*Scooby Wright III, Arizona Football News: Draft Scout Player News

07/06/22 - ILB *Scooby Wright III, Jr/2016, Arizona

Scooby Wright of the Birmingham Stallions said it best when he told me that his season of football in the new USFL felt like summer camp. "Just hanging with all my homies all day," he said. And for months and months. Or, as we say in Birmingham, munts and munts. USFL Season One was a wild and wacky experiment in sports entertainment. The league, all the teams and the TV rights are owned by Fox Sports, and so to save money the entire regular season was played in Birmingham. Players, coaches and support personnel lived in hotels or rental properties around town. All the games were played at Protective Stadium. Players ate lunch together, and then one of the guys was kicked off a team because he didn't want chicken salad for lunch. Who doesn't like chicken salad? It was all a little insane. And then the craziest part of it all is that it actually worked.

The final product? Pretty good. The championship game? There were multiple lead changes in the fourth quarter, dramatic story lines and game-winning heroes. It doesn't get much better than that. The Birmingham Stallions defeated the Philadelphia Stars 33-30 on national television on the Sunday night before Independence Day. Sounds like a new holiday tradition to me. "The Birmingham Stallions win the inaugural USFL championship, baby," Wright said during his post-game interview on the field. Giddy up. They used to call Birmingham the Football Capital of the South. I'd say that reputation still fits. By multiple degrees, the USFL was a huge win for Birmingham. It's worth celebrating. Best of all, the league is returning next year. It's not clear how many teams will be in Birmingham in 2023, but USFL Season Two is reportedly scheduled to begin in mid-April. - Birmingham News

Jr/2016