ESPN.com just launched a feature on the United Football League. It is a great piece for the league as the news of the UFL slowly spreads – especially since ESPN is effectively the go-to sports media property today. The piece also currently has UFL Commissioner Michael Huyghue on the front page of ESPN.com – priceless exposure for the league.

The article discusses the challenges facing the league, the structure, a potential IPO, and features Jim Fassel and others sharing their opinion as to the possibilities of the United Football League.

Below are excerpts:

Carl Peterson was the most successful executive in the late, great United States Football League, which during the mid-1980s tried to carve out a niche in the NFL-dominated pro football world. His Philadelphia/Baltimore Stars won the last two championships in the league’s three-year existence; and later, he spent two decades as the top football man for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Recently, Peterson was asked to assess the viability of another would-be challenger to the NFL, the United Football League, which kicks off a six-week premiere season this coming October. After making a number of duly diligent calls — including conversations with two of the new league’s four head coaches — Peterson offered an insightful and detailed analysis.

When asked if the league would succeed, Peterson paused, chuckled, then paused again.

“Extremely difficult,” he said in his deep baritone. “This is a precipitous time because the economy is affecting all of professional sports, even the National Football League.”

Yes, even the NFL is reportedly in the process of cutting 150 jobs, 14 percent of its workforce. So how can another new professional football league possibly survive, even if it has an initially modest business plan?

“If you look at the definition of visionary,” said Michael Huyghue, the UFL’s commissioner, “it’s doing something when everybody else is sitting on their hands.”

…

“The presumption is, ‘Don’t you know this doesn’t work? Look at the history books. You must be a glutton for punishment,’” Huyghue said. “They thought it was a pretty big reach.

“But once I explained things to people — the underserved markets, the quality of athletes out there — I found almost wholesale support to do it. The personnel people we have, GMs from the NFL, the head coaches … these people couldn’t all be drinking the Kool-Aid.”

…

The underlying premise of the UFL’s launch is to meet untapped demand.

League executives cite a 2007 ESPN/The Sports Network poll indicating that half of those who describe themselves as avid NFL fans have never attended a game. Scaling UFL tickets at an average price of $20, the reasoning goes, should make the new league’s games an easy destination and turn the UFL into an attractive alternative in these difficult economic times.

“Ironically, we’re thinking our message might get better heard,” said Frank Vuono, the UFL’s chief operating officer. “You can’t be economically viable and compete with the NFL. We need to be smaller, smarter and more mobile.

“We have pretty humble expectations.”

Of course, that’s what executives of most of the earlier leagues said when they entered the business of professional football. Small, at least at the outset, is the cautious credo.

Source: ESPN.com.

The article goes on to feature quotes from VERSUS Executives, the first public comments made since the initial announcement. It also discusses potential NFL labor unrest in 2011, as well as comments from Huyghue as to where he sees the United Football League developing. Either way the article was remarkably well balanced coming from a media property that was extremely dismissive of the XFL when that league launched.