Football Bolts into Brooklyn

By MICHEL PEDROSO

In an effort to promote the Brooklyn Bolts’ first football game of the season, Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams on Tuesday led a rally on the steps of Borough Hall.

“And now we have football taking place in Coney Island. You can’t ask for anything more,” shouted Adams. The Bolts, who will play home games at MCU field in Coney Island, is one of four teams in a brand new developmental football league, which has been dubbed “The FXFL.”

The first game was scheduled to take place on Wednesday/

The Bolts’ roster, mostly made up of young players who were recently cut by NFL teams, attended the rally in uniform. They chatted and took photos with a few dozen people, most of whom were on a lunch break from work or walking by and stumbled on the event.

Most Brooklynites seemed clueless about the new league, which was put together by FXFL commissioner Brian Woods in just six months. Former New York Jet and current Bolts head coach John Bock, for instance, had less than a month to put his staff and roster together:

“We put this staff and team together in a very short period of time … and I’m so proud of each and every one of them,” said Bock.

While Woods said that the league was “NFL-caliber talent on Wednesday nights” when most games will be played, most developmental leagues have failed in the past. The United Football League, for instance, lasted just three years (2009-12), in spite of similar optimism.

And while the league might serve as a platform for some players to get back to the NFL, most will not succeed. However, unlike in the past, when the NFL paid little mind to such leagues and simply fed them crumbs for a player or two, the NFL seems determined to establish a developmental league.

However, what the XFXL is offering doesn’t seem to be precisely what the NFL wants. In August, Troy Vincent, NFL director of football operations said, “For all this football talent around, we have to create another platform for developing it,” but added that it might be an “academy” or a “spring league.”

you can see it’s not spring.

Nevertheless, developmental football is kicking off in Brooklyn. While the Bolts obviously won’t be a blockbuster like the Brooklyn Nets, watching the team play is an inexpensive alternative to the stratospheric prices at Barclays Center.