Are you ready for more spring football?
Good. Because after delivering solid ratings in its inaugural season, the UFL is back in 2025 – and so is the other football team that calls Ford Field home: the Michigan Panthers.
Like its big brother (the NFL), the success of the United Football League is predicated on two key factors.
The first one is pretty intrinsic: how much demand exists in the US for a supplemental league that can occupy an audience during the NFL offseason? So far, the results are mixed. People are tuning in, but we’re still a decent ways off from having a surplus of rabid fan bases that are packing the stands and driving a hearty discourse. If the initial run for the UFL was largely an experiment for how viable spring football could be, this year could provide a lot of insight into finding the ceiling of its commercial success.
But the other factor is where the NFL has forged its path from being just another organized sports league to its transformation into being the preeminent cultural brand of the US – the agility to create storylines through on-field drama.
Despite only having an 18-week season – as a media-facing entity, no sport feels more year-round than the NFL.
And this is where we turn our attention to the Panthers, who return to action this Sunday as they travel to face the Memphis Showboats in Week 1. The Panthers went 7-3 last season, with all three losses coming against the two teams who would face off in the UFL Championship (the Birmingham Stallions and San Antonio Brahmas). But, oddly enough, it wouldn’t be championship fortunes that ultimately defined the narrative of the 2024 Panthers – but instead, the pedigree of their brightest star.
There’s simply no two ways about it. Jake Bates is the strongest reason why NFL fans need to keep their eyes on what happens in the UFL season. And moreover, why those same fans should intently monitor what the Panthers produce on the field this year.
The Bates story is one so rich that it straddles the line of disbelief. A kid who grew up on the outskirts of Houston and was in the midst of endeavoring to be a brick salesman in his hometown gets recruited to train for a roster spot with a pro football team in Detroit after being cut by the Texans a year prior. In his first game, he trots out to attempt his first field goal since high school with eight seconds left in regulation and his team down by one – the kick is from 64 yards out.
Bates hit it. Not once, but twice. Not even three months later, after the Panthers’ season was ended by the aforementioned Birmingham Stallions, Bates signed a two-year, $1.98 million deal to play in the same home stadium he became a spring football darling in – for the Detroit Lions.
So here’s the multi-million dollar question; how did this all happen in the first place? Not the particulars of it all, but how did we all end up so fortunate as to witness a true Cinderella story unfold over the course of the UFL’s debut?
Beyond the obvious credit that Bates’ has received for rising from the ashes and blazing a new path that led him to become a star on one of the NFL’s most exciting teams, another piece of that pie should be served to his former head coach, who remains at the helm as the Panthers enter their 2025 campaign, Mike Nolan.
Call it something in the water of the Detroit River if you’d like, but for all the praise Dan Campbell receives for fully leaning into the strengths of his players regardless of what the consensus might think, Nolan equally embodied that ethos when he called on Bates to be the player he knew he could be – and it should excite football fans to know that the Panthers’ coach has no intention of veering from that course anytime soon.
“That’s our goal. We want to get as many guys into the NFL as we can,” Nolan told the media earlier this week. “The most important thing (as a coach) is to have good players. The more experience you have and the more football you know, it helps you for one reason. When a player walks in that can only do certain things, you gear your attack to utilize those skills.”
Nolan went on to highlight how Bates’ journey with the Panthers, and ultimately his path to signing with the Lions, embodied this belief.
“Jake has a really strong leg, and therefore we were gonna try long kicks. And we tried ’em, and the son of a gun made ’em. And he made it to the NFL because of it. I’m not giving us credit for that necessarily, (but rather to say) if you’re good at something, we’re going to try and make that what we use you to do.”
The Michigan Panthers travel to face the Memphis Showboats this Sunday at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium. Kickoff at Noon EDT.
