Upon taking over the Minnesota franchise, I made many personnel and coaching changes, turning around an 0-6 team into a 7-9 team by season's end. We've had a busy offseason so far, moving everything down here to Dayton, Ohio, and now we have a new team name, new colors, new logo, and a brand new stadium.

My franchise will now be known as the Gem City Gangsters and our primary colors are red and black, with a little green ($$$) mixed in the helmet colors. Our logo can be seen on our homepage. https://xfl.myfootballnow.com/team/26

I had originally wanted to build our stadium at Belmont Park, but the Dayton City Commission would not allow that due to the neighborhood's concern about parking and drunken fans. Not to mention 2 other teams located near downtown Dayton. https://cust79.myfootballnow.com/team/7 https://private75.myfootballnow.com/team/6 I was able to keep the team in Montgomery County though, just down the road in what was a cornfield at the Dayton/Kettering border.

We even have our first corporate sponsor, Cousin Vinny's Pizza. They are a local, late night pizza delivery chain that paid for naming rights to Cousin Vinny's Coliseum, the 74,127 seat open air, natural grass palace the Gangsters will play.





The stadium is not quite complete yet, but as you can see, it's close.

The cheerleaders for the team are the "Gangster Chicks" and their uniforms were revealed at a press conference today.



Alternate uniforms...

Gangsters Trade for #1 overall pick

Pittsburgh had let it be known the #1 overall pick was available, and had already turned down an offer from division rival Baltimore. Last season, as Minnesota, I made a couple of trades that netted me an extra first round pick in 2022 and 2023.

Once I started looking at the current draft class, it seemed both of my picks would be risky, high volatility players. I purged a lot of bad contracts last season where I have $43 million in dead cap this year, and I really want our first Gem City pick to not be a bust.

Three 1st round picks may seem like a lot to give up, but I'll gladly take a sure thing over 2 gambles, especially when you factor in my work/sleep schedule. I work 4 nights a week from about 6 until 4 or 5 am and I am rarely awake between noon and 1 when the 14th and 19th picks go off.

The 3rd pick I gave up for next year still leaves me with Arizona's first round pick and a total of 17 picks the next 2 years.

So the big question on everyone's mind...who will I select? Well I really don't know yet but it will most likely be one of the following 3 players: LB Martin Sims, DE Robert Page, or RB Nathan Miller.

I honestly did not have a specific player in mind when I made the offer which is why I still don't know. The offer was accepted right as I was getting ready to leave for work. I'm a procrastinator by nature so I may take it all the way to the final minute.

When asked for the 100th time who he was going to select #1, raidergreg snapped, "I'm not telling you! I've spent 4 of the last 5 days delivering Christmas Pizzas to drunk and/or high people, not to mention taking care of my other MFN teams so I haven't had much time to dig into the scouting."

It's hard to pinpoint which direction the Gangsters may go, as they have needs at all positions. Sources had linked Gem City to Sims, Miller, or Page though their interest in Page seems to have waned recently. Conventional wisdom says they're worried about his slight loss of speed if he stays at DE as the added weight will slow him down, and if he moves to LB, he doesn't have quite the coverage skills of Sims.

Gem City already has 3 RB's under contract, so it's curious why the interest. Raidergreg said "Why is it curious? It takes more than 1 RB to win in MFN and you can never have enough good football players. I wish Nathan Miller was just a bit faster but in the current version 4.4, his pass catching skills should help him be productive right away."

So does that mean Nathan Miller will be the #1 overall selection? Raidergreg also had plenty of praise to heap on Martin Sims, "I love that Sims kid, man he's a hitter. There are several rumors about why he skipped college to play semi-pro ball but we don't have drug testing in MFN so he can imitate Snoop Dogg all he wants as long as he produces on Sunday. Like Miller, I wish he was faster, but he's as safe a player as there is in this draft class."

Well apparently when you name a player after a drug lord, he acts like a drug lord. Pablo Escobar "blew" through training camp giving zero f's, trying to outdo Charlie Sheen. I called him into my office this morning to ask for his playbook and informing him he's being released.

That didn't turn out so well. He screamed at me from the top of his lungs "I'll kill you, you stinking Gringo. Nobody steals Pablo Escobar's money". I was afraid this might happen so security was right outside the office. They were able to calm him down enough so I could explain to him that he gets to keep all of the bonus money.

It took awhile to convince him I wasn't pulling his leg, but once he realized I was serious he started laughing like a fool. "Stupid Gringo, I'll take your money for doing basically nothing, but you better hope I don't end up on a team on your schedule. I'll make you pay for dismissing me."

Gangster Life caught up with team owner raidergreg after the Gem City Gangsters defeated the defending champion Oakland Raiders 16-7 in the first ever regular season game at Cousin Vinny's Coliseum.

Greg, this is the first chance we've had to speak since the move from Minnesota. Why did you move the franchise in the first place?

I run all of my teams out of Dayton, Ohio, even my teams in Oakland, San Francisco, Tampa, New Jersey, and Windsor, California. Those leagues force me to stay in those cities but the XFL allows franchise movement so I wanted to have a 3rd franchise based at home.

In addition to the Dayton RiverBandits (Cust-79) and South Park Cows (Private 75), the Gem City Gangsters will be the 3rd of 4 to call Dayton home. I am awaiting completion of the current season in Rivals, then I will be moving my New York Jets franchise here.

