Alliance of American Football league to debut in 2019

There’s a football void after the Super Bowl. A TV/film producer has teamed with experts from the sport on a game plan to try to fill it.

“For the last year, in secret, we’ve been building a new football league,” Charlie Ebersol said.

The secret came out Tuesday with a rollout at a Manhattan hotel. Welcome to the Alliance of American Football, a professional winter/spring circuit that will debut with eight teams in 2019, beating the XFL’s scheduled return by a year.

Ebersol, the son of former NBC Sports chairman and Alliance board of directors member Dick Ebersol, is the co-founder and CEO. Hall of Fame GM Bill Polian is the other co-founder and Head of Football.

“We want to put high-quality, top-flight football on the field in the offseason for the first time in well over a quarter of a century,” Ebersol said. “We want to put the power in the fans’ hands to interact with the game.

“In-game fantasy [football] is something that we believe will revolutionalize the way you experience professional sports because for the first time it’s actually integrated into the telecast of the game.”

The goal is for sub-2 1⁄2-hour games, with 60 percent fewer commercials, no TV timeouts and a 30-second play clock. The opener next Feb. 9 and the championship game in late April will be on CBS. Otherwise, there will be one game per week shown on CBS Sports Network. Games also will be streamed on a free app.

The average ticket cost will be $35. The league owns all the teams. There will be two four-team divisions and 50-player rosters. The cities and head coaches will be revealed within the next few months. A 10-game regular season, played mostly on Sundays, will be followed by a four-team playoff.

Kickoffs are out in order to improve player safety. Possession begins at the 25. Teams will get fourth-and-10 at their 35 instead of onside kicks. Two-point conversions are mandatory.

Qualified players can begin contacting the league via AAF.com. There will be guaranteed one-year contracts and post-career initiatives. Polian said players released by the NFL will be “the primary source of talent.”

“Eight hundred of our players get cut from the NFL every year,” said Justin Tuck, the former Giants defensive end who’s the head of the new league’s advisory board. “It’s creating huge opportunities for our players to really enhance and grow their skill set.”