Excerpts from ProFootballWeekly.com’s interview with UFL GM Rick Mueller below:

PFW: What is your ultimate goal as the GM of each team? Are you trying to create a level playing field?

Mueller: In my mind, it’s just to get the best players we can out on the field and to give our coaches the ability to make personnel decisions; give them all the information, help them from that standpoint, gather information on players, locate players, evaluate players just to get the best players for them and then let them make the decisions. Every team in our league has the same evaluations from our standpoint on every player and the same information available to them and basically the same players available to them. So we give them that information, we try to help them as much as possible and then at the end of the day, the coaches – no different from a lot of places – they decide which players they want to go with and we’re here to support them in any way that we can.

PFW: Have you had any cases of the bidding war-type thing where you’ve had to get involved?

Mueller: No we really haven’t because in our league one thing that allows us to do this, other than the quarterbacks, players all make the same amount of money. We kind of take that bidding-war aspect out of it, and it’s been great. We haven’t had a lot of conflicts between the teams … but if it is we usually work it out. These coaches have been good about that and we’ve found a way to work it out and I think everybody feels good about it at the end of the day of what they have and where we came from. And I think we’ve learned a lot of things over the past year that we’ll be able to build on next year from a personnel standpoint and a stocking standpoint, but I feel pretty good about what we were able to do just in putting the product on the field. I feel good about the football talent level. Our goal is next year to add two more teams and I think there are plenty of players out there to be able to field six quality football teams.

PFW: That actually leads right into my next question. I’ve obviously heard these talks about expanding. Where are these talks at? Anything you can tell me in particular?

Mueller: Not necessarily. We’ve talked to a lot of different groups and I know there are a lot of cities that are involved. Primarily the cities that don’t have NFL football: the Hartfords, the Memphises, the Birminghams, the Portland Oregons, the Salt Lake Cities, those types of cities. Los Angeles obviously. So I think what we want to do is build the right way – not get crazy but go to six teams next year in a ten-week season and keep building incrementally so we can kind of manage our costs and do it the right way and not dilute the talent pool out there.

PFW: I’ve heard mentions of Mexico and I think at some point Michael Huyghue mentioned possibly expanding to London. Is that plausible at this point?

Mueller: You know, I think it’s plausible. I think maybe Mexico City would be more plausible from a travel standpoint, but I think that we would consider anything. I think that Europe is down the road a little further, only because of from a travel standpoint you’ve got to build in a bye kind of like they do in the NFL to be able to facilitate that, although we did it in NFL Europe and back in the old NFL Europe – the World Football League – I coached in Sacramento and we played London and Montreal and Frankfurt and Barcelona. It can be done, it’s just a little difficult form a logistics and travel standpoint. I wouldn’t eliminate it but I would say it’s probably farther down the road than probably next year.

PFW: You mentioned a 10-game season. Would the season start a little earlier to give the players a chance to try and jump into the NFL?

Mueller: Yes, that would be our goal. We would probably start them off earlier and then still our goal is always to end on Thanksgiving weekend with a championship game so hopefully we can work that out. That way, the players that we have still have the ability to show what they have and still have the ability to make the most of the NFL once our season is over.

PFW: Have you noticed any scouts at the games or have you been in contact with any NFL teams in regards to that?

Mueller: On a weekly basis, I probably talk to about half the teams in the league one week – at some point in time I’ve probably talked to a member of every NFL team throughout the past month or so. We have had scouts at our games. We’ve had scouts at our practices. We make our film available to them. We want our players to get this exposure. They are here for a reason. They’re here to make a career out of it. Obviously, it helps our league if that happens, so we have an open-door policy and we’ve been very accessible to anyone in the NFL that wants to come and look at our players or talk about our players or evaluate our players in games or practice. And our coaches are all on board with that and they’ve been great about it too. We’ve had a lot of interest from the NFL. Like I’ve said, between me and my staff, we’ve spoken to every NFL team at some point in time and there’s guys I talk to on a weekly basis wanting to know what’s going on with this league and who’s playing well and who’s not.

For the rest: http://profootballweekly.com/blogs/2009/11/11/sit-down-with-ufl-gm-rick-mueller