The Alliance of American Football couldn’t complete its first season without suspending operations and effectively dissolving.
In the immediate aftermath of the league’s collapse, there were plenty of stories about players being forced to pay for their own transportation back home or being on the hook for medical treatment.
Really, the AAF was a complete mess that was doomed to fail. And the stories from inside the team facilities keep on getting wilder.
According to Sports Illustrated, San Antonio Commanders employee Brad Sternberg said the AAF initially fostered a family atmosphere. When Sternberg couldn’t find a flight home from Atlanta to witness the birth of his child, the coaching staff and front office joined him at a bar to watch the birth on FaceTime. When the league folded, though, the entire mood in the facility escalated.
And that was when the looting started — really, via Sports Illustrated:
For Sternberg, it was startling to see how quickly the atmosphere bottomed out. After the AAF closed up, he says, one employee from each team was retained, for a small bonus, to recoup that franchise’s physical assets—hardware such as cameras, computers and televisions—and return them to the Alliance’s warehouse in San Antonio. That task proved more difficult than expected, though, because some of those assets started making their way out the door the day the AAF was shuttered.
“I watched the biggest loot-fest I’ve ever seen,” says Sternberg. “Cameras disappeared. Flat-screens. I watched a f—— full-time coach walk out of the building carrying a 55-inch TV. I watched people carry printers out. It was unbelievable.”
And just imagine what went down at other teams across the league.
The bar is set so low for the XFL that all it needs to do to be deemed a success is survive an entire first season without its team facilities being looted by disgruntled league personnel. And I’m not even joking. That’s it.
