Friday, Nov. 27, 2009 | 7:59 p.m.
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Sun archives
- Locomotives prepare for UFL Championship Game (11/26/09)
- UFL's first season served as a "dress rehearsal" (11/25/09)
- Locomotives cruise past Sentinels, look forward to championship (11/21/09)
- Locomotives clinch spot in UFL championship game (11/14/09)
- Locomotives beat New York, have shot at championship game (11/4/09)
- Las Vegas Locomotives fall to Florida Tuskers, 29-15 (10/14/09)
- Las Vegas Locomotives win inaugural UFL game (10/08/09)
Unless something unforeseen happens, Jim Fassel said he will be back as the coach of the Las Vegas Locomotives.
Fassel, who spent 15 years coaching in the NFL, said he loved his first year in the UFL.
“I really enjoyed it,” Fassel said. “To me right now, I love coaching. I have a passion for it.”
At the same time, Fassel would not make a definitive statement about coaching somewhere else.
“I can’t say I’d rule it out,” Fassel said. “But it would have to be the very right situation.”
While Fassel made it sound like he would coach in the UFL again, Florida coach Jim Haslett’s statement was a little more open to interpretation.
“I don’t know if they want me,” Haslett said. “You’ve got to be wanted to have a job. We’ll see what happens.”
UFL overtime rules on display
Unlike the NFL, where the first team to score in overtime wins, the UFL guarantees both teams possessions.
If neither team scores after they get the ball once, it turns into sudden death and the first team that scores wins.
In Friday’s championship game, Florida turned the ball over on its possession and Las Vegas scored. But both Fassel and Haslett said they prefer the UFL’s overtime rule to the NFL’s.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Fassel said. “I think the NFL, there’s a lot of bright minds in that league, and they want to go to it.”
Haslett upset with the officiating
Jim Haslett believed a fumble in the fourth quarter that Las Vegas returned to the one-yard line should have been an incomplete pass.
Las Vegas defensive end Adrian Awasom knocked the ball out of Florida quarterback Brooks Bollinger’s hand to force the fumble.
But Haslett said Bollinger’s arm was moving forward, so the play should have been a pass attempt. He challenged the ruling on the field, and the officials upheld the fumble after reviewing the play.
“The guys upstairs must have been drunk,” Haslett said. “I don’t know what they were doing.”
Players now available to sign NFL free agent contracts
NFL teams in need of help at certain positions can now sign UFL players because the season is completed.
Both Fassel and Haslett said they expected a few of their players to sign free agent deals in the NFL.
“There are a lot of guys who have been contacted,” Haslett said. “Myself and a bunch of the coaches have been contacted. We’ll see.”
One player both coaches mentioned was Las Vegas running back DeDe Dorsey. But Dorsey declined to give any hints of where he might end up.
“Only time will tell,” Dorsey said.
Fassel said the chance for players to sign on with an NFL team is one of the best things about the UFL.
“In the past, without this league, guys would be sitting on the sofa watching the game and you don’t know what kind of shape they are in,” Fassel said. “You know these guys are in football shape.”
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