Mini-season Cut Short
Due to a lack of media coverage -- the SFL had no TV or radio contracts, and newspaper coverage was spotty at best -- it quickly became obvious that the league was a sinking ship. Attendance was disastrously low, despite very competitive contests. The SFL wasn't even able to finish out its modest, one month season -- league officials ended the test program after only two weeks (and four games, none of which drew more than a few thousand people). Houston and San Antonio, both with 2-0 records, were declared league co-champions.
With funding for the league having been provided by tech-stock entrepreneurs, any chance that the SFL would return was scotched by the tech-market crash of 2000 and the subsequent announcement of the XFL by the WWF.
The last professional football game to be played at the Miami Orange Bowl was an SFL game: a few thousand fans watched on April 29, 2000 as the Houston Marshals defeated the Miami Tropics, 40-10.
Read more about this topic: Spring Football League
Famous quotes containing the words cut and/or short:
“That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country’s champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[On being asked “what sort of future she anticipates having”:] A very short one.”
—Jeanne Calment (b. c. 1875)