THE NEXT season of the United Football League starts this month (Shutterstock).

Football fans, rejoice! The return of professional gridiron action is just a few weeks away.
Wait a second. Jim … is your calendar based on something from another planet? Can’t you just look out the window and see it’s not autumn yet?

Relax, I’m saying. It’s not the NFL I’m talking about. It’s the UFL, the United Football League, a spring operation. Not quite major league but not quite minor league, it’s the latest effort to satisfy the American appetite for pigskin action … without the traditions and star power of the National Football League.

To make up for the comforting familiarity of the NFL, the UFL (a merger of the former XFL and USFL) is offering some pretty smart innovations in rules, even if the idea of a clash between the Columbus Aviators and Birmingham Stallions doesn’t fill you with excitement.

When the season kicks off on March 27, these rules will be in effect:
• the “tush push” will be illegal.
• receivers will only need to get one foot inbounds, rather than two, when making a catch.
• no punts are allowed within 50 yards of the goal line.
• a field goal of four points will be awarded when of at least 60 yards.

Now, these new rules may seem like the gimmicks of an underdog, but there’s lots of precedent for this. It was the ABA that popularized the three-point shot, long before the NBA (and the rest of the basketball world) adopted it, and it was the AFL that brought back the two-point conversion.

And both those leagues were eventually rewarded by being (partially in the case of the ABA) absorbed into the money machines that were the more-established leagues.

Will the UFL survive through this third season? The odds may seem against it. Three of the the league’s lineup of eight teams are new this year (i.e., three have dropped out).

As always, it depends on how much lasting power the owners have. Any that expect to get rich quick and make the NFL start to tremble are leaning on a slender reed.

But, as I hinted earlier, an upstart enterprise is usually the one that brings innovation to an industry. So when the UFL season starts on March 27, I’ll be cheering them on.

Not literally, of course. I mean, who wants to watch the Louisville Kings and their quarterback N’Kosi Perry?