Here’s an interesting idea: What if you, the fan, were in charge of a football team? What if you called the plays, made the roster moves and designed the logo? What if it was your franchise — excuse me, FANchise?
What would you do?
Well, now you get the chance, and it’s happening in your own backyard. The Colorado Crush are back with new ownership, and they’re handing the keys over to the fans.
Project FANchise, co-owned by Denver Broncos legend Al Wilson, has developed a digital platform that allows fans to call the shots, from offseason moves to gameday calls; there are no boundaries. For the first time ever, fans can play an integral role in the outcome of the game, the season.
To what extent? That’s up to them.
“It’s really this interactive experience, where as deep as the fans want to go and get involved in, [they can],” CEO Sohrob Farudi told Mile High Sports. “If these guys want to go down the rabbit hole, the rabbit hole is there for them to just keep on going.”
A FANchise-owned team has one purpose: serve the fans, whatever that means.
If you want to dive into the minutia of the game — scouting, play calling, roster building — you can. If you simply want to play a role in the big-picture decisions — logos, names, color schemes — you can. It’s up to you.
A year ago, Project FANchise purchased their first Indoor Football League (IFL) team, and ceded full control to the fans, allowing them to decide where to play (Salt Lake City, Utah), what to be called (Screaming Eagles) and what colors they would wear (red, white and blue).
And they did all this with no checks and balances. Whatever the fans say goes.
“If you name us Teamy McTeamface, we’re going to be Teamy McTeamface,” Co-Founder Patrick Dees said.
(Teamy McTeamface actually finished in third place with six percent of the vote.)
And with the Colorado Crush, Project FANchise’s second IFL team, you can now vote for the team’s next head coach, and before long, you’ll be able to help construct the roster that will lead the team into the 2017 IFL season.
It’s a grand idea, but it doesn’t stop there.
“Our short-term goal, in the next five years, would be to have an entire league run by the fans,” Farudi said. “I love this game, the indoor, the arena game, the closeness that fans have to that sport — guys coming over the wall, balls in the stands, after the game 6-year-olds running onto the field getting autographs — this game is built for what we’re doing, because they’re already together; we’re just bringing it closer.
“So I think we can, as a league, change into the Interactive Football League, this whole new way of experiencing a league as a fan base.”
And the long-term goal? Of course, an NFL franchise. But that’s a long ways away. For now, they’re more than happy to have the support of Al Wilson, five-time Pro Bowl linebacker for the Denver Broncos and co-owner of the Colorado Crush.
“It’s been amazing, man,” Wilson said. “Just the way everybody is embracing the idea is what sold me on it. We’ve talked about it for a long time, and when I first heard about what these guys were doing, of course it makes you think, ‘Is it really going to work?’ But the idea was genius. And as I tell people about it and people started listening about what we’re doing, they’re like, ‘Man, I want to be a part of it. What do I need to do?’ The fans have absolutely embraced it.”
The game of football is evolving, almost as quickly as the technology around it. Put them together and you might just be looking at the future of sports.
Four months from now, the Colorado Crush will begin kicking off their first season as a FANchise team up at Budweiser Events Center in Loveland, Colorado. Make sure you’re there to help make history.