By: Mike Anthony

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

It’s been more than 30 years, and some people still haven’t learned their lesson.

For the better part of the last half century, football has been the most popular sport in America.

The Super Bowl has supplanted the World Series as the pinnacle of the sports-watching season and the last decade or two has seen college football rise to second place behind the NFL in terms of attention paid to any specific sports season.

But that still doesn’t mean that there’s room for more football.

The Alliance of American Football kicked off its inaugural season just a week after the Patriots defeated the Rams in the Super Bowl. The upstart league drew some ratings and attention in early weeks from folks who weren’t quite ready to settle into a winter of basketball, hockey and early-season golf.

The AAF assumed to fly high where other leagues, such as the USFL and the XFL had failed previously.

As it turns out, the AAF wasn’t even as successful as those previous failures.

Just eight weeks into its’ 10-week season, the AAF has shut down all football operations. The league didn’t even make it two weeks in before a desperate infusion of additional cash was needed to cover paychecks and even that couldn’t float the league through its first regular season.

There’s no shame to be had by the players and franchises of the AAF. A few hundred football players were out there doing their best to maybe catch the eye of a scout who could get them to the next level. Good for them for chasing their dreams.

But as for the executives and corporate-types who continue to hatch these ‘professional’ football leagues, it’s really time to take a step back.

The immediate failure of the AAF – and what can be assumed to be an uphill battle for the reiteration of the XFL next season – has served home the fact that there is a saturation point for even the most beloved sport in the country.

Fans go nuts over their favorite NFL team, but maybe that’s because they only have to make a 5-6 month investment.

College fan bases show up by the hundreds of thousands to tailgate and cheer and travel to far-reaching bowl game destinations, but that’s still just a few months of commitment.

The AAF – like other leagues before it – has crapped out on the same faulty line of thinking. The fact that America loves football doesn’t mean it has the ability to tolerate sub-par versions of the game through an entire calendar year.

A sea of players that plunged head-first into a new league shows that there is an ample supply of talent that is willing to keep toiling away in hopes of making it to the NFL someday. Unfortunately, the AAF was never the place for those players.

There may well be a league or program that can serve as a stepping stone for players to move from college into the pros, or that can provide a chance for former pros to get back into

the game. But the AAF was just another league that served the front offices and league owners far more than the players.

Just like the failed leagues before it, the AAF promised ‘FOOTBALL’ and not much else.

And unfortunately for the AAF, football fans have remained consistent in believing that there can be too much of a good thing.