Enjoyed the doc, largely. (I suppose some level of passion for the subject is necessary in a documentarian, but Ebersol's kid was a little too close to the subject.)
I actually went to an XFL game - Las Vegas at Chicago one very cold weekend at Soldier Field. Tell you what, their in-game presentation was fun.
The innovations as far as televising the games were forward-thinking and survive today, of course. Jim Ross, Jesse Venture et al contributed to the overall unprofessional-ness of the shows, though.
The football wasn't very good, but when you give teams 28 days to try to get it together, that's going to happen. By the time teams started to get into synch, ( a ) the public and media had made up their minds and weren't going to give it a second chance and ( b ) the season was over so quickly.
McMahon's bluster wrote checks the football couldn't cash, when it came down to it. His antagonistic stance toward....well, everybody....would have been just iconoclastic and fun had they actually been able to put together representative football teams.
Still, they didn't miss their goal of a million tickets sold by much, but their success was predicated on TV ratings which never materialized. Nor were they going to, not when they targeted a certain demographic and then put the games on TV on a night when that demo didn't watch TV.
"This Was the XFL" on ESPN's 30 on 30 tonight
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Throwin_Samoan
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Dusty Sloan
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Re: "This Was the XFL" on ESPN's 30 on 30 tonight
Have been trying to contact everyone and anyone with WWE to try to track down left-behind XFL materials (game films, PR, programs, flip cards, etc.), but no one answers. Would be one thing if they said it doesn't exist, but stinks not getting an answer.
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MatthewToy
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Re: "This Was the XFL" on ESPN's 30 on 30 tonight
A good companion piece to the 30 For 30 documentary is the Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard podcast. He was part of Vince's inner circle at the time.
Re: "This Was the XFL" on ESPN's 30 on 30 tonight
Other companion pieces:MatthewToy wrote:A good companion piece to the 30 For 30 documentary is the Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard podcast. He was part of Vince's inner circle at the time.
Charlie Ebersol was on Chris Jericho's podcast, "Talk is Jericho". Previewing the 30 for 30 but also went into other XFL stuff that wasn't on the show. Was a good listen.
Also there was the "30 for 30 Plus" Post-show on ESPN3 with Jonathan Coachman, Charlie Ebersol, Rod "He Hate Me" Smart and Darren Rovell.