Game Thread: Pittsburgh Maulers at Philadelphia Stars, Sat April 23, noon ET, FOX

[Tank55]

Why do I hear crowd noise?

They ought to be piping in crowd noise, to be honest.

I think I would give any "fan" who walks in before kickoff a $1 bill, and any fan who leaves after the final whistle another $1 bill.

[MarkNelson]

Yeah you are correct. Without the piped-in crown noise it would be eerie.

[MGB01]

Hey here's an idea, maybe we'll have a game without a missed kick

What, four misses this week? BUT THE LEAGUE LISTENED TO THE KICKERS!!!!!!!

[johnnyangryfuzzball]

A bubble for a new league isn't good. It's fine for established leagues like the NHL (two hubs in Canada in 2020), NBA (a bubble in Florida in 2020) and MLB (post season bubble in Arlington, Texas in 2020) because they know that the fans will return to their leagues but it's not good for the USFL and it won't be good for the XFL if they do it.

The bubble was a necessary evil for leagues that had substantial TV revenue (and the ratings to support it) in a pandemic where there wasn't going to be spectators anyway. We're two years into this mess, and we've all pretty much given up on the idea of capacity restrictions having a permanent impact. The bubble notion has outlived its usefulness.

The other factor, of course, is that TSL was at least halfway smart enough to not associate its teams with individual cities. The USFL went ahead with this comical notion of giving city names to teams that will never play in their home venues and making people believe that those teams represent them. That's only worked in Michigan, and even then probably because they have a Michigan starting QB. (Though you can have that in a traditional league as well without naming a team after the city; see the DC Defenders following in Buffalo.)

So if TSL, for example, had opened up its stadium to spectators, you'd've probably seen a fairly even number of fans for each game. With the USFL, you have a solid fan base for the Stallions, but bupkus for the other seven teams.

[MGB01]

Hardaway wouldn't have come down in bounds anyway, besides playing up drops only makes people say "Sixers/Raptors on yet?", come on now JK

[MGB01]

Where the hell was this Mauler offense on Monday? Granted the turnovers have greatly helped out, but Love wasn't even close to throwing those type of passes last time out.

[GDAWG]

Where the hell was this Mauler offense on Monday? Granted the turnovers have greatly helped out, but Love wasn't even close to throwing those type of passes last time out.

they mentioned that Kirby Wilson spent time adjusting his game plan and talking to the NFL coaches he was working with (Norv Turner, Mike Tomlin, Pete Carroll) to make sure the mistakes he made on Monday would hot happen again.

[MGB01]

Three pointer coming, and there it is

[MGB01]

Why did Andrus just call a timeout?

[MarkNelson]

Why did Andrus just call a timeout?

He wants to win it on the field and not on the clock??