2010 UFL season


The 2010 United Football League season was the second season of the United Football League. The regular season ran from September 18 to November 20 and featured five teams playing eight games each over a 10-week span. The 2010 season was a relatively competitive one as no team won more than five games, and no team lost more than five. The season ended with the 2010 UFL Championship Game on November 27 at Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Nebraska, where the Las Vegas Locomotives defeated the Florida Tuskers, 23–20.

League changes for 2010

The UFL based its plans for 2010 in part on the lessons learned from its inaugural season in 2009, a year the league considered a modest "dress rehearsal". One of the lessons learned from 2009 was that the league performed better in cities that did not have an NFL presence. To that end, the league relocated two of their 2009 franchises away from NFL markets: The New York Sentinels were relocated to Hartford, Connecticut and were renamed the Hartford Colonials, while the California Redwoods, a team based in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2009, were moved to Sacramento, California and became the Sacramento Mountain Lions. Rentschler Field and Hornet Stadium were the respective home venues for the Colonials and Mountain Lions.
Along with the above franchise shifts, the league set forth to add two new franchises; San Antonio, Texas was considered as the leading candidate for a new team along with Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and Omaha. Civic leaders in San Antonio were cool to the league's advances, however, citing previous failed football teams in the city and the fear that the UFL's presence would hinder the University of Texas at San Antonio's launch of its Division I college football team in 2011. Instead, the league added just one franchise for 2010, the Omaha Nighthawks, who spent 2010 at Rosenblatt Stadium before moving downtown to TD Ameritrade Park Omaha for 2011.
Three of the four charter teams retained their ownership from the previous year, though some sold portions of their teams to minority owners. The lone exception was the Florida Tuskers; Stuart Sternberg pulled out of ownership after the 2009 season and filed legal action against the league for funds he believes is owed to his company, Sunburst Entertainment Group. After spending the offseason and the first four weeks of the season under league ownership, a group led by Joe Theismann purchased the Tuskers in October 2010. NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson agreed to purchase the Omaha Nighthawks. Mark Cuban also loaned the league $5 million in April 2010; in January 2011, he filed a federal lawsuit against the league after they had yet to repay the loan.
To account for the odd number of teams, each team played an eight-game schedule over a 10-week span ; two bye weeks for each team were included. The schedule's double round robin format remained intact. Also, all of the games were being played in the teams' home stadiums, as opposed to the neutral site "barnstorming" approach used for some of the 2009 games.
In another change from 2009, the UFL strengthened local exposure of its teams, including radio coverage and the establishment of training camps and practices at sites in each team's market. Additionally, each team gained their own uniform identity for 2010, loosening them from the standard league colors and uniform template used in 2009.
The 2010 season was a high-water mark for the league. The Sacramento and Omaha franchises were rousing successes with their fanbases, regularly playing to sold-out stadiums with over 20,000 fans a week. The league's salaries would be the highest in its history, peaking at $200,000 a year for a starting quarterback ; as such, the league was able to sign prominent NFL veterans such as Daunte Culpepper and Jeff Garcia. The inability to sustain that level of spending and the systemic lack of sustainable revenue sources to match it became evident shortly after the season, prompting the league's slow unraveling over the course of the next two seasons. The league had intended to lose money the first two seasons in an effort to sell their product to television for a rights fee high enough to sustain spending at 2010 levels, but the networks refused to buy a rights package, instead insisting on payment from the league for television coverage.

Coaching changes for 2010

Broadcasting

The 2010 season was the second and final year in the UFL's initial broadcast deals with HDNet and Versus; HDNet carried 10 regular season games, while Versus carried 8 games plus the championship game. In addition, the league gained its first partnership with a regional network—the New England-based NESN, which carried 2 Hartford Colonials home games. The league website provided live and archived video streaming for all games, while YouTube provided a live HD simulcast of Versus' Championship Game broadcast with additional content.
Also, UFL games were carried on radio for the first time, with each team having their own flagship station:
Team2010 Radio broadcaster
Florida TuskersWYGM ; WFLF
Hartford ColonialsWPOP
Las Vegas LocomotivesKWWN ; KBAD
Omaha NighthawksKOZN
Sacramento Mountain LionsKHTK

Team schedules

Win
Loss

Florida Tuskers

Hartford Colonials

Las Vegas Locomotives

Omaha Nighthawks

Sacramento Mountain Lions

Standings

Championship Game

The 2010 UFL Championship was held on November 27, 2010 and involved the Las Vegas Locomotives and Florida Tuskers, who finished first and second, respectively, in the league standings. The Locomotives won the championship game for the second straight year, beating the Tuskers 23-20 behind an MVP performance by quarterback Chase Clement and a blocked field goal by defensive lineman Alfred Malone on the final play. The game was played at Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Nebraska, which was chosen as host venue on October 18, 2010, after the league employed a formula that took into consideration "advance ticket and merchandise sales, energy for all events prior to the season starting, and team record" to determine the site.

Attendance

The UFL's attendance generally improved from its inaugural season; in that year, the average attendance was 9,678 spectators per game, with one game as low as 4,312 fans and the highest-attended game at less than 18,187. For the 20 home dates in the 2010 regular season, crowd numbers ranged from a high of 23,554 to a low of 8,451. The league's newest markets—Omaha, Sacramento, and Hartford—were the front runners in attendance, with the Nighthawks selling out all 4 of their home games and never failing to draw less than 21,000 to Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium. The Mountain Lions and Colonials saw marked improvements from their 2009 seasons in the San Francisco and New York markets, respectively.
After being the attendance leaders in 2009, both Las Vegas and Florida suffered noticeable declines at the turnstiles during 2010. The crowd decrease for the Locos, coupled with a high rate of rent at Sam Boyd Stadium, led the league and team management to consider a smaller, more affordable home stadium for 2011, such as Cashman Field.
Note that in the table below, numbers for the Sacramento Mountain Lions are rounded to the nearest 500 spectators; Sacramento did not give out exact ticket counts and only offered estimates.
TeamHome GmsHome TotalHome AvgTop Home CrowdRoad GmsRoad TotalRoad AvgOverall GmsOverall TotalOverall Avg
Omaha Nighthawks491,14322,78523,554 453,02613,2568144,16918,021
Sacramento Mountain Lions472,50018,12520,000 461,48815,3728133,98816,749
Hartford Colonials457,46214,36614,554 454,65513,6648112,11714,015
Las Vegas Locomotives440,94310,23613,622 466,16116,5408107,10413,388
Florida Tuskers437,6899,42210,066 464,67716,1698102,36612,796
League20299,73714,98723,554 20300,00715,000---

Awards

Players of the week

Players and Coach of the Year