CANTON, OHIO – The 2022 United States Football League (USFL) Championship is set to take place Sunday, July 3, and the final matchup of the year will feature one team that was the favorite all season, and another that rode a late surge all the way to the “Spring League Super Bowl.”
It’s the Philadelphia Stars vs. the Birmingham Stallions, and Temecula’s Lorenzo Burns will be there to represent our area, along with Victor Boldin Jr., who went to Los Osos High School and attended Oregon State (Undrafted Free Agent with 49ers in 2017), and Ryan Pope from Lakewood High School, who went on to play at SDSU (Undrafted Free Agent with the Rams in 2021).
Burns, who plays defense for the Stallions, graduated from Linfield Christian school in 2016 where he was a three-time captain and finished his career with 166 tackles, 26 passes defensed, five interceptions and two fumbles. He also ran track and won the CIF Division 4 triple jump championship.
After graduating, he played for and graduated from the University of Arizona, starting 40 games including all 17 in 2019-2020. For his career he had nine interceptions and 26 pass breakups. In his final two seasons as a Wildcat, Burns was a Pac-12 honorable mention and, in 2019, he was voted as the team defensive MVP. The Jacksonville Jaguars claimed Burns off of waivers from the Arizona Cardinals on August 08, 2021. The former Temecula native signed with the Cardinals as an undrafted free agent at the conclusion of the 2021 draft.
Burns, who had two interceptions and nine tackles this season, joined the Stallions in the USFL’s inaugural year, where the league accomplished what the last two attempts at spring football failed to do — make it through its first season.
Fox Sports president Eric Shanks even announced earlier this week that the USFL will return next season. Ratings have been steady, with games averaging 1.034 million viewers on Fox and NBC. The overall average is lower (715,000) when games on USA Network and FS1 are included.
While those ratings are slightly above the 2019 Alliance of American Football, which ceased operations after eight weeks, they are behind the 2020 XFL viewership average of 1.9 million. The XFL ceased operations midway through its season, mostly due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think we have said pretty consistently that the number one goal for this season was to establish that we could do viewership at the same level as other sports that have been part of the spring calendar for a long time (Formula 1, Major League Soccer, English Premier League). I think we’ve more than held our own,” Fox Sports executive vice president Michael Mulvihill told the media.
The league took a huge step toward ensuring financial stability by playing all of its regular-season games in Birmingham, Alabama. League officials announced 17,500 fans took in the first game on April 16 between the Stallions and New Jersey Generals but did not release figures for the other 39 games, which appeared to be played in a mostly empty stadium.
The plans for next year include the same eight teams, but they will play games in at least two cities or as many as four. USFL games averaged 2 hours, 58 minutes, which is 14 minutes faster than an NFL game. While league officials were happy with the game pace, they would like to see more plays and more attempts at 2- and 3-point conversions.
The USFL averaged 158 plays per game — 20 fewer than the NFL. Even though teams could attempt a 3-point conversion from the 10-yard line after touchdowns, it only happened five times during the regular season with one successful conversion. The league does have a working relationship with the NFL but doesn’t want to be seen as its developmental league. But it is also not a challenge to the NFL, which puts it in a strange middle ground.
The 2023 season is expected to start in mid-April so that the USFL does not have to compete against the NCAA basketball tournament and the Masters. The XFL plans a return next season with an expected start of February 18, the week after the Super Bowl.
Of course, the primary focus for this weekend will be the Stars and Stallions, who last faced off in Week 5 (May 15). The Stallions escaped with a 30-17 victory, but it was a one-score game entering the final quarter. In fact, the Stars actually held a three-point lead at halftime, in a very even contest. Both offenses averaged about five yards per play, both scored two red zone touchdowns, and both turned the ball over two times. The USFL Championship game will be played at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, Sunday, July 3, at 7:30 p.m. ET on FOX.
JP Raineri can be reached by email at sports@reedermedia.com.
