Call it the USXFL, maybe. At least for now.

Titles are not important. Only know this: The two television-fueled spring professional football leagues are in discussions to merge, reports Axios.

The combined league could emerge by next spring, according to Axios.

The United States Football League 2.0, most wholly owned by Fox Sports as a television play, endured two seasons. Two seasons with Birmingham, Alabama as its foundation—for all eight teams in its inaugural 2021-22 season, then four teams in 2022-23.

Two seasons when the league championship was won by the Birmingham Stallions, a re-homage to the Stallions of the infant USFL, which did not survive but was reborn in this new incarnation.

The television-fueled product generated 1.2 million viewers for its championship game, though per game averages were under 700,000.

The XFL was fueled and still mostly owned by World Wrestling Enterprise (WWE) founder Vince McMahon in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Alas, it ceased after just five games and filed for bankruptcy in August 2020 until a new consortium, led by actor Dwayne (the Rock) Johnson, bought the remnants for $15 million.

In 2023, the league, with games carried on ESPN and its varied affiliates, heaved through a season when the Arlington Renegades ultimately beat the DC Defenders to become the first league champions in this news XFL. According to Forbes, the league lost $60 million in its first season.

Its average television ratings hovered just above 700,000, sources shared.

Both leagues were gifted as way stations between the NIL (name, image, and likeness) and portal (“Who is No. 77 again?”) reality of college football to the National Football League, where the bar for life is higher than can be proffered by a local car dealership or deep-pocketed alumni collective.

The journey to profitability for spring football was never easy as a traditional model, dependent on fannies in the seats (ticket sales) and exorbitant television rights fees, rising in the billions, which networks prayed to recoup in advertising fortunes.

RELATED: Years from now, 2022 will be remembered as the year that changed Birmingham, if we’re lucky.

The model was tweaked when Fox Sports dived into the ownership end of the pool, making the model less dependent on an individual city’s ticket sales, embodying the “bubble” concept first launched during the pandemic with all of a league’s teams protectively huddled in one city.

The USFL’s eight teams in 2023 were huddled in one city, Birmingham, and performed at Protective Stadium, which sliced the proliferation of costs, most notably travel and venue rental. And also led to teams not called the Stallions mostly playing for empty, silver bleachers—albeit with television eyeballs largely ensconced at home.

It’s too early to officially predict what spring professional football 2024 will it look like, other than resemble the network-owned USFL spiced with dashes of The Rock-cookin’ XFL in varied cities starved for football beyond the NIL.

It just may still work.

This story will be updated.

More columns by Roy S. Johnson

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Do we want our children to go to school or prison? State funding levels provide an answer

‘Skinny-shamed’ as a youth, Birmingham mom now a champion bodybuilder

I’m a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary, a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame, and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts for “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. My column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Check out my new podcast series “Panther: Blueprint for Black Power,” which I co-host with Eunice Elliott. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach me at [email protected], follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj