So reading the various message board posts and articles about the recent AAF and XFL news I was wondering about a question that came up.

Should AAA level development football be held in the spring or in the fall?

Some have argued that spring would fill a gap for football fans and help develop a fan base not needing to "compete" against NFL/College/High School etc.

Others have pointed out that developmental leagues for baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer all run at the same time as the major leagues. This is when you would traditionally see these particular sports and it would allow the parent clubs to call up players as needed.

Thoughts on this?

They won't get the money so they won't get the talent pool to go head to head with the NFL. So spring/summer is the only time frame to really put it out there. The CFL wouldn't offer much of a competitive advantage--they are spring.

You call it "AAA football"... the season isn't the issue. If you want to see how financially viable AAA football is, just look at AAA baseball.

In AAA baseball, the players, managers, and coaches are all being paid by the MLB parent club. That's millions of dollars per year that the AAA franchise owner doesn't have to pay, which is why, if they have good management, a AAA franchise can make a modest profit just on ticket sales, concessions, parking, and advertising/sponsorships.

The billionaire who just killed off the AAF wanted to change the AAF's model in midstream to one where the AAF didn't have to pay its own players. Convincing the NFL to loan players to AAF at no cost to AAF would have made the financial burden more similar to minor league baseball, but there's no reason for the NFL to loan out players with no strings attached, which even MLB doesn't do. The NFL would just say, "If we were going to do that, we'd just own the minor league ourselves," as they did with the WLAF many years ago. Baseball only continues to do it out of inertia, because it's a system that's been entrenched in baseball for 100 years or so.

Colleges perform the function well enough.

There's really no incentive for anyone to form a minor league football system unless it was making pretty good money. The odds of that are slim though.

I think the main problem with developmental football leagues is the expiration date on a football player is very short. There really isn't an 'in-between' period for football players where they go from young and inexperienced to adequately trained. The learning curve isn't super steep because so much of the game comes down to athleticism and body type.

Football is so physical that you either develop in college or you're probably not good enough to play. If you're not good enough then all the developmental time won't make much difference if for no other reason than it won't take long for your body to give out.

If a kid doesn't already possess a great deal of athleticism and the proper size then it's extraordinarily rare he'll be able to learn the requisite skill set before he's too old to be of any use.

So from the NFL's perspective, why dump a bunch of money into a developmental system that will only occasionally produce a player good enough to move up? Especially when their usefulness wears off pretty quick? They're going to make billions either way so no need to cut into the profit margin just for an occasional diamond in the rough.