Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

For those of us who remember when NBC tried to sell us on the XFL back in 2001, it's the subject on "30 on 30" on ESPN tonight at 9:00 pm. It was an interesting, if insignificant, footnote in pro football history. I hope I don't forget to watch it, but I regularly forgot to watch the XFL 16 years ago too.

As both a football and WWF/WWE fan I had to give it a chance. I think I gave up after hearing Brian Bosworth get way too excited about a field goal in the middle of a game. Looking back I should've known it would fail when Vince McMahon first talked about it. "Where's my wide open smash mouth football?" Those are two separate things. Vince was/is so focused on his product he doesn't watch sports and has no knowledge of them.

Quality of play was a huge problem with the XFL, they didn't have the young talent or interesting offenses of the USFL. Lack of practice time before the first(and last) season showed on the field, and the league seemed to care more about promotion instead of putting a good product on the field.

Given the WWE's notorious reputation for essentially promoting the use of steroids among their wrestlers (with far too many of them dying young), I always had this image of an XFL locker room being a place that just had a huge bin full of PED's that anyone could gulp down if they wanted.

L.C. Greenwood wrote:Quality of play was a huge problem with the XFL,

Of course, this is exactly what football purists (known today as historians) and snooty media said about the pro grid leagues back in the mid to late 1940s, when it started to encroach on college football, calling it gimmicky, too unpredictable, and designed for ratings or show.

I remember being turned off by the XFL's presentation early on. But the league grew on me after awhile. There were still times when the games were best watched with the volume turned down, but it was hard not to root for the coaches and players. Play improved throughout the season, but by then not enough people were taking notice. L.C. Greenwood, I agree that a lack of initial preparation time also cost the league in terms of quality of play. Perhaps the biggest problem was the expectation that a minor league product could perform on primetime network television.

For those who want to brush up on their XFL history before the show:
http://www.statscrew.com/football/l-XFL/y-2001

And don't forget "He Hate Me:"
http://www.statscrew.com/football/stats/p-smartrod001

preeths wrote:Perhaps the biggest problem was the expectation that a minor league product could perform on primetime network television.

Exactly, the primary failure was from the business perspective.

I watched every game that was televised - because I like football - and I liked watching players every football fan knew like Mario Bailey, Ryan Clement, Rashaan Salaam, etc. Coaches/teams were filled with a lot of WLAF/NFLE guys, also. So if somehow people didn't know coaches/players from their college days or previous NFL experience but they watched NFLE then they would recognize head coaches and plenty of players.

I still have my XFL football, not a great ball but looks cool.

Reaser wrote: I still have my XFL football, not a great ball but looks cool.

And my next door neighbor "still has" his giant San Francisco Demons tattoo in living technicolor across his rather enormous left calf (body part not bovine).
Might've wanted to wait for season two to do that, Dan...

For all the criticisms of the XFL's on-field product, and some of them are warranted, 28 of its players appeared on NFL rosters after the XFL folded. When one considers that this was a minor league which never competed with the NFL for players in the first place, maybe that's not too bad.

JuggernautJ wrote:And my next door neighbor "still has" his giant San Francisco Demons tattoo in living technicolor across his rather enormous left calf (body part not bovine).
Might've wanted to wait for season two to do that, Dan...

Ha! That's great.

I was a junior in HS, there was two of us with the XFL ball - mine on display and my friends' was the one we used to throw around and then we had another friend who showed up to school one day wearing a Hitmen jersey.