Note: This is an OpEd that includes both facts gleaned from various sources and speculation as well. Keep that in mind and enjoy.

For a few weeks last fall and again in the winter the news was flowing fast and furious directly from sources within the UFL – and even from Commissioner Huyghue. Everything seemed headed towards kickoff in 2008 when I  spoke to the commissioner around the time of the NFL Combine and found out that the league was pushed back to ‘09. Since then a few media savvy folks have come on board the effort and begun to clamp down on the news leaks.

This has been distressing for us as we have not been able to bring all of you news. That said, the occasional leak has  arrived from the league – with the latest being from a Peter King article in Sports Illustrated which has garnered quite a bit of buzz this week. Spanning noon till midnight on Monday, a Google Blog search yielded more than 90 blogs writing about the King UFL mention.

The official site also prelaunched at http://www.ufl-football.com – and the league, and we here at UFLA, would like to remind you all to sign up for the newsletter so that you can all receive advance word from the league moving forward.

In other words – despite the relative silence, things are moving forward with this effort.

Here’s what we know:

-    The United Football League has three offices open  – Jacksonville, Florida , New York City, and New Jersey.
-    The league has numerous employees with many of the executives in the league having come over from high profile positions within the NFL.
-    Michael Huyghue, the commissioner, has been traveling around the country promoting the effort to influential agents, etc.
-    The UFL had people at the NFL Combine, the scouting combines for the Senior Bowl, etc.
-    According to Michael Huyghue, six locations are confirmed/likely: San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orlando, and Hartford.
-    San Antonio, Memphis, and Salt Lake City should not be counted out – as every indication seems to be that they are attempting to add more teams – and hope to have eight at kickoff.
-     http://www.ufl-football.com should launch fully within the month. Lightmaker is a tremendously talented web design/PR company which has been contracted to develop the site – ie: the league is spending money.
-    The league claimed to have several sponsorship deals and a television package in place for the ‘08 launch which should carry over to ‘09. Every indication I’ve received said that is still the case.
-    The salary cap will be $20,000,000 for players and $3,000,000 for the coaching staff.
-    Mark Cuban is one owner. William Hambrecht is likely to be heading up an ownership group for the San Francisco franchise. Tim Armstrong will likely continue his involvement behind the scenes. According to Peter King, via Michael Huyghue it seems, the Wilpon Group which owns the New York Mets will be owning the New York UFL team – although recent reports have had differing news and it seems likely that negotiations are ongoing on that front. Hartford would be owned by Northland Investment Corporation if those negotiations move forward well – although Nortland said they might place a team elsewhere.

We don’t know who the other owners are, although we have heard rumors. Allegedly the league has considered owning two franchises itself and  could do so to reach eight teams, which many pundits consider the minimum necessary for a truly national footprint for a new league. We don’t know yet who will play for the league, although every indication, including from the King article, has been that a tremendous amount of interest is developing among players – particularly 3rd stringers, practice squad players, etc. that the UFL is targeting.

We don’t know who will be airing UFL games, although rumors have ranged from TNT to USA to Spike to Fox Sports. Whoever it is, the announcement is likely to come with the formal announcement in a few short weeks.

What the league has seemed to have done so far is a credit to the effort in a difficult economic climate. One of the reasons that we likely haven’t heard more – and one of the reasons that it has taken so long to reach the formal announcement – has been that it has simply taken them longer to get things into development. It isn’t the easiest economy to launch an undertaking of this size and therefore we shouldn’t expect things to fall into place as easy as they would have in the late 90’s when the economy was booming – that is one of the reasons the announcement hasn’t come as early as the UFL had hoped. It isn’t to say things aren’t going well, just that things simply haven’t always gone easy.

The full site for the UFL should launch within a month or so according to the league, and in the interim perhaps more information will leak out. It seems the league is getting very close to a formal announcement, at which point they wish to announce everything at once, as previously reported. They are currently finalizing details, formalizing negotiations and trying to figure out what date is best to launch the league with maximum exposure.

I believe a market exists for the league, as evidenced in part by the buzz stirred up just this week with the King article. They certainly have a lot of work left to do and the formal announcement will showcase whether or not they have gotten to where they need to in order to kickoff in a year. This effort has been developed over the course of more than a year and a half by dozens of employees with millions of dollars spent on it – this isn’t intended to be a pipe dream and they don’t want it to be a fly by night venture. They have been nothing but professional in their communications with me and I fully expect the announcement to be top class -  altough the real challenge will be to see if they ever make the field, which is no guarantee. That said this is the best funded effort since the XFL and the best funded and best planned effort since the USFL folded. Neither of those leagues succeeded, but they did hit the field which I expect will be the case with the United Football League.

Alternative football fans everywhere are hoping that is the case, because maybe – just maybe – this will be the effort that topples the NFL monopoly , or at least the effort that opens up the game and brings fun back to professional football.

Keep checking with UFL Access, post in the forums, and sign up on ufl-football.com to keep in touch with the news as it begins to come fast and furious. We will be adding a lot of information, reporting on the news as it comes, and further adding to and developing the site as the league prepares for launch in the next few weeks.