J.K. McKayIn 1976, J.K. McKay was a Tampa Bay Buccaneers receiver catching passes from quarterback Steve Spurrier during the debut season of that NFL franchise.
Tampa Bay lost all 14 games that year, but McKay and Spurrier have teamed up again for another venture that is off to a winning start this time around. McKay is the director of operations for the Alliance of American Football, an eight-team professional league that launched last weekend, while Spurrier is the head coach of the Orlando Apollos, who opened last Saturday night with a 40-6 whipping of the Atlanta Legends.
"Steve was one of the first guys we called when we started talking about hiring head coaches," McKay said. "He's perfect for this league, and he's already done a great job. He's always going to be great television."
Spurrier, who repeatedly tormented Georgia and Tennessee fans while winning six Southeastern Conference championships as Florida's coach from 1990 to 2001, proved last weekend that he hasn't lost his touch with the one-liners, either. While pointing out that he had won his debut game at every stop of his head-coaching career, Spurrier quipped to reporters, "I even won with the Redskins, and that's not an easy thing to do."
A head-coaching career that includes college stops at Duke, Florida and South Carolina, as well as his two-year NFL stint with Washington, began in 1983 with the Tampa Bay Bandits of the United States Football League. Spurrier guided one of the league's healthiest franchises to a 35-19 record during the three years the USFL existed before imploding financially, and he already has discovered a very different landscape with the AAF.
"The USFL had individual owners, and some of them wanted to outspend the other guys to win," Spurrier told the Orlando Sentinel this week, "so it sort of got unfair there a little bit. Salaries here are the same, so it ought to be pretty fair."
Financial fairness - each AAF player is operating under a three-year contract that pays a total of $250,000 - was one of many objectives McKay had when he was asked to help a league co-founded by Charlie Ebersol and Bill Polian. That has resulted in Birmingham Iron running back Trent Richardson, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2012 NFL draft, competing with the same salary as Memphis Express linebacker Colton Jumper, who played at Baylor School and began his Tennessee career as a walk-on.
The AAF opened with mostly positive reviews, with contests in Orlando and San Antonio drawing more than 20,000 fans and with its coverage on CBS topping the NBA on ABC last Saturday night in the key 18-to-49 age demographic.
"I can honestly say it exceeded my expectations," McKay said. "We were prepared for something to go wrong, and it really didn't. I thought the quality of football was really good. We basically sold out of merchandise at all our games. All of the home teams won, and we saw those communities begin to embrace these teams.
"The television numbers were good, so I don't know if we could have asked for more."
AAF games will not be on CBS again until the April 27 league championship, with contests in upcoming weeks being spread out among TNT, the NFL Network and the CBS Sports Network. McKay, who was a guest this week of "Press Row" on Chattanooga's ESPN 105.1 FM, said the objective is to produce similar quality this weekend and to continue to build support in the eight markets.
The quality of play will largely be dependent on the quarterbacks, who provided mixed performances last weekend.
Orlando's Garrett Gilbert, a member last month of the NFL's Carolina Panthers, and Arizona's John Wolford each completed at least 60 percent of his passes and combined for six touchdowns with no interceptions. Yet the combination of Atlanta's Matt Simms and Christian Hackenberg of Memphis combined for 213 passing yards with no touchdowns and three interceptions.
"That's the No. 1 challenge, and we're aware of that," McKay said. "We created a system and had a quarterback draft which was designed to make sure that we didn't have a situation where one team had the best three quarterbacks. We want the best quarterbacks to be playing across the league, and I think we're close to achieving that goal.
"The bottom line is that there are 90-something quarterbacks in the NFL and that our guys are as good as a lot of them."
Getting it right
Shorter commercial breaks and the ability to hear coaches and replay officials were part of the opening success enjoyed by the AAF, with the most controversial moment being a hit by San Antonio linebacker Shaan Washington on San Diego quarterback Mike Bercovici that resulted in Bercovici's helmet sailing off.
McKay said the play was studied closely by AAF officiating consultants Dean Blandino and Mike Pereira.
"They determined that it was not a foul," McKay said. "It was just a really good football play. Football can be vicious at times, and that was a big-time hit, but it was a legal one."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.