In a league as highly competitive as the UFL has been to date, there are bound to be some newly-minted rivalries that have been a part of that. Looking ahead, however, here are the rivalries fans will want to keep an eye on during the 2011 UFL season:

1. Marty Schottenheimer vs. Jerry Glanville. Football fans who remember the late-1980s matchups between the Cleveland Browns and the Houston Oilers will look forward to this year’s games between the Virginia Destroyers and the Hartford Colonials. Schottenheimer and Glanville know each other well, so the only secrets for the first game of the 2011 season will be each team’s personnel.

This renewal of the Schottenheimer-Glanville rivalry is 20 years in the making, and it will be well worth the wait.

2. Las Vegas Locomotives vs. Virginia Destroyers. How can you have a rivalry between a two-time defending league champion and a team which hasn’t yet played its first game? Well, it’s an extension of the Locos-Florida Tuskers rivalry which played out six times in the UFL’s first two seasons. As of Thursday night, the Destroyers had 17 ex-Tuskers on their active roster, meaning the passion for the games between Las Vegas and Virginia should be there.

Remember, of the six games the Locos and Tuskers played, five were decided by a touchdown or less – including the 2009 and 2010 UFL Championship Games.

3. Omaha vs. Sacramento. Not the teams. The fan bases. The Nighthawks sold out all four games at venerable Rosenblatt Stadium last year, setting new UFL single-game attendance records along the way. The Mountain Lions had crowds of at least 19,000 in three of four games at Hornet Stadium last year, and finished second in the league in average home attendance.

The UFL’s second game of 2011 will be in Sacramento between the Mountain Lions and Nighthawks, and Mountain Lions fans no doubt will look to get a head start on the race for attendance supremacy on August 14.

4. The new breed of UFL quarterbacks. Quarterbacks tend to want to out-perform other quarterbacks, and there could be some new rivalries formed among the league’s new pivots, like Hartford’s Colt Brennan and Jarrod Johnson, Omaha’s Eric Crouch and Virginia’s Pat White.

All four of those quarterbacks have proven themselves with high-quality play at the collegiate level. Now, they will look to take that high level of play into their first UFL seasons. The one or two who can do that might just face off in the league’s third Championship Game.

5. Las Vegas Locomotives vs. Sacramento Mountain Lions. Sure, the all-time series between these two organizations is 3-1 in favor of the Locos, but there are plenty of reasons to like this rivalry. For one, for the most part, it has been rather competitive. Their first two meetings in 2009 were tight affairs going into the fourth quarter, and the second meeting in 2010 was a seesaw game in which Sacramento scored the first 21 points, then Las Vegas scored the next 17, and the game was decided on a Fabrizio Scaccia field goal inside of two minutes.

Add to that the mix of Head Coaches Jim Fassel (Las Vegas) and Dennis Green (Sacramento), as well as the possible returns of Mountain Lions quarterback Daunte Culpepper and running backs Cory Ross (Sacramento) and DeDe Dorsey (Las Vegas), and you have the ingredients for two more classic games this fall.

Source: http://www.ufl-football.com/news/36-days-kickoff-ufl-top-five-rivalries

Each team will play at more than one home venue and the list includes Giants Stadium (New Jersey), James Schuart Stadium at Hofstra University (Long Island,New York), AT&T Park (San Francisco), the Citrus Bowl (Orlando), Home Depot Center (Los Angeles), Rentschler Field (Hartford), Sam Boyd Stadium (Las Vegas) and Tropicana Field (St. Petersburg).

As of this week, Florida was leading the way with a 3-0 record. Las Vegas (1-1), California (1-2) and New York (0-2) round out the rest of the league.

Griffith, 5’11″ and 197 pounds, is a San Diego State alum and was voted to Sporting News 1st Team All-NFL and Associated Press 2nd Team All-NFL in 1998. A year later, he was recognized again by the Associated Press as a 2ns Team All-NFL player.

ROBERT GRIFFITH NFL PLAYER STATS

MuscleSport Radio can be heard live every Tuesday from 1:00 to 2:00 PM Eastern time on www.blogtalkradio.com and all episodes are archived on Blog Talk Radio, MuscleSport Mag and iTunes.

Please feel free to join us and give us your opinion, ask a question or make a comment. Our call-in number is 347-884-8157.

UPCOMING GUESTS:

Tuesday, December 15 – IFBB pro bodybuilder and 2009 Ms. Olympia runner-up Heather Armbrust.

