The Spring League
| Sport | American football |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2017 |
| Inaugural season | 2017 |
| CEO | Brian Woods |
| Country | United States |
| TV partner(s) | Regional channels |
| Official website | www |
The Spring League is a professional football minor league that began play in 2017. The league's stated goal is to "serve as an instructional league and showcase for professional football talent." The 2017 season consisted of six games that were played in the month of April. There was an additional game called The Spring League Showcase that was played in July 2017.
The Spring League was the second football league to be established by Brian Woods, following the Fall Experimental Football League from 2014 to 2015.
On September 2, 2016, the Fall Experimental Football League, after two abbreviated seasons of operation, announced it had suspended operations in hopes of finding a more effective business model.
Brian Woods, the founder and CEO of the FXFL, launched The Spring League in early 2017. Like the FXFL, The Spring League is built upon the concept of serving as a developmental minor league to allow players to advance to more established professional leagues. The Spring League has some prominent differences from the FXFL. Experienced professionals, which the FXFL discouraged, are welcome in The Spring League, and its players include National Football League (NFL) veterans Fred Jackson, Anthony "Boobie" Dixon,Ben Tate, Greg Hardy, Ricky Stanzi and McLeod Bethel-Thompson. Teams do not have distinctive identities and have no set home cities, instead playing showcase games intended mainly for NFL and Canadian Football League (CFL) scouts in the spring and summer months. Also unlike the FXFL, which paid a per-game stipend for its players, The Spring League is officially amateur, with players not receiving any payment for their services; Woods acknowledged that the lack of payment is out of financial necessity.
The Spring League's 2017 season consisted of a four-team, single round-robin tournament in Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in April, and a two-team "Showcase" game in Napa, California in July. The teams in each tournament were only identified with vague geographic names such as North, South, East, West and California.
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