Does Mark Cuban’s budding love affair with professional football mean he’s cooled on buying the Cubs?

The owner of the Dallas Mavericks pro basketball team has been mentioned as a possible contender for Chicago’s iconic, loveable baseball losers, but plans to buy a team in the United Football League, the new competitor to the NFL. (See this New York Times story that broke the news.)

The UFL, which also is getting backing from Hambrecht + Co. investment bank founder Bill Hambrecht and Google executive Tim Armstrong, will start with eight teams and play on Friday nights.

The league will include teams in such NFL-less cities as Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Mexico City, which last year hosted the most heavily attended regular-season game in NFL history (Plans for a UK game are in the works as well).

Cuban, who has expressed interest in the past in buying the Cubs, stands ready to gamble on the UFL succeeding where the World Football League, the United States Football League and the XFL failed. Even the Canadian Football League failed when it tried to establish a presence in the United States.

Cuban could still be in the running for the Cubs, which Tribune has put on the block, but Major League Baseball tends to favor local owners, which may be a reason why Cuban is looking to the gridiron.

Side note: See this other New York Times article — which is a story by one reporter at the paper talking about how his colleague got the exclusive report… if you can follow all that.