Ben Fischer on XFL Insider Podcast

[MarkNelson]

Good insight and speculation from Sports Business Journal's Ben Fischer. Starts with a fun interview with the Gridiron Crew's Colin Durina, Nick Ernst, Dallas Hartwell and Aidan Hickey, where they discuss the agency and their goals for providing opportunities to athletes.

[4th&long]

Good insight and speculation from Sports Business Journal's Ben Fischer. Starts with a fun interview with the Gridiron Crew's Colin Durina, Nick Ernst, Dallas Hartwell and Aidan Hickey, where they discuss the agency and their goals for providing opportunities to athletes.

One point on Fischer... when talking about the AFL-NFL merger he said not all AFL teams came over... that is not correct. Yes the larger NFL was the successor but the AFC contained all the AFL teams including expansion teams AND established NFL teams were migrated to the AFC for balance. So even a Ben Fischer can get his facts wrong.

He may be confusing that with the AAFC NFL merger in which Cleveland Brown SF and Baltimore Colts merged with the NFL and other teams did not (that occured in 1950.

On Russ getting the merged Leagues CEO position. Since the USFL has no Russ B equivalent it only made sense that the one CEO among them would remain CEO.

[GDAWG]

Good insight and speculation from Sports Business Journal's Ben Fischer. Starts with a fun interview with the Gridiron Crew's Colin Durina, Nick Ernst, Dallas Hartwell and Aidan Hickey, where they discuss the agency and their goals for providing opportunities to athletes.

One point on Fischer... when talking about the AFL-NFL merger he said not all AFL teams came over... that is not correct. Yes the larger NFL was the successor but the AFC contained all the AFL teams including expansion teams AND established NFL teams were migrated to the AFC for balance. So even a Ben Fischer can get his facts wrong.

He may be confusing that with the AAFC NFL merger in which Cleveland Brown SF and Baltimore Colts merged with the NFL and other teams did not (that occured in 1950.

On Russ getting the merged Leagues CEO position. Since the USFL has no Russ B equivalent it only made sense that the one CEO among them would remain CEO.

I read that in order for all of the AFL teams to approve of the merger, this was one of the stipulations: that all AFL teams, including expansion teams are guaranteed to join the NFL. This stipulation was also the reason the legendary Paul Brown came back to the NFL. He had seen the AFL as an inferior league, but joined the AFL when he was told his team, the Cincinnati Bengals would join the NFL. The merger got the legendary coach back in the NFL.

[MarkNelson]

Fischer is a good source, but...

From this interview we can see Fischer probably has inside sources or is being fed information by the league (something we have seen in the past) However, you might notice he lapses into what even he calls speculation.