Last week was a big week for the USFL. After hearing reports that the league was in talks with representatives from Birmingham, AL and Jefferson County since October, an event was scheduled this past Tuesday at Protective Stadium to make things official.
The event featured executives from FOX, local politicians and even head coach of the Birmingham Stallions Skip Holtz. The event tuned out to be much more than just announcing the central hub, the league went above and beyond bringing us more details on the opening weekend.
April 16th at 6:30pm CT the Birmingham Stallions will take on the New Jersey Generals, which is set to be simulcast on both NBC and FOX. This will mark the first time since the Super Bowl 1 that a sporting event has been aired across two competing broadcasters. The broadcast is set to be produced by FOX, even going as far as showing the same ads. Additionally, tickets went on sale for only $10 each and free for 15 and under.
That wasn’t all though. Two days later the USFL finally revealed the last two head coaches with another feature on The Herd.
After the big week, we’re now seeing the USFL start to kick into gear on social media. Up until now we’ve seen the individual team accounts mainly share posts from the main league account. But with all eight coaches now known, the team accounts have started to post some more content.
The Houston Gamblers account was first to strike, when on Thursday night they posted a short profile video with head coach Kevin Sumlin.
✅ Physical
✅ Disciplined
✅ Fast
✅ High scoringThat’s what you can bet on this season if @CoachSumlin has anything to say about 🎰 pic.twitter.com/b6oWaZuE84
— Houston Gamblers (@USFLGamblers) January 28, 2022
Since then, we’ve seen the Philadelphia Stars, Pittsburgh Maulers, Michigan Panthers and New Jersey Generals drop similar clips.
Obsessed with football doesn't begin to cover it.
Football is life for Coach Andrus 🏈 pic.twitter.com/NNWb45STq6
— Philadelphia Stars (@USFLStars) January 28, 2022
Nothing motivates Coach Kirby Wilson quite like dropping the hammer on the competition 🔨 pic.twitter.com/rsjp4r8xHS
— Pittsburgh Maulers (@USFLMaulers) January 28, 2022
You'll never meet a head coach more dedicated to leading the troops than Mike Riley 🎖 pic.twitter.com/sbEQiIMza1
— New Jersey Generals (@USFLGenerals) January 28, 2022
"You can leave for 15 minutes during the telecast, but … you'll miss 2 or 3 touchdowns."
Coach Fisher is excited to hang up the fishing rod and get back to high-octane football 🏈 pic.twitter.com/FsmJoMXnnN
— Michigan Panthers (@USFLPanthers) January 31, 2022
It’s not just the team accounts either. Kicking off the week, the USFL social account shared a video detailing all eight head coaches.
Your inaugural USFL head coaches.
Is it spring yet? 🏈 pic.twitter.com/fE3B6S4LeQ
— USFL (@USFL) January 31, 2022
We expect to see more action from the team accounts going forward now. We’ve seen the league ramping up their marketing efforts recently, and now it seems their ready to do the same on social.
Late last week we saw new job listings for the league, most of which are centered around building out those social media teams.
🚨 WE ARE HIRING 🚨
Helping build the @USFL Social accounts has been one of the most unique and fun projects of my career… and now we’re looking for some more creatives to take our content up another level 🧵 pic.twitter.com/I6lk4hMfAz
— Nick Rago (@NickRago) January 26, 2022
The more that these teams grow, the more content we’ll see; naturally. But with these initial promos, and job listings out there the wait in not long at all.
Now that each team now has a face behind it, we’re starting to see the fandoms take shape. Going into the announcement on The Herd the Pittsburgh Maulers led the pack. That was until it was revealed that Jeff Fisher would be taking the reins for the franchise. Since then, they’ve seen steady growth on social, even jumping into first place becoming the most followed USFL franchise.
It’s quite amazing how much we’ve learned about the USFL in such a short time, it really goes to show that there’s a lot going on in the background that we don’t have insight into. Ultimately, the league is doing everything it needs to do, and things are looking pretty smooth from here until kickoff.
On the latest edition of The USFL Podcast, the game witnessed the new social activity live. Make sure you go check it out!
With less than three months until kickoff the marketing machine is picking up speed. Over the weekend FOX aired a new promo for the USFL during the NFC Championship game between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers. This would be the first 30-second ad for the league, as the first five were all 10-seconds. It’s even speculated that we may see yet another league promo drop next Sunday during Nascar’s Clash at the Coliseum.
What are you looking forward to the most in the upcoming USFL season? Let us know down in the comments below or join the conversation on Discord.
