I really think this has potential because of the timing and the more conservative approach to it.
The NFL seemingly seems trapped, uninspired and not moving in any sort of interesting direction at the moment.
What you do is simple. You take the type of players and type of "play" that the NFL has seemingly rejected, go run with that. You know those offenses that Mike Leach or Navy runs? That would be interesting to see play out beyond the collegiate level and to see if you could maybe move that into the pro level.
You know those guys who were successful in college, but are written off as to ever being successful pro players? That is who you target.
The goal, period would be to be a league that experiments with everything from players to markets to officating to cameras. It's not so much to knock over and conquer the NFL, but it is to help encourage some healthy competition to motivate football as a whole to have some healthy change.
And as an aside? Guess who benefits? The freaking NFL. You know part of the reason the Browns got good in the 80's? Guys like Gerald McNeil, Kevin Mack, etc all making a name for themselves in the USFL, and then getting a deal with our team. I imagine there's a lot of guys that have likely not had their careers turn out as well due to the NFL being very picky about where a certain guy lines up, etc.