You need an army of people to handle each city. Ticket sales, tryouts, media, public relations, etc. You have to develop crowd management plans, emergency management plans, etc. You can't claim to have a league, have no announcements in SEPTEMBER (and none for MONTHS), and think you can just snap your fingers and viola! you have a professional league. These things take planning and this league was nowhere close to this level.
You only need ONE person who is willing to update the site and admit no season in 2010. That's been the critics' biggest complaint, not being upfront with us.
There are problems in AMNRL and that's semipro. If they try the management they do for AMNRL with NRLUS it'll be a farce. As to sports management folks, you can get interns from several sports management programs at universities. It's basically slave labor. I should know because that's my major. You mention Pat Croce. He has a little niche novelty basketball league that is basically a house league with all teams in one venue. Whole different ballgame from a serious rugby league with training facilities, sleeping arrangements, etc.
I will give them credit WHEN DUE: Spike's website DOES have NRL pics in the background on the homepage, a set of commercials and videos, even a designated page for NRL on Spike ( nrl.spike.com ) That's a very good sign for hopefully picking them up next season.
And the commercials are VERY well done. Just wish they had a little more time to get them out. Also, the AMNRL logo and link is there, wish they had one for NRLUS.
Commercials were in HD. HOPEFULLY even if tape-delay we'll see NRL in HD.