Ex-NFL players are putting their dreams into rugby, and a league that doesn't yet exist
But can it be the next great American sport?
By: NINA MANDELL 14 hours ago
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Daniel Wilczek- NRFL Films
When his phone stopped ringing after seven seasons in the NFL, Aaron Francisco wasn’t quite ready to call it quits.
Then another ex-player, Deuce Lutui, reached out to him with an invitation to test a different sport — rugby. Though he’d never played the game, Lutui convinced Francisco to fly to Minnesota at his own expense and try out at the National Rugby Football League combine for a spot in a planned national league and a chance to play against international competition at the Independence Cup.
Francisco, a defensive back who played for the Arizona Cardinals and Indianapolis Colts from 2005-10, was intrigued by what Lutui, the league’s director of player development, was pitching. Francisco could be part of a team again. He could show that he still has what it takes to be a professional athlete. And he could get in on the ground floor of a league playing a sport that is wildly popular around the world.
“I didn’t really know what to think about but told him, ‘Yeah, if they pull through I’d love to be part of it.’” Francisco says. “I didn’t want to be one of those guys who had a shot at something and didn’t take it and it becomes huge and I felt like I missed out.”
Another combine was held last week at the Los Angeles Coliseum, and like the event in Minnesota, it drew more than 150 participants, according to Michael Clements, one of the NRFL’s co-founders. Many of them are like Francisco, former football players who are enthused by the chance at a second life in a new sport.
Their ambition may be surpassed only by Clements, who says he is forming a team to play an exhibition against the Leicester Tigers, English power, in August, and plans to launch the 16-team league by 2016. “The world is looking at the U.S. to say ‘Hey, come play this game’ and that’s what we’re doing,“ says Clements. “We’re the ones that are bringing it here.”
Except many of those who have tried out for the league are feeling anxious after two canceled exhibition games and broken promises — not to mention an understanding of the amount of capital it takes launch a venture of this size.
“After the combine was over, I think they were supposed to contact us within 30 days after and I hadn’t heard from them in two months,” says Francisco, who was told he had made a team that would play against Leicester. “Then (NRFL director of player recruitment Shawn Zobel) called me one day and said everything was good and they’re getting things started up again and I got really excited about it. I joined a league out here just to learn the game and learn as much as I can.”
Zach Gentry, who played football at North Carolina State and went to camp with the New York Jets, participated in a combine last year with his brother, Taylor. They were told they made the exhibition team and to be prepared to travel overseas where where they would represent the league, leaving behind theirs jobs in the U.S. in the process.
“I got a call from one of the head guys and he was like, ‘Just notifying you that you may be flying out in the next couple of weeks,'” Zach Gentry says. “I was completely ready and ready to roll and my family and friends expected I was going overseas, but I never got that call. But we were told by (Zobel) that the NRFL is going to happen this year so hopefully it does.”
George Robertson, another co-founder of the NRFL, says they are now being more measured in starting up the league, trying to make sure they have the right players, corporate structure, partners and venues.
“If we have any fault,” Robertson says, “I don’t know if we realized how ambitious we
were when we went down this road.”
READY FOR RUGBY?
Even if the NRFL is launched, is the U.S. ready to sustain a national rugby league?
The sport figures to gain valuable exposure next year when it is an Olympic event for the first time. According to USA Rugby, the main governing body in the U.S., 5 million kids have participated in youth rugby over the past five years, and there are 104,637 people registered with the organization. And another rugby league, the Grand Prix Rugby Football League, announced its debut in 2013, though it has yet to debut.
(USA Rugby, however, says it has no relationship with the NRFL and declined to comment on the league’s prospects.)
Daniel Wilczek- NRFL Films
Clements says he sees potential for huge growth in the U.S., and has chosen to build a national league here instead of buying into a team in England.
“Why is it that this great sport of rugby that has been around since 1823 is not being played here?” Clements says. “So I went to work, started working with people, grabbed some folks that were very knowledgeable in major league sports, former NFL execs and so forth.”
Clements spent most of his life building APS International, which he describes as Home Depot for lawyers. In 2013, according to business records, he and Robertson, formed RugbyLaw with an eye on building the first professional rugby league in the U.S.
“This is serious business,” Clements says. “This is a major league economy. And the major league economy is exactly the business model that we’re following. So make no mistake about it — this a multi-billion dollar deal that’s being birthed right now.”
Clements declined to name potential investors or executives from other sports with whom he has spoken. Robertson says he believes they need about $200 million to start the league.
“The people that are looking at this are owners of major league sports right now,” Clements says. “And internationally, we have international multi-billion dollar entities that are looking in on this right now. And we also have Hollywood high-level entertainment figures.”
Joe Furin, general manager of the Los Angeles Coliseum, said that he told Clements he would introduce them to a number of television and entertainment executives while they were in town for the combine.
“I think from an industry perspective we’ve seen things come and go, we’ve seen ventures, whether it’s the XFL football league or something like that, so it does take a lot of dynamics to establish a new league and get it going,” Furin says.
“We’ve seen hits and we’ve seen misses —you never know what’s going to take hold and grow. Look at something like the X Games. … (When it started) people were wondering if it’s going to happen
“Now it’s a staple.”
Before the league is launched, Clements and Robertson plan to put on an exhibition game against Leicester, though neither side could confirm a venue when asked by USA TODAY Sports. Zobel says it will be announced in two weeks.
Another exhibition between a team called the American Barbarians and the London Irish, which was also backed by RugbyLaw and England’s Premier Rugby Limited of which Leicester is also a part of, collapsed in 2013 after it was scheduled at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. In 2014, another attempt at the exhibition, which is labeled the “Independence Cup,” was postponed a year.
“We have a concrete timeline right now,” Zobel says. “When we held our first combine we were in talks and in the process of putting together the Independence Cup with the Leicester Tigers, so it was premature at that combine or once we had told those players that they would receive the invitation a specific date.
“With the fact that this game is set in place for August 1, we have specific dates that are set in stone — not necessarily in stone — but a timeline of how things are going to play out in the next nine months.”
‘WHAT MAKES YOU SURE?’
For longtime rugby players, having a professional league in the U.S. would be a dream come true.
Derrek Van Klein, a two-time Division II All-American player at the University of Minnesota Duluth who has been playing rugby for six years, learned about the combine online and then was contacted by Zobel. “I thought it’d be great if we could a professional league in the U.S.,” Van Klein says. “That would be a dream for a lot of rugby (players).”
Van Klein says he took on the role as the veteran player at the combine in Minnesota last year even though he was younger than most of the participants. He says he was invited to tryout at another combine this year.
Daniel Wilczek- NRFL Films
“I was 22 when I tried out and I felt like most of the players there were in their late 20s,” he says. “So I felt young and undersized — guys that have just been training in the football combines ever since they got out of college — and it was just a big step up from the college level to seeing these guys. The way I looked at it I’d give it a shot and if I wound up being selected for it I’d put school on hold and go play professional rugby if I could.”
The NRFL’s Facebook page is also overwhelmed with requests for information and enthusiasm that one day it will become a reality. Despite what seems to be a limited amount of communication from the league, all of the players who spoke to USA TODAY Sports said they were convinced the league would happen as well. But what makes Clements so sure at least the exhibition game will happen this year?
