Todd Archer
Multiple Authors
ARLINGTON, Texas — Quarterback Jalan McClendon has been to a few fan fests in his time playing spring football either with the XFL or UFL.
“You’d get maybe 20 people to show up,” said McClendon, now with the Columbus Aviators, “but at the one in Columbus, like that was my expectation going into it, but we get there and I’m like, ‘Oh, shoot.’ There’s like 1,000 people there, and it was snowing.”
The biggest cheers that day were for the Aviators coach Ted Ginn Jr. From 2004 to 2006, he starred at Ohio State. He returned the opening kickoff in the BCS National Championship game for a touchdown against Florida. In 37 games with the Buckeyes, he had 4,068 total yards and 26 touchdowns. Six of those touchdowns came on punt returns, two on kickoffs.
While he had a 14-year NFL career with six different teams, he is Ohio through and through, having grown up in Cleveland. He played high school games at Historic Crew Stadium, where the Aviators will play their home games.
“It’s very special,” Ginn said of being in Columbus. “And then, I get my own time. I don’t have to compete with nobody. It’s just the Aviators, it’s just Ted Ginn. Don’t have to worry about the Browns on TV or the Bengals. No Ohio State or Friday night lights. I just want to bring a good team into town.”
Ginn’s appointment as one of the eight head coaches in the UFL is not an outlier. He is one of four first-time head coaches at the professional level.
AJ McCarron, who played in the UFL two years ago, is the coach of the Birmingham Stallions, about 60 miles from the University of Alabama, where he led the Crimson Tide to two national championships. Before a 10-year NFL career, Chris Redman set records as a quarterback at Louisville, his hometown. Now, he is the coach of the Louisville Kings.
Ricky Proehl has one of the biggest catches in St. Louis Rams history — the touchdown grab to beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 1999 NFC Championship Game. Once an assistant for the St. Louis Battlehawks, he returns as their head coach.
The league’s other new coaches are familiar names. Rick Neuheisel takes over the Dallas Renegades and Kevin Sumlin, whose ascent to the head coaching jobs at Texas A&M and Arizona started at the University of Houston, is now the head coach of the Houston Gamblers.
The league’s only returning coaches are Shannon Harris of the defending UFL champion DC Defenders and Anthony Becht, who moves from St. Louis to helm the Orlando Storm.
The ties that bind Ginn, McCarron and Redman — stars in their college cities or states — were by design as new UFL investor Mike Repole, the billionaire founder of Vitaminwater and Bodyarmor sports drinks, looked to rebrand the spring league in some ways.
“It was about local, local, local,” said Repole, who has become the league’s point man. “I wanted to have people that resonated with the local community as much as I could. And I wanted people who were not only recognizable but respected on and off the football field.”
He also needed those people who wanted to coach.
Ginn was training athletes with his father, Ted Sr., a coaching legend in Cleveland. McCarron had worked with high school kids and said he had college offensive coordinator opportunities. He briefly ran for lieutenant governor of Alabama but walked away from that pursuit when the Stallions’ job was offered,
Redman, who retired from the NFL in 2011, was also coaching high school football.
“It’s cool to see guys get an opportunity, guys that understand the game, know the game really well, played it for a long time,” McCarron said.
McCarron was driving home from the Alabama governor’s mansion when he got a call from UFL president and CEO Russ Brandon, who let him know he was their top choice to replace Skip Holtz, who won two USFL championships and the UFL title in 2024 as the Stallions coach. Holz announced in December that he was stepping away but not retiring from coaching.
The next day McCarron was offered the job.
how the deal got done 👀
watch the FULL Inside Training Camp episode at the link below!
🔗: https://t.co/P2Ad2vn1NM pic.twitter.com/J7EVUIofMQ
— Birmingham Stallions (@UFLStallions) March 3, 2026
As a quarterback, McCarron prepared to know everything the offense needed to do as well as what the opposing defense would need to do. It made the transition to coach a little easier, although it was strange at first to coach players he once competed against.
