The Alliance of American Football is suspending operations before completing its first season, which would leave legendary football coach Steve Spurrier out of a job.
Spurrier understandably wasn’t pleased with Tuesday’s news, and he criticized how the league’s leadership played off that everything was fine with the AAF when, in reality, the league was on the verge of folding.
The Orlando Apollos coach spoke to the Orlando Sun-Sentinel and pinned his surprise over the league’s collapse on the AAF founders.
He said via sun-sentinel.com:
“Everybody wanted to play out the season and everybody is disappointed. Everyone was led to believe that the Alliance was well funded and we could play three years without making any money and this, that and the other. Obviously, everything that was said was not very truthful.”
The AAF faced its struggles from Day 1. Despite strong promotion and viewership in the opening week, the league needed an emergency $250 million investment from Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon just so it could make payroll. The league’s co-founder Charlie Ebersol spun the cash infusion as a game-changing positive, but Dundon is reportedly the one pulling the plug on the entire operation.
When it came to Spurrier, though, he did hope that the first-place Apollos would be declared the champions.
Dundon is set to make the official announcement Tuesday evening.
