Former Ohio State football players who aren’t on NFL rosters will soon have an opportunity to continue their professional football careers in Columbus.
The United Football League – the No. 2 professional football league in America – announced earlier this week that it will play in Columbus starting in 2026 as it relocates one of its eight teams to Ohio’s capital city for next season. The Columbus Aviators will play at Historic Crew Stadium, with the season set to begin in late March.
And the UFL has plans to ensure that former Ohio State players who join the league play in the same city where they were once college stars.
Mike Repole, who leads the league’s business operations after becoming a co-owner of the UFL earlier this year, says the league plans to give the Aviators first dibs on Ohio State players who are interested in playing in the UFL.
“Every player that comes out of that Ohio State program, if they want to continue playing football (in the UFL), they'll be playing here,” Repole said Thursday at the Columbus Aviators’ introductory press conference.
While the UFL has a draft and free agency, Repole indicated that each of the league’s eight teams will get the first opportunity to add players from colleges within a 100-mile radius of their home cities. All eight teams are owned by the league, giving the UFL the ability to decide if they want players to play for specific teams, though each team has its own general manager.
Four former Ohio State players played in the UFL this past season: Damon Arnette, Steele Chambers, Antwuan Jackson and Rashod Berry. Arnette landed with the Houston Texans as a result of his play with the UFL’s Houston Roughnecks – which were renamed this week to the Houston Gamblers, their original name from the USFL – and played in his first NFL regular-season game since 2021 last weekend when the Texans elevated him from their practice squad to play against the Baltimore Ravens.
UFL leaders believe stories like Arnette’s illustrate the league’s value.
“Sometimes there's a player that gets drafted and goes to the NFL for a year or two, and for some reason just misses out and has to come back. And the development of players is so important to me because many of these kids play football from eight to 21, 22, and then they just miss it by that much. Wrong team, wrong coach, wrong play,” Repole said. “And if we can give them a second chance – we have 50 players in the league right now that are playing in the NFL. If it wasn't for our league, I'm not so sure they'd be there. And that makes me real proud, but I want that 50 to be 500.”
Beyond having former Buckeyes play for the Aviators, UFL leaders plan to discuss other ways they can work with Ohio State as the league enters the Columbus market. Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork was in attendance for Thursday’s press conference, and UFL CEO Russ Brandon thinks the league should try to learn everything it can from Ohio State as it looks to build its own brand with Columbus football fans.
“I'm good friends with Ross, and we've had some talks, and listen, Ohio State football is king,” Brandon said. “It's one of the greatest universities on the planet, it's great football. Coach Day has done an amazing job, Coach (Jim Tressel) before that, just some incredible people have come through here. So as much as we can do and as much as they'll have us, quite frankly, I'm going to lean on those relationships and want to be a big part of Ohio State, the Buckeye family, and obviously here in this great city of Columbus.”
The UFL has already recruited one former Ohio State player to work with the Aviators as the league announced former Buckeye quarterback Cardale Jones as the Aviators’ team ambassador during Thursday’s press conference. Jones – who played in the XFL, one of the two leagues that merged to form the UFL, in 2020 – is excited to be a part of the organization, though he doesn’t know exactly what his role will entail yet.
“I think you see the product they've put on the field the last couple of years, having 45-plus guys on the NFL active rosters right now, you can tell it's a product that's continuing to be enhanced,” Jones said of the UFL. “It's a product that's working. It's a product that continues to expand as well.”
Fearless at any altitude.
— Columbus Aviators (@UFLAviators) October 9, 2025
Welcome to the 614! pic.twitter.com/YF66nGLynK
Repole said he hopes to have at least 10,000 fans per game in Historic Crew Stadium in 2026, with expectations of drawing 15,000 fans for Aviators home games in 2027 and filling up the stadium with 20,000 fans per game in year three. With how many football fans there are in Columbus and throughout the state of Ohio, Repole is confident the Aviators will draw plenty of support.
“People are watching this sport. I mean, a lot of things that I read is like, ‘I want the United Football League to make it because I can't go March to August without football,’” Repole said. “There are football-crazed fans, and football-crazed markets, and the markets that we're in, this is a football crazed market.”
“Every player that comes out of that Ohio State program, if they want to continue playing football (in the UFL), they'll be playing here.”– UFL co-owner Mike Repole on getting Buckeyes to play for the Columbus Aviators
The history of past leagues like the UFL, even in Columbus, leaves plenty of skeptics about how big of a market there truly is for non-NFL professional football. Previous professional football teams in Columbus have been short-lived. The most recent professional football team to play in Columbus, the Columbus Destroyers, lasted just one year in 2019 (after a previous iteration from 2004-08) before the Arena Football League folded. The Ohio Glory, which played in the World League of American Football, also lasted just one season in 1991.
But Repole, whose confidence in himself and the UFL was apparent throughout Thursday’s press conference, believes the UFL can find long-lasting success despite the failures of past spring football leagues. He draws from his past experience as the founder of BodyArmor Sports Drink, which he sold to Coca-Cola for $5.6 billion in 2021, as evidence that the UFL can overcome the odds.
“There were two sport drinks for 50 years, Powerade and Gatorade. 45 drinks between 1969 and 2011 all tried to compete with Powerade and Gatorade ... like opponents for Mike Tyson in his prime, they lasted a round or two and they got knocked out. That didn't scare me, that excited me,” Repole said. “That this spring football has failed for 40 years is why I'm interested. Because we're going to do things differently, and we're going to move quickly, and we're going to listen to fans, and we're going to listen to media partners, and we're going to listen to our sponsors, and we're going to listen to our employees.”