“They all view me as coach and the weirdest part’s hearing them, ‘Yes, sir. No, sir,'” McCarron said. “So I don’t feel like I’m that old yet, but no, I mean, it’s really, it’s been awesome. I mean, I’ve had so much fun doing this. I really couldn’t see myself doing anything else now.”
Having played for Nick Saban, McCarron is not trying to emulate everything his former coach did.
“So many guys have fallen into the trap of taking the Saban Way but trying to be Saban instead of trying to be themselves,” McCarron said. “I mean, probably the most Saban thing I really talk about is being process oriented. Everybody wants success. The world we’re in now, everybody wants fast success. They want to either get rich overnight or popular or something, right? Nobody focuses on, if you do it the right way, the work you have to put in each and every day to eventually reach that goal. And then once you achieve that goal, the climb to the mountaintop isn’t the hardest path. It’s once you’re at the top of the mountain, can you sustain it and stay there because everybody’s gunning for you? So I think when I think of things that he really touched on and preached back in the day, that’s probably the biggest thing that sticks with me and what I try to implement from a mindset standpoint.”
Like Ginn, Redman played for his father, Bob, at Louisville Male High School. He was the national player of the year and could have gone anywhere but opted to remain home for college. A third-round pick of the Baltimore Ravens, his NFL career did not start the way he had hoped.
“I think the people, they liked me, but I don’t think that they truly really had my back,” Redman said. “And I never felt that way throughout my career in Baltimore. And I think it probably showed. I feel like I kind of went backwards as a quarterback.”
It wasn’t until he got to the Atlanta Falcons, reuniting with his college coach, Bobby Petrino, in 2007, that he found the joy of playing again. He wants to foster that experience with his current players.
As much as it was about teaching the schemes, Redman held off-field events, such as a taco Tuesday and a cornhole tournament, to bring the group together despite just a five-week period before the season started.
“I want to be exactly what I would have liked when I was playing professional football,” Redman said. “And so I’m excited now to be able to give them that and have, say, ‘Look, if you’re here, you’re here for a reason. I 100% believe in you.’ And I think that as old-school and whatever that is — and these are professional players — I think human nature needs to hear that. People need to know that you have someone that believes in you and we’re all at the helps for the common goal of winning a championship.”
Ginn was a former first-round pick, No. 7 by the Miami Dolphins in 2007. His players remember him. McClendon was a Carolina Panthers fan when Ginn played with Cam Newton. Wide receiver Keke Chism grew up a New Orleans Saints fan when Ginn played for Sean Payton. Ginn’s connection with Payton led him to his Aviators offensive coordinator, Todd Haley, who was on the same Dallas Cowboys’ staff with Payton under Bill Parcells.
“He’s a guy from Day 1, he’s brought the energy,” Chism said. “Not only that he’s brought the expertise about the small details of the game, what it takes to elevate each and every player on the team. He doesn’t just focus on the offensive side of the ball. … He speaks; you listen.”
And if need be, Ginn can still show his players what to do.
“I can show you,” Ginn laughed, “now I don’t know how many times I can show you, but I can show you.”
Ginn, McCarron and Redman played at the highest level in front of thousands and thousands of fans. As players, they had more control over what will happen during games, especially opening day. Now as first-year head coaches, they are about to walk into the unknown.
“What’s it going to look like?” Ginn wondered. “Am I on time with the guys getting there? Do we get back in the locker room at the same time? How many holding penalties will we have? I want to come out with a win, and we run the ball good and we play great defense. I know it all doesn’t go like that, but in a sense that’s what I want the overall day to look like.”
And when their seasons are over, they want wins, but they want their teams, their cities and their states to be proud.
Redman spoke about his feelings, but he summed up what Ginn and McCarron felt as well.
“I think people around Louisville will know how much this team matters to me,” Redman said. “It’s more than just a coaching job or a stepping stool for a coach for another coach. To me, this is where I want to be, and this is exactly what I want to do. And I think all these coaches are going to have pride in where they’re from and the cities that we’re playing at. I think it makes it more passionate. And I think the league and all the viewership will see that.”
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