Oh really? That's the first I've heard about this.

Well I don't know why you're just hearing it now, I announced it like a month ago. Anyway, that team will be called the Dayton Triangles and play at Triangle Park where the original Triangles played.

OK, cool, so why did you choose the name Gem City Gangsters?

I wanted an original sounding name that didn't necessarily have Dayton in it. No need for redundancy.

Specifically, why Gangsters? Aren't you concerned with the image that represents?

Haha, no I'm not concerned. I grew up with the rough and tumble NFL of the 70's and 80's and I chose the Oakland Raiders as my favorite team because their defense scared people, literally. Nobody wanted to go over the middle with Jack Tatum lurking around. Those old Raider teams didn't just want to beat you on the scoreboard, they wanted to beat you physically.

That's how I want my teams to play, make opponents have to fight like **** for every measly yard they gain, and to feel the pain when tackled.

That is the total opposite of how football is played today.

No, it's the total opposite of how the real life NFL is played but this is the XFL, where almost anything goes.

Well it's obvious anything goes with guns in your logo and scantily clad female cheerleaders.

What's your point?

I'll ask the questions here if you don't mind. My point is, aren't you afraid of offending your fan base by glorifying guns and objectifying women?

I do mind when your questions and comments undermine what I'm trying to build here. Images and words are only offensive if you let them be offensive. Guns? Would you rather I use a pic of some real gangster with his pants hanging way below his ****? Give me a break. Scantily clad women? That's pretty much the definition of cheerleader, is it not?

Our marketing team determined our average fan in Dayton is a 27 year old male who plays lots of violent video games and our market test results show Gem City Gangsters will be a popular name among our fan base. I'm not even going to explain the cheerleaders. That's like explaining why peanut butter goes good on a sandwich with jelly.

Sorry to touch a nerve, but if I may ask, why no male cheerleaders?

Sometimes a picture is worth a 1000 words.



Well I guess nobody wants to see THAT. So may I ask about the name of the stadium?

Of course. It's named Cousin Vinny's Coliseum since they paid for naming rights.

How much did they pay?

That's personal as I actually work for Cousin Vinny's. You may or may not know this, but MFN does not pay my bills. I derive zero income from this football team so I have to have a real job working for a late night pizza company.

Late night?

Yes late night. Bars close at 2:30 am around here so we're open until 3 am Sunday through Wednesday and 4 am Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Do people really order pizza that late? Aren't you scared of being robbed?

Are we gonna talk about pizza or football? I'll answer this last pizza question then it's on to football. Yes people really order that late and no I'm not scared of being robbed. Those things do happen, but not really in my delivery area. The store is located just outside the Dayton border in the suburb of Kettering so we mostly deal with drunk people who are happy to see hot food at their door.

OK back to football. Once you took over last season the Vikings finished 7-3 and the Gangsters are 2-0 this young season, fresh off defeating the champion Raiders. Do you feel this team is ready to compete for a title this year?

On one hand I am proud of this team being 9-3 under my watch after starting 0-6 last year and if you base our chances off of beating the champs, then yes we have a shot.

On the other hand, last year our schedule wasn't all that tough the last 10 games. Starting 0-6 led to flying under the radar and perhaps teams taking us lightly. Heading into this year, the media was taking us lightly as we were around 24th or 25th in the opening power rankings.

The win over Oakland notwithstanding, I'm not sure we have enough players yet to win it all. Our offense is still a work in progress but if our defense keeps playing like they have so far, who knows how far we can go.

Is there anything else you'd like to discuss?

Not at this time. I didn't get home from work until 4:20 and I still have some MFN games to watch.

Wow, where did this offensive outburst come from? Hope it's a sign of things to come.

Huge win last night for the Gangsters against the reigning division champs. Gangsters were 7-3 upon taking over last season, with 1 of those losses coming against the Pack. This game was a measuring stick to see how far along my team is, and I'm loving my defense. I think I have a safety in every game but 1, idk for sure.

Heading into the season I would have guessed I'd be 4-2 so I'm ecstatic to be 6-0 with a 2 game lead in the division but...there is a lot of football left. Can I keep winning games when I don't even score 20? We'll all find out soon enough.

$$$ Gangster Life $$$

This pic is an exaggeration but I'm disappointed to have 10,000 empty seats for my huge division game against Green Bay. It was bad enough only having 54,000 and change for our home opener against the XFL Champion Oakland Raiders, but we're new in town and competing against more established teams like the Dayton RiverBandits and South Park Cows for fans. There is also an upstart team from Rivals League, Dayton Triangles in town and the United Football Alliance just announced yesterday their Hattiesburg franchise will be moving to Xenia, 15 minutes east of Dayton.

This was just our 3rd regular season home game, and the 64,000 in attendance today is an increase of 10,000 from the last home game, so we are trending upward.

The local media still like to focus too much on our logo (we've actually had more backlash about the cigar smoking than the guns) and our scantily clad cheerleaders than the on field product, but that tide is slowly turning.

Well we've come a long way in a short time, from many empty seats to a capacity crowd for the NXC Conference Championship, to bringing the hardware home from Detroit.



We had our parade through Downtown Dayton followed by a fan celebration at Cousin Vinny's Coliseum.







This was all fun, but I'm exhausted from all the interviews and talk shows. It's time to get back to work to try and do this all over again.

$$$ Gangster Life $$$