The idea that the AAF needed help from the NFL was absolutely right, but everything about Dundon's statement was strange. For starters, it was phrased like an ultimatum, preemptively blaming the NFLPA's refusal to share players for the AAF's demise. In the squeegee scenario, Dundon was now shouting "IF YOU DON'T GIVE ME SOAP, I WON'T SQUEEGEE YOUR CAR" to a driver who never asked for their car to be squeegeed in the first place. Secondly, while the AAF would eventually need the NFL's help, Dundon seemed oddly fixated on one specific form of help—literally sharing players with the NFL. That wouldn't necessarily be a requirement for a developmental league. But most importantly, Dundon made the matter of getting NFL players seem urgent, while it clearly wasn't. The AAF obviously could have finished its season without the 88th player on the Cincinnati Bengals' roster signing up—and without completing its first season, it seems unlikely the AAF will ever convince the NFL or the NFLPA that it is worth partnering with.
Nobody is still 100 percent sure why Dundon immediately began fixing to kill the league he just invested $70 million in. The best explanation offered thus far stems from a report by
Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer,
who posits that Dundon actually bought the league not for, you know, the league, but for the proprietary technology the league had worked on, such as its app and gambling tech. Early on, Ebersol billed the league as "
a tech company that owns a football league"; Dundon apparently took that literally. This is
possibly illegal, and
who knows whether the technology is worth $70 million, and
it seems likely he doesn't have the rights anyway. But, like, why else would Dundon so quickly give up?