No News Has to be Bad News for the Omaha Nighthawks

In early April, UFL founder Bill Hambrecht told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the UFL planned to return as a five team league, and that we'd hear an official announcement around May 1st.

Well, it's almost Memorial Day, and still nothing.  No word on a television contract.  No word on a season.  No word on who the coach and the general manager would be.  Frankly, it's now approaching the point where you have to say that even if the UFL gets their act together, there's simply not enough time to put a franchise back together again to play this fall.  I don't know what a "drop-dead" date would be, but if we're not past that point, we're getting awfully close.

The idea behind the league was noble, and I think it could have worked...at least in Omaha.  But they've bumbled and stumbled around the last year and a half, and most fans have already written them off. Even if they somehow make an announcement that they'll try to restart the Nighthawks this fall, can anybody take them seriously at this point?

And that's a shame, because I think minor league football could work in Omaha.  But can anybody looking to start a minor league football league find enough markets to make it viable?  I doubt it.  The USFL is considering starting a spring league again.  We'll see if that will work nationally; it won't in Omaha.  TD Ameritrade Park won't be available for spring football (not with Omaha's commitment to the College World Series), and now UNO is selling off the bleachers at Al Caniglia Field. So now the biggest stadium available for football in Omaha is a high school field. Yeah, that'll work.  Not.