WKU Football: WKU Not Included In AAF’s Player Allocation

I understand how confusing this headline may be, so let me explain: If you haven’t heard, this coming February, there’ll be a new football…

I understand how confusing this headline may be, so let me explain: If you haven’t heard, this coming February, there’ll be a new football league, the Alliance of American Football, and it’s purpose is two-fold; to bridge the gap between the lack of pigskin throughout the spring and to develop players for the NFL.

Cool, now that that is out of the way.

The league recently just finished announcing all of their inaugural member cities, which consist of; Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Orlando, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego and Salt Lake.

Along with the completion of team announcements came guidelines for how players will be selected. I’ll show you an example from my soon-to-be-beloved Atlanta AAF franchise.

I’m not going to lie, I really like the idea of certain areas being privy to having, for lack of a better term “dibs,” on certain players from certain colleges or even past steams. It’s kind of dynasty-fantasy sports (for those really deep multi-sport leagues, especially) and it’s a good way, especially if AAF is going to be a niche-thing, to really be something local fans can get behind.

It’s a neat concept, and a lot of schools are included; MTSU, UAB, La Tech, Rice, UTSA, UNT, UTEP, FIU and FAU are all included as far as teams that have first dibs. For instance, the Memphis team will be able to select players from MTSU before anyone else, Orlando will have dibs on former Panthers or Owls, Phoenix has first claim to former UTEPers…well, you get the point.

As you may have noticed, there’s a team that isn’t included in the player allocation, despite having two, maybe three teams that’d make geographical sense to pair them with; Western Kentucky.

Louisville has a partner club (Atlanta). Kentucky has a partner (Memphis). Hell, even the aforementioned Blue Raiders have a partner (Memphis).

But not the Tops?

This isn’t to say that means no Hilltoppers will ever be taken in the AAF. Quite the contrary. I think we’ll see a good number of players taken by the league. It may couple of years to see that come to fruition, but it will happen.

It’d be the place for guys like Antonio Andrews, Nacarius Fant, Ace Wales, Brandon Doughty (although he got drafted) and so on would get to go instead of having to sweat out getting drafted late or getting (and surviving) UFA’s and rookie camps.

Memphis not having the Tops is the obvious WTF, but there certainly could have been room for the Tops in either/or Birmingham and Atlanta, right? (West Georgia? Fort Valley State? Shorter?!)

However, it isn’t all bad. Hypothetically, we could see Toppers head to every corner of the league, as opposed to knowing they’re going one place or the other (which could be fun). And also, who knows if the league will expand in the coming months, or if the teams will get to expand their talent pool in the coming years.

OR, if we really wanna get crazy, who knows if the XFL will have something similar?

All I’m saying is the Tops deserve to have a secure spot in the player allocation, and I’m only slightly upset that they don’t.