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XFL, I Weep for Theeeee

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 05/11/01)

The XFL died yesterday (May 10) at the ripe, old age of four months, leaving its estimated 289 hard-core fans morose and inconsolable.

You remember the XFL. The pro football league that was going to put real men back on the field? The league that was about the game, not the money? The group that was going to drive the namby-pamby out of pro football? The league imbued with the oily patina of the World Wrestling Federation?

If none of this rings a bell, you know why the league died. The XFL was born when NBC mated the WWF (televised live on pay-per-view!). NBC hoped the resulting XFL spawn would fill the bloody gash left in NBC’s sports lineup left by the loss of NFL football rights in 1997.

You can just imagine the NBC “brainstorming” session where someone said, “HMMMMMMMM, let’s do this: Lets make a deal with Vince McMahon and his WWF posse to create a new league of ‘eXtreme’ football, let them promote it as being the roughest, smash-mouthy-est league ever and get the Governor of Minnesota to do the ‘color’ in the booth. We’ll give our teams butch names like the ‘Hitmen’ and ‘Maniax’ and maybe ‘Serial Killers’ and we’ll make some cash.”

A funny thing happened on the way to the cash register. After months of promos that promised a game so pure, brutal and Butkus-like that small children shouldn’t watch, the actual game itself sucked. The league didn’t even come close to living up to its hype.

Instead of real man’s football, we got 9 to 6, error-filled yawners. I’ve seen soccer games with better offense. The XFL’s one-year gig proved that fans enjoy fancy sports packaging but they’re still most concerned with the product.

We get a kick out of the wildly over-the-top player yapping and get titillated by the nearly naked cheerleaders, but we draw the line at investing prime time, weekend television viewing hours in watching NCAA Division II-level football.

I was among the millions who tuned in for the opening XFL game in February. Curiosity, mainly, and a sense of giving them a chance. After ten minutes I was driven back to my reading by the sound-off-like-you-got-a-pair, comically over-hyped player introductions, Vince McMahon at midfield spewing on about this being “real football” and the impossibly goony camera angles.

Ironically, the first points registered in the XFL came from a kicker, which the league pretended to scorn. The XFL also proved that eight straight months of football is too much. Right after the NFL wrapped up its ever-lengthening season with the Super Bowl in late January, the XFL started.

The endless football had a kind of National Hockey League feel to it. The NHL’s season starts in November and runs through frickin’ JUNE. The playoffs started sometime in March, I swear, and are about half over right now. Somebody send in the hostage rescue team.

The NHL scores even lower than the XFL in prime time because I’m among the estimated 821 people outside the host cities with the endurance to care about the league for EIGHT MONTHS. Bowling leagues are shorter than the NHL season.

The National Basketball Association’s playoffs are also in full swing with exactly 1,209 people watching. I know you’ve heard the buzz about it around your water cooler. Wake me up sometime around game two of the finals this summer.

The XFL also taught me that I don’t really want to know what football players and coaches are saying on the sidelines. Here’s a tip: There’s a lot of spitting and swearing and it’s not that interesting. Plus, you shove a microphone under their noses and players start profilin’ and representin’ for the TV posse. It’s like they’re auditioning for Survivor or something.

Ratings -- the grand arbiter of who lives and dies on TV -- went from a 10 for the opening XFL game to a 2.1 for the championship on April 21. The 2.1 tied the championship game for 93rd place among prime-time shows that week. You could show two hours of video of my daughter’s guinea pig, Pee Wee (GuineaCam!), on NBC at 7 p.m. Saturday and get a 2.1 just from the couple million people who forgot to turn off their TVs. The game packed 24,153 fans into the 90,000-seat LA Coliseum. At least the tickets to see a horrid, over-hyped game were “affordable.”

Of course it’s all the media’s fault. Negative Nellies like me. We’re the ones who poisoned the minds of the public, turning them against the XFL. We never gave it a chance. We forced people not to watch. We took control of millions of TVs and blocked the XFL broadcast. Look, a black helicopter just flew out of my butt!

I do feel bad for the players (except for players who were way too in love with themselves). Lots of these guys played just because they love to. That’s too bad. The evil NFL signed some of the XFL players. There’s always arena league.

I’m glad the XFL players got to play, I’m just gladder I didn’t spend time or money watching them. I agree with the XFL that there’s a lot not to like in the NFL. The whole league has become permanently attached to the American cash teat. $29 million a year to catch a football is one example. $150 for two people to attend a game (when you include parking and $7.50 stadium beers) is another example.

But if the American public is willing to shell out the huge coin to feed the NFL money machine, hey, more power to them. I give the XFL credit for coming up with a competing product to the NFL and giving it a shot. Competition is good. Put a product on the market, promote it and if the public goes for it, you’re in business. If not, you’re the Ex-FL. That’s how it works here in the U.S. of A.

Maybe the XFL could have been saved if it hired large-breasted “managers” who could get into catfights at the 50-yard-line, hit the players on the heads with chairs at random moments or tackle the ref after bad calls.

Hmmmm. I better call NBC and Vince McMahon.

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