Tom Dundon's self-imposed deadline on the survival of the Alliance of American Football has come and gone, and the league still stands. The AAF played its Week 8 games on Saturday and Sunday, and Week 9 is slated for this upcoming weekend.
However, Dundon -- the Dallas billionaire and Carolina Hurricanes owner who has thus far plunged $70 million into the league to save it from instant death -- isn't taking the AAF off of the injury list.
“Trying to figure that out so I will have more information tomorrow,” he told Sports Business Journalon Monday. “It’s pretty fluid. It’s day to day I would say.”
While Dundon hasn't come out and said this, the prevailing thought is Dundon is trying to leverage the NFL into an agreement to share players with the AAF. From SBJ:
A source said they heard the AAF wants a system like MiLB, where MLB pays the players and the minor league teams run the business.
Of course, "You pay the players, we'll keep the money," is a fantastic business plan for the AAF, but it remains to be seen what, exactly, is in such an arrangement for the NFL and its Players Association. The NFL earned $14.2 billion without the AAF in 2018, and it'll make even more in 2019 with or without a true minor league.
So, can the AAF hammer out a deal, and/or can the league survive without such a deal? Perhaps we'll have more information tomorrow.