MuscleSport Radio has enjoyed a steady flow of special guests since launching, with famous names in the bodybuilding and sports industry such as Samir Bannout, Bill Grant, Boyer Coe, Troy Brown, Ronnie Coleman, Gunter Schlierkamp, Leo Ingram, Heather Mae French, Cathy LeFrancois, Colette Nelson, Cathy LeFrancois, Dena Westerfield, Bill Romanowski, Tony Mandarich, “Leapin’” Lanny Poffo, Taylor Boyd, Steve Michalik, Dan Lurie, Emy Silvagni, Rae Holitt, Tom Terwilliger, Dan “The Beast” Severn, Kevin Levrone, Layne Norton, Randy Roach, Debi Laszewski and more.

Contest History:

Colorado Mountain States Bodybuilding and Figure Championships (2008)

Northern Kentucky Bodybuilding and figure Championships (2008)

U.S.A Championships (2008)

National Championships (2008)

Arnold Classic Amateur Invitational (2009)

WBFF World Championships (2009)

MuscleSport Radio can be heard live every Tuesday from 1:00 to 2:00 PM Eastern time on www.blogtalkradio.com and all episodes are archived on Blog Talk Radio, MuscleSport Mag and iTunes.

Please feel free to join us and give us your opinion, ask a question or make a comment. Our call-in number is 347-884-8157.

UPCOMING GUESTS:

Tuesday, October 27 – Robert Griffith, California Redwoods (UFL) defensive assistant coach and former NFL safety for three teams (Minnesota Vikings, Cleveland Browns, Arizona Cardinals).

Tuesday, November 3 – FAME World Tour/BodyProud athletes Amy Barnes and Honnor Moore

MuscleSport Radio has enjoyed a steady flow of special guests since launching, with famous names in the bodybuilding and sports industry such as Samir Bannout, Bill Grant, Boyer Coe, Troy Brown, Ronnie Coleman, Gunter Schlierkamp, Leo Ingram, Heather Mae French, Cathy LeFrancois, Colette Nelson, Cathy LeFrancois, Dena Westerfield, Bill Romanowski, Tony Mandarich, “Leapin’” Lanny Poffo, Taylor Boyd, Steve Michalik, Dan Lurie, Emy Silvagni, Rae Holitt, Tom Terwilliger, Dan “The Beast” Severn, Kevin Levrone, Layne Norton, Randy Roach, Debi Laszewski and more.

Photo by John Velasques

Hours before the late 4 PM start, the name being whispered by the team representative’s tables as the one falling down the draft board was Brian Orakpo, defensive end out of Texas. Of the nine players who chose to be at Radio City Music Hall on the biggest day of their lives, the former Longhorn is the only defensive lineman, normally a position looked at as one to go high in a draft.

Why exactly Orakpo has been mentioned as falling remains to be seen. He had a great combine, showing amazing strength by doing 31 reps with 225 pounds on the bench press, as well as good speed for a big man with a 4.64 40-yard dash.

With the first two picks going as planned (QB Matthew Stafford to the Lions and T Jason Smith to the Rams), Tyson Jackson of LSU went third to Kansas City. The defensive end going before Orakpo does seem to give this a little credence.

If the NFL Network had to do it all over again, they probably would have named Bob Papa as their play-by-play man from Day One. The radio voice of the New York Giants is a valid choice and will handle the job with dignity while bringing something to the table. Unfortunately, this comes a year too late and after football fans had to deal with Bryant Gumbel calling games, who’s style was reminiscent of the lead character in “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

While he may have been a decent studio host many years ago on NBC, Gumbel was an odd choice to be in the booth during the fledging network’s first season exclusively covering Thursday night games. His years as a ‘Today’ show host seemed to have taken a lot of his being considered a ‘sports’ person away. No matter what color analyst Cris Collinsworth did to attempt to salvage what was being said over the microphones, Gumbel’s inability to even have a deep knowledge of the game reared its ugly head on more than one occasion. If that wasn’t bad enough, his style was so laid back that even his calls of critical touchdowns had the same intensity as when he called for a commercial break.

Papa has been with the Giants since 1995 and has been called “one of the most talented and experiences announcers in the business” by NFL Network president Steve Bornstein. While being accused of being a ‘homer’ during Giant games, Papa won’t have to hear that on a national scale. His broadcasts sound as if he is having fun and not just doing a job, a claim that Gumbel cannot make.

The NFL Network’s first game this season will be on November 6 with the Denver Broncos at the Cleveland Browns.