Birmingham is getting a pro football team, and the mayor wants Colin Kaepernick to be the quarterback.

In case you haven't noticed, pro football isn't just about pro football anymore.

Bringing Kaepernick to Birmingham is how you put your city on the national stage, and how you make a statement to the world for political points. Is that how you build a strong base for a town's new pro-football team playing in a pro-football league being rushed to market next year amid President Donald Trump's attack on the NFL?

It's an enormous gamble, but certainly a gamble worth taking.

Six pro football teams have come and gone in Birmingham, after all. Will Team No.7 capture the power of the city's recent pride in itself amid its slowly building renaissance? The new stadium coming to downtown will help, although the team will play at least its first season at Legion Field in 2019.

Tim Lewis, a former assistant in the NFL, will be the team's new coach, and the league will use regional drafts to keep college players close to home. Considering Alabama's dominance of college football over the last decade, Lewis might be able to find a few guys trying to get back onto the field.

The AAF will begin in 2019 in eight cities across the country, and seven have been announced: Birmingham, Atlanta, Memphis, Orlando, San Diego, Phoenix and Salt Lake City. The league has a television deal with CBS, and games are scheduled to begin the week after the Super Bowl. A four-team playoff will end with a championship game the weekend of April 26-28.

A winter-to-spring football league might be a tough sell in frigid Salt Lake City, but the AAF has potential here in Birmingham. Hopefully the city embraces this team, and proves, finally, that a pro football team can thrive here. We'll see. The mayor is excited -- he now has three pro teams in town when his predecessor only had one -- and Woodfin's enthusiasm now ties his credibility to the success of the team.

Embracing the city's past and not running away from it is an important message, so Woodfin took his shot on Twitter on Wednesday after the news conference: "Hey, @Kaepernick7, Birmingham welcomes players who fight for social justice. It's in our DNA. Come #JointheAlliance."

It would be extraordinary if that actually happened in Birmingham, of all places. This town has some pretty famous history of brave people standing up to police brutality. Kaepernick was blackballed by the NFL for taking a knee during national anthems to raise awareness for police brutality of the black community.

Kaepernick's message was twisted by Donald Trump, of course, and the divisiveness sowed there helped to germinate the environment where the AAF is trying to operate. It's not alone. Pro wrestling magnet Vince McMahon is relaunching the XFL in 2020.

McMahon said his new XFL won't allow players with criminal records to play in his league. The XFL's new CEO, former NCAA executive Oliver Luck, recently reiterated another of McMahon's statements: all players would be required to stand for the national anthem. Something tells me everyone will be standing for the national anthem in the AAF, too. Alliance Birmingham's introductory news conference for Lewis was flanked by two modeling dummies dressed in patriotic football uniforms.

The red, white and blue jerseys even featured stars and stripes.

Pro football in America is now all about making political statements, it seems. That's not going to help sell any tickets, though. If we've learned anything over the last two years, it's that fans don't want politics with their football.

Football's political undertones will persist, however, at least for the next three years. Any chance of it going away ended last week when Donald Trump disinvited the Philadelphia Eagles to the White House. Last year during a campaign rally for Luther Strange in Huntsville, Trump famously ridiculed players in the NFL for kneeling during the national anthem, and said owners should fire anyone who kneels.

On Wednesday in Birmingham, AAF executive J.K. McKay (the son of John McKay), called the AAF a "player friendly" league. League consultant Justin Tuck told me that the AFF, "from top down," is going to be about "players having input on what we do as a league."

"We're trying to make sure that we do right not only by our players, and that's obviously a huge facet of it, but also the community," Tuck said. "If you look at our flag over there, it has three stars, and this league does not even come close to what we think it can become if all three of those are not aligned.

"If the fans aren't winning in our league, and the engagement is not there, then we don't succeed. If the players don't have the opportunity on the field, off the field, whether that's safety, whether that's continuing education, whether that's just overall player wellness, we don't have a league."

The league is working on continuing-education scholarships for players, and kickoffs will be eliminated from games to reduce the chances of injuries. Safety will be a top priority.

How that will affect the product on the field at this point is anyone's guess. In Birmingham, history tells us fans will show up to find out. It sounds like the mayor will be first in line.

"Birmingham is back in the game," Woodfin said.

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for Alabama Media Group. He's on Twitter

.