Daryl Johnston was a guest on McElroy & Cubelic in the Morning in Birmingham to talk USFL. Johnston is the Executive Vice President of Football Operations for the USFL. They talk about this past weekend’s youth clinic, the USFL rules, and more.
They talked about the first USFL youth clinic this past weekend.
“That was one of the things that Brian Woods was insisting on was making sure we got these youth clinics built into the structure of our calendar and connecting and giving back to the community of Birmingham here. So we had about 250 kids come out on Saturday and Sunday for the youth clinics. On Saturday, Jeff Fisher and the Michigan Panthers and Bart Andrews and the Philadelphia Stars hosted the clinic for the kids. And then, on Sunday, you had the home team, Skip Holts and the Birmingham Stallions, and Todd Haley in the Tampa Bay Bandits hosting Sunday. So it was great when the guys got back to the hotel just to hey, how was it? Always fantastic.”
He talks about the health issues around the game of football and how that has been impacting youth interest.
“The last ten to 15 years a lot of young boys that may have been, I don’t want to say, scared away from the game of football… the conversation going on about the health of football players in the future brings a lot of concern. You saw the numbers started to impact the country, especially in the big football States, Florida, Texas, California, Alabama, the areas where football is a huge part of that high school.
These programs are seeing numbers drop considerably. So I thought it was great for us to be able to get out there and give a love the game of football to the boys, but also I believe it’s important for the parents, too, to be able to be out there and engage and if you have the questions, to be able to talk to the guys.”
Johnston was asked about the importance of the USFL’s overtime rules. His take was, let’s try to avoid overtime in the first place.
“It got that feel of an English Premier shootout back and forth with two points. But my favorite thing is some of the rules we’ve changed during the game that allows you to never even get to overtime. I love the fourth and twelve. I love the three-point extra point play. We’ve built so many things into the structure of the rules to prohibit us from even getting into that overtime situation.”
He was asked if teams would be going for three points alot after touchdowns.
“I think we’re going to have many people looking at that, and points are always at a premium. So if you have offensive-minded head coaches, I can see Todd Haley being very aggressive. I can see 100% aggressive in that situation.”
They talk Dallas Cowboys and the USFL kicking off in April and more.
