TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS — Football is the most popular spot in America, but is there enough room for another professional league besides the NFL?

The creators of the United Football League or UFL hope so as they plan to kick off their season in October.

The UFL plans to play its games on Thursday and Friday nights with the championship game scheduled to be on Thanksgiving Weekend. All the games are scheduled to be broadcast on the cable station, Versus.

I think there is always room for another professional football league, if, and only if, it does not try to compete with the NFL or college football for viewers. It has been proven with the XFL disaster a few years ago that it does not work.

The best way for the UFL to draw viewers is to have their games during the week. The best audiences would probably be on either Tuesday or Thursday nights. Early indications are that the UFL will have its games on Thursday and Friday nights.

The Thursday games will work, but Friday could be a problem for the first part of the season because high school football season is still going on. If this league thinks it will draw a good number of viewers when high school football is being played, they are wrong.

There will be four teams in the first season: Las Vegas, New York, Orlando, and San Francisco. The league is going to add teams in Hartford and Los Angeles in 2010.

One early indication that the UFL will be a respectable product is the coaches who have been hired to lead the franchises. Jim Fassell is the coach of Las Vegas, Ted Cottrell is the New York coach, Jim Haslett is the Orlando coach and Dennis Green is the coach of the San Francisco team. Each one of these coaches has experience in the NFL and three of them, excluding Cottrell, have been head coaches in the league.

With owners intent on hiring big-name coaches, it shows that they want the coaches, not the players, to be the faces of the teams. It is kind of like college where players come and go, but Joe Paterno is Penn State football, Bobby Bowden is Florida State football, etc.

The UFL is being marketed as sort of a minor-league for the NFL. This means the league will have players who are fresh out of college and are looking to attract the attention of the NFL and some were previously in the NFL that are looking for a second chance.

Some of the early “big-name” players who are on the rosters are safeties Mike Doss (261 tackles, seven interceptions and a Super Bowl Championship with the Colts) and Adam Archuleta (2001 first round pick of Rams). There are also a few good quarterbacks in the league including J.P. Losman (2004 first-round pick of the Bills) and Tim Rattay (31 touchdowns, 23 interceptions with the 49ers, Buccaneers and Cardinals).

While none of these players were stars in the league they are all talented players who, with a good year in the UFL, could easily play their way onto an NFL roster.

One player who is not on this list, but could end up joining the UFL is Michael Vick. Vick has yet to be reinstated by the NFL and teams seem leery of taking a chance on the former Falcons star. A season in this league and he could work his way back onto an NFL roster and help the UFL draw good crowds and ratings along the way.

There are several other players who are currently unsigned that would help the UFL tremendously. All-Pro linebacker Derrick Brooks and receivers Marvin Harrison and Plaxico Burress are among them.

Can you imagine Orlando quarterback Michael Vick dropping back and finding Plaxico Burress for a touchdown? Ok that may be a little far-fetched, but it could happen and if the UFL can attract some of the aged NFL stars, then it will hasten its development as a league.

In the end, this league will never replace the NFL, but I think this will be a better product than the XFL and Arena Football and will become a mainstay for football fans during the week.