Paul Pelosi seems to be loving every minute of being an owner in the United Football League. He has traveled to many of the games and before that he traveled to many of the events leading up to the launch of the league. Everywhere he traveled he seemed to have a smile on his face – owning a football team just seems to be fun for Pelosi.

Pelosi told me that he would give the first year of the UFL a 7 or 8. He went on to explain that, “You listened to Michael Huyghue speak, he is doing a great job and he knows his stuff. By and large our product was terrific also. We have to review our marketing and advertising campaigns but we will improve those.”

“The other thing that is important to note is that when we did the financial numbers for this first year we put nothing, or next to nothing, for ticket sales. So the attendance figures didn’t impact our bottom line in a negative or positive way. We understood that sponsors and television were the key for our revenue and that will remain moving forward,” said Pelosi.

He admitted, as did other league officials, that it was somewhat of a mistake to have the California Redwoods live in Arizona and just come in for games. He said that, “Look, the media loves Dennis Green. They wanted him to do interviews but he couldn’t fly in from Arizona for a round of interviews when he was rushing to put together a team in three weeks. Moving forward the teams will be in the local market and that will help.”

As for what local market that remains unclear. Pelosi acknowledged that he loved Sacramento as a market and with facility upgrades that are going on now it becomes increasingly likely. He said that the Redwoods had also looked at UC Davis, in addition to San Jose. Speaking of San Jose Pelosi said that, “My old friend Bill Walsh loves the idea of a team at San Jose State. He told us that he thought San Jose would be great for the league as we were getting this off of the ground.”

San Francisco fans should take heart in the fact that Pelosi still believes San Francisco could play a role in the Redwoods future saying that, “The fans we had were great, we just didn’t reach enough of them. The games were terrific that we played there and those who attended saw good football.”

He went on to say that San Francisco may still see games in late October and November moving forward.