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Jack Lengyel likes the idea that players in the new league will have to have college degrees.

Jack Lengyel always likes to have some sort of revival or startup project brewing.

In the early months of 2005, Lengyel was elbow-deep in trying to right the ship of a troubled athletic department at the University of Colorado.

But as he was wrapping up his efforts at giving the Buffs a fresh start as interim athletic director at CU, he was also getting on board with another project still trying to get its first start. Two-and-a-half years later, that latter venture is looking like it might finally get rolling for real.

Lengyel is a member of the board of managers for the All-American Football League, a unique professional league that is hoping to begin play next spring.

"It was very formative at that time while I was at CU," Lengyel said last week by phone. "I had some conversations with (league president Cedric Dempsey) talking about my interest in it. But I think I was back in Phoenix before I actually joined the board."

Lengyel's early days with the AAFL involved helping form the vision for what the organization aims to become: a pro league that tugs at the heartstrings of college football fans who yearn for the sport in the offseason as well as a chance to see their former heroes who didn't make it in the NFL back on the gridiron.

The novelty of the idea comes in with the rule that every player must have a college degree and that most of the games will be played in college stadiums, possibly with teams even wearing those schools' colors. Players will be placed on teams nearest where they attended college to give the teams ties to their communities and regions.

"I just thought it had a lot of good things about it and wanted to see if I could help make this come to fruition," said Lengyel, who has more recently been working with prospective teams on football operations aspects of the business.

Lengyel, 72, is still involved in an array of activities — including gigs with the National Football Foundation, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics and one as vice president of business development for XOS Technologies. He also has a passion for seeing organizations such as CU through tough transitions, and for getting projects off the ground.

"Jack is as good as anybody because he knows so many people and everybody likes him," says Gene Corrigan, the former commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference who has been on the AAFL's board since the start. "They're certainly going to listen to what he's talking about.

"And no matter how many things he's involved with he seems to always have time for you."

There are, of course, plenty of hurdles in the way of the AAFL, most notably the history of demise for other second-tier professional football leagues that have come and gone — the WFL, USFL, XFL and, most recently, NFL Europe.

But the player salaries alone should make the AAFL competitive for top players who don't make the NFL.

League spokesman Travis McGriff, a former Florida Gator and Denver Bronco wide receiver who hopes to play in the AAFL himself, said players will earn $75,000 to $100,000 per year, instantly putting the league on par or ahead of leagues such as the Canadian Football League. The recent folding of NFL Europe doesn't hurt either.

"I think this league will be the No. 1 option for guys that aren't in the NFL," McGriff said.

The league also doesn't have a profitable television deal and may not for the first season or two as it gets going.

But the organizers of the league, which is being financed by San Diego millionaire Marcus Katz, are sticking with some of the biggest college football hotbeds to begin with. There are plans already for a Florida team that will play some of its games at the Citrus Bowl and some in Gainesville, and more plans are in the works to get teams playing at the Universities of Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Purdue and Texas to name a few.

Lengyel said there have also been preliminary talks with the University of Nebraska — How's the thought of former Buffs donning red and white sound? — but that Lincoln won't likely be a host city in 2008.

The ideal locations for teams, all of which will be league-owned, are where college stadiums are always sold out in the fall and people are waiting years sometimes to get season tickets. The idea, of course, isn't to rob fans from stadiums that aren't full in the fall anyway.

"Particularly in the Southeast, football is a way of life," Lengyel said. "Once it grows, will that concept transcend to communities that don't have them sold out? That remains to be seen. I think the first thing is to get it going in the hotbeds and then see if there are other cities where people might want to start it up."

Corrigan said the league, which would begin play in April and hold its championship game on July 4, should know by mid-September whether it will launch or not.

Lengyel added that the biggest challenge the league faces right now is gauging whether there is enough interest from the ticket-buying public. On that front, everyone involved with the league is confident.

"If we don't get this done, somebody else will," Lengyel said. "This concept will be a viable concept and somebody is going to do this concept. We've got it out there now so it's, 'What are the fans' responses?'"