selected in the second round (51st overall) of the 2016 NFL Draft by the New York Jets. He never transpired into a starter and has completely fallen out of the league, but now he’ll get another shot at football in the AAF.
Some other familiar names that were drafted were former Miami Hurricanes quarterback Stephen Morris (Round 2, Orlando), former Tennessee product Matt Simms (Round 2, Atlanta) and former Toledo standout, Logan Woodside (Round 3, San Antonio). Woodside is the all-time leading passer at Toledo with 10,083 passing yards.
Rules
One of the biggest questions everyone has right now is how much will this game look like the NFL. In terms of the rules, we’re looking at no kickoffs. That’s the first biggest change. All halves, overtime periods and possessions (after a score) will start on the team’s 25-year line. Instead of an onside kick, teams will have a shot to keep the ball by starting on their own 35 and picking up a first down (on one play).
Kicking will also be cut down after a score as there will be no extra point kicks. Every team must go for a two-point conversion after a score.
The play clock will only be 30 seconds, which is 10 seconds faster than the NFL. Clearly, they are looking to speed things up in this game. The league is hoping to get games finished in about 150 minutes. While in baseball, fans tend to complain that games go to long, that hasn’t been an issue for football fans. But maybe this is something that the NFL might adopt if it works well.
We still don’t quite know how the playoff structure will look but it’s expected to fairly standard with the best teams making the playoffs and then going through a knockout tournament.
