Uninsured injured players, booted from team hotels: More stories emerge of the AAF's disastrous final day
After stories for weeks that the Alliance of American Football was in dire straights despite a great inaugural weekend and a massive influx of investment cash, the league abruptly ceased operations on Tuesday.
Yahoo Sports’ Terez Paylor spoke with several players for a story that published late Tuesday night. Meanwhile details are still emerging, and each one shows what a callous decision owner Tom Dundon made in pulling the plug in the manner he did.
‘Kicked out of their lodgings’
Former NFL offensive lineman Rich Ohrnberger is now a sports talk radio host in San Diego, and was a color analyst for the San Diego Fleet AAF team.
On Wednesday night, he posted a thread on Twitter offering lowlights of how things were mishandled by league management.
“More on the AAF collapse,” Ohrnberger began. “Players in Memphis came back to their hotels after news came down, and had their personal items waiting in the lobby. Kicked out of their lodgings.
“Amount of money owed to vendors, venues, etc. in San Antonio for training camp is over $4 Million.
“Reserve/Injured players, ‘will be left in the cold.’ They will be paying for their own rehab/medical expenses.
“High level staff at the team level received an email from ‘The Board’ no one received a termination notice from an actual person.
“Team level staff members were asked to stay behind in markets to clean out office spaces (without pay)...and handle ‘refunds’...no clarity who will be receiving those refunds.
“This is a complete mess...”
You got that right.
‘A car full of my belongings and nowhere to go’
Ohrnberger then highlighted an exchange between Anthony Manzo-Lewis, a fullback for the Memphis Express, and his teammate, quarterback Brandon Silvers:
Brandon Silvers and Anthony Manzo-Lewis —QB & FB for the Memphis Express #teammates pic.twitter.com/GdVpEMPHU4
— Rich Ohrnberger (@ohrnberger) April 4, 2019
Manzo-Lewis laments that he and others were “kicked out of our rooms (that weren’t paid apparently). 17 hours away from home with a car full of my belongings and nowhere to go...”
Silvers responded that he still had an AirBnB rental for a few days and he’d take care of his teammate; “I got ya unlike @TheAAF.”
Manzo-Lewis included league co-founder Charlie Ebersol in his tweet. Ebersol has been silent on social media since everything went down.
Regardless of whether, as was reported, the stoppage happened despite his protestations, Ebersol is a founder and bears responsibility for what’s happened and what happens to these men, many of whom uprooted their lives to continue pursuing their football dream and were convinced they were entering a professional league.
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