BY RICK CURTI
Welcome to another edition of Ricks Rants. Today we will be discussing, what happened to the Alliance?
I’m surprised they couldn’t last a whole season. But with all the problems they had from the very beginning, we should be asking how did it last as long as it did?
This week I have seen everyone blame Carolina Hurricanes Owner Tom Dundon for the leagues downfall. He purposely shut the league down when talks with the NFL Players Union went south. Even I was blaming Dundon but now I have a different take on this. The person to be blame that nobody is talking about is Charlie Ebersol, The Former Co-Founder Of The AAF.
From day one he said he had enough funding for 6 years and that was a massive lie. He claimed he had tons of investors and we all know, Dundon was the only investor. They would be a league nobody has seen. They would have success unlike other start up leagues, like the UFL and of course it wasn’t true. Looks like Charlie was way over his head on this. I feel bad that he dragged Bill Polian and players like Hines Ward, Jarred Allen and others like Daryl Johnston to be bamboozled by him.
Why are people blaming Dundon? He promised to make an investment of over 200 million dollars and had only spent over 70 million so far on his new investment. It was a money pit from the very beginning. Would you keep investing when you already lost 70 million dollars? Why was he the only one investing in it?
He had already paid the players when reports that the league couldn’t even make payroll. Once he decided to stop investing, the league shut down. Dundon is a businessman and I wouldn’t invest in something when I already had lost millions.
Charlie Ebersol lied to everyone. The sad part is the fans and the staff lose out in all of this. You would think he would of learned from his fathers mistake when he partnered with Vince McMahon on the XFL in 2001. I hope Charlie doesn’t get involved in business again.
Maybe he can go into politics and make promises he can’t keep like some of our elected officials. What do you think? Do you blame Tom Dundon? Is Charlie getting a pass?
