Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Good afternoon, everyone!

With XFL 2.0 underway, I was thinking - did anyone ever find (or originally have) game books from XFL 1.0? I know the stats were kind of scattershot, but would like to see the game books, since they have eluded me for 19 years.

Dusty Sloan wrote:Good afternoon, everyone!

With XFL 2.0 underway, I was thinking - did anyone ever find (or originally have) game books from XFL 1.0? I know the stats were kind of scattershot, but would like to see the game books, since they have eluded me for 19 years.

Heck, this new version doesn't even have them either!

The new XFL does have gamebooks. They are on password protected portion of the XFL site. Why the league doesn't want to make them public is beyond me.
And they still have problems with the play-by-play. Plays such as "A.Rehkow punts" - and well, that's it. Was it returned? out of bounds? touchback?

This is what happens when you outsource it to Australia!

By contrast, the AAF did a great job of sharing their gamebooks with the public. I get the sense the AAF was trying to be a real minor league operation compared to the XFL. I still think it's strange, however, that the XFL hasn't been just a little bit more cartoonish or over-the-top. I really don't see the draw except to have football on when there's nothing else to watch. The other sports are getting smarter about filling in the time after the Super Bowl. I don't know if MLB has done this in the past, but this year they are replaying spring training games all day and all night when they're not showing their flagship shows. After a season of football excitement, I'm ready for the lazy pace of baseball; it's hard for me to get excited about football until the NFL and college seasons roll around again.

RyanChristiansen wrote:By contrast, the AAF did a great job of sharing their gamebooks with the public. I get the sense the AAF was trying to be a real minor league operation compared to the XFL. I still think it's strange, however, that the XFL hasn't been just a little bit more cartoonish or over-the-top. I really don't see the draw except to have football on when there's nothing else to watch. The other sports are getting smarter about filling in the time after the Super Bowl. I don't know if MLB has done this in the past, but this year they are replaying spring training games all day and all night when they're not showing their flagship shows. After a season of football excitement, I'm ready for the lazy pace of baseball; it's hard for me to get excited about football until the NFL and college seasons roll around again.

While the original XFL made the mistake of being too over the top this new version seems to be making the mistake of being just too boring. There just isn't anything about this league that seems to be able to hold people's interest. It isn't awful by any means like the first league was but it is just 'meh'. It's basically just a league that if you want to continue to follow the guys that will get cut during training camp you can watch the XFL. If it does indeed get a year 2 it will be interesting to see what changes they make during the offseason to try to rekindle interest in it. Because as of now the interest is just fading away week by week.