I've recently started getting into watching football. There's a great amount of tactical depth, and I really appreciate that it's one of the few sports where th

I've recently started getting into watching football. There's a great amount of tactical depth, and I really appreciate that it's one of the few sports where the coach has a very noticeable impact on the outcome of the game. It's essentially like watching a physical version of chess. In light of the whole concussion thing, it's somewhat interesting that there are two new football leagues launching in the US soon. The AAF (aaf.com) recently launched this past weekend and is positioning itself as sort of a minor league to the NFL. There's also the XFL, which is a relaunch of sorts (it existed briefly in the early 2000s), and seems to be setting itself up to be a faster version of the NFL. Both of these new leagues do have rule changes that are there to speed up the game, and marginally improve player safety. Eventually, I would suspect that NFL teams will be able to send some of their practice team players, and players they want to get another look at before cutting, to the AAF for more development. The AAF seems to have had a moderately successful weekend launch. At least to the extent that there were no catastrophic failures. A lot of the players who like playing football seem to really like playing football (i.e. they had opportunities to go pro (getting paid actual money) or semi-pro (college in the US) in other sports, and still chose football over them), so I don't think it'll go away entirely unless middle and high schools stop offering the game completely.