United Football League executive vice president of football operations Daryl “Moose” Johnston was at radio row this week for Super Bowl LIX. We have a breakdown of some of the things he said about the UFL this week leading up to the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles this Sunday.
The biggest story he talked about was the return of the XFL style kick-off in 2025. He mentioned the return on the Grant & Danny show on 1067 The Fan in Washington DC. He first explains his surprise that NFL fans accepted the new kick-off.
I really thought that was going to be a one and done. I thought that as a trial year that that kickoff would not be accepted by NFL fans.
Now that it has been accepted, Johnston while still not a fan of it, feels the UFL needs to change course.
No, I’m not. I’m still not. I still like the traditional kickoff, but I also have to be smart for our players. And if the NFL is going to embrace this kickoff moving forward, then it doesn’t make sense for us to have our guys doing something that’s not something they’re going to be doing at the NFL level. So it It made sense for us to do that.
Based on the health and safely of players, he mentions concussions are down in the NFL, are another reason the UFL will bring it back. However, the United Football League might make some tweaks to keep the return rate high, like the UFL had in 2024.
He was asked what would be metrics of success in year two of the UFL.
Outwardly, it would be the competitiveness of the football. How many of our guys get an opportunity to chase that NFL dream when our season ends and they move towards the NFL season?
Inwardly, us generating more revenue, the ability to increase attendance across all eight markets, I think is something that we would like to see change this year. And being able to have more a little bit of a footprint in each of our home markets with our business people is hopefully going to help us there.
How do we connect in a hub model with our players and our staffs back into the home market on a consistent basis where we’re generating interest? How are we bringing attention to what we’re doing in these home markets?
There’s a lot of things inwardly that we’re looking at that should have an impact on both the revenue component and the attendance component. But the most important thing will always be football, making sure that the football is extremely competitive.
Johnston was asked about the UFL starting in March vs the XFL in February launch window. He mentioned the issue with the World Cup in 2026, which is something we wrote extensively about and how difficult it is to schedule UFL games.
So to watch our people work through the scheduling component with all the different venues across the league and come up with our schedule is one of the more challenging things that you get to watch. So, yeah, when people get a little bit frustrated with the schedule, we do want to separate ourselves a little bit from from the NFL in that post-Super Bowl.
Johnston then was on NFL Spotlight With Ari Meirov talking about some new technology coming to the UFL in 2025.
We’ve got something new coming in. We actually tested it during the East West Shrine game last week. We learned a lot about the platform. We think that there’s some things that we still need to work on. So we’ll introduce it on a very small scale as the season starts.
Finally he mentions increasing the number of communication devices for players to try and keep games in that 3 hour window.
from a technology standpoint, we we are going to increase the number of of players that have communication devices.
One thing he was asked about in both interviews is the referee conspiracy situation in the NFL, something, because of transparency, the UFL does suffer from. Also as a bonus, the fans like it a lot.
We’re going to continue to do that. You know, we really feel that that’s one of the the best things that we have in our league. And I agree with you, it eliminates any of the conspiracy theories that are out there.
Daryl ‘Moose’ Johnston is always a good candid ambassador for the Untied Football league and someone, because of his ties to the Cowboys dynasty, media people want to talk to.
The UFL needs more of them on Super Bowl radio row in 2026. These are the only two interviews we are aware of. For the whole football world to be in once place for a full week, that is not enough.
*UPDATE:
We may have a new winner for most #radiorow interviews in 1 day @DarylJohnston talking @TheUFL. 27 breaks the previous record of 24 by Leigh Steinberg. Lol #nfl pic.twitter.com/Y4OVEYgBOs
— Joe Favorito (@joefav) February 5, 2025
2 Comments
by 4th&long
Disappointing that UFL bringing in the XFL kickoff, the oldstyle NFL (pre Goodell) used by USFL was far superior to the XFL style kick. But its better than the 2023 and earlier NFL rules which basically resulted in touchback most of the time.
As Johnston said in 2024 there were no injury differences between old style vs XFL style kicks in USFL/XFL. The NFL change to limit KO returns was a PR move during the concussion legal battle, they never provided any data, and still haven’t. Saying league wide concussions are down 2024 vs 2023 (that’s ALL plays) when the KO was basically a touchback adds no credibility to the NFL.
As far as season start date – that’s more driven by Fox and ESPN-Disney. A winter trapped audience is likely better for a Feb start but then clashes with March Madness is then an issue.
Fox has CBB to fill Friday nights into early March, they need something after CBB.
by He Hate Me
That is the worst decision the UFL could ever make. Who cares what kickoff format the NFL uses?! The XFL kickoff format was probably the dumbest idea that league ever dreamed up! It’s so damn boring to watch play out.