Also the XFL(this time) was announced during the whole kneel-down kerfluffle when millions of folks were burning Nikes and swearing to boycott the NFL forever, and tried to stake a claim as teh alternative. As that petered out to nothing, and was forgotten over the last couple years it hurt the leagues chances to suceed as well, and I’m sure dampens McMahon’s enthusiasm to push on.
the coolest thing about the XFL was how everyone was mic’d up and you could hear the replay officials talking to the refs and actually explaining why they’re making the calls
NFL should do that but they won’t because it would expose more that nobody actually knows what is a catch or pass interference
Yeah that was revolutionary. It made it so much better.
Meanwhile the NFL is vehemently opposed to just adding a sky judge, which to almost anyone familiar with pro football should consider common sense.
The XFL officially filed for bankruptcy today. Its largest single unsecured creditor is the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, owners of the local stadium.
Somehow professional football once again manages to shaft St. Louis.
It still seems insane to think that people are going to want minor league football after a month of non stop college bowl games, national championship playoffs, and NFL playoffs. Plus, once you’re past February, you’ve got March madness and then baseball plus NBA/NHL playoffs. The USFL worked somewhat, but that was in a time without 24/7 non stop NFL coverage and every clown that can fog a mirror given 2 hours on ESPN for their mock draft predictions. The draft used to be a couple of days coverage in the newspaper and a few minutes on TV news
I’m sure there is a market for 52 weeks per year football but it’s not large enough to sustain a second league, especially with the quality of play so inferior. At best, in a corona free world, the XFL would have stumbled through one season and called it quits during the summer lull.
Heck with it, I’m not finished. I’m going to bring up those three not-so-little words…Ultimate Fighting Championship.
First off, even its own creators never even intended it to grow into anything. It was intended as a fun little one-off meant to showcase the superiority of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and build support for that martial art in America. It was rough, sloppy, messy, and painful, with Ken Shamrock the only competitor other than Royce Gracie who had any real degree of MMA skill. (Oh, and the term “mixed martial arts” wouldn’t exist for some time.) In the end, Gracie triumphed and that was supposed to be that. But it was such an unexpected success that it spawned a sequel, which to this day is the most brutal sports event I have ever witnessed. The company in charge at the time, Semaphore Entertainment Group, realized they had a hit on their hands and turned it into a regular event.
And then came the setbacks.
UFC 3, which had as its huge selling point the much-anticipated rematch between Gracie and Shamrock, saw Gracie pull out due to health reasons and Shamrock immediately afterward, eventually crowning an alternate after winning one match over a showboating chump. UFC 4, the last with no time limits, had its pay-per-view telecast cut off right in the middle of the title match. UFC 5 finally was able to get Gracie/Shamrock 2 by making it a one-off…which turned into the single most go-nowhere borefest in the damn history of the event. Then came UFC 6, highlighed by an openly fixed match and the debut of David “Tank” Abbot at the height of his clownheel idiocy. What else…there was that last-second legislative meddling which turned UFC 9 into a farce (the only time in history I actually pitied John McCarthy), and the attrition rate in UFC 11 being so awful that the eventual winner, Marc Coleman, didn’t even have an opponent for the final.
Then there was the BS by the usual gang of incompetent morons in Washington. Remember John McCain and “human cockfighting”? (This was when he was a respected Senator and war veteran, not the epic flailing embarrassment he would become during the '08 campaign.) The UFC, much heavy metal in the recent past, would become a convenient target by every useless political hack looking to score cheap points, and score they did.
And then were the many, many self-inflicted wounds. Looking back on it, it’s truly astounding to see how UFC managed to find seemingly the worst PR men in the whole goddam world, eternally stumbling imbeciles who always managed to say the absolute worst possible thing at the absolute worst possible time. Never was this more evident in that interview when an executive, when asked what could stop a fight, listed DEATH as one of the possibilities. Needless to say, the news media pounced on this in a manner similar to a starving lion on a cart full of raw steaks. (For the record, total fatalities in the history of UFC: 0)
And let’s not forget that entrenched, immensely powerful, immensely rich, and extraordinarily hostile rival, boxing. The whole sport was (rightfully) concerned that UFC presented a more exciting, less corrupt product and would completely eat their lunch if allowed to survive. Keep in mind that this was the heyday of Evander Holyfield, who in terms of global recognition and drawing power may be the most successful heavyweight in history. (He was doing endorsements as late as '16, to put it in perspective.) Boxing fought UFC at every turn. They battled for airtime. They battled for ad space. They lobbied to get events cancelled.
All these elements would eventually coalesce into what should, by rights, have been the death knell: the complete loss of pay-per-view. For years UFC (and MMA in general) were invisible to nearly the entire country. Fighters, most of whom were being paid breadcrumbs, competed in tiny arenas to handfuls of diehard fans, and few others even knew these events even happened.
And it survived. On a shoestring budget, with most of the nation either despising it or forgetting it ever existed, with powerful, loaded enemies everywhere, after countless costly blunders and unbelievably horrible luck at every turn, IT SURVIVED. I’d argue that Dana White taking the reins in '06 merely accelerated the event’s rise to global prominence.
But do you know what didn’t survive, and after suffering a vastly smaller setback? World Extreme Cagefighting. What happened was that their big star, Kimbo Slice, got knocked out by some skinny white kid (who would go on to make some bizarre accusations afterward) and exposed as a fraud. Embarrassing, but not disastrous, right? Next man up. Women’s MMA didn’t crash and burn just because Ronda Rousey got her haribun handed to her by Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes. WEC can find a new big contender and recover, right? Except it didn’t; it faded into nothing almost immediately.
And that’s what I’m seeing in the XFL, a league where everyone talked a good fight and the news was always glowing and the future was bright. Then it suffers one, one setback, and it’s finished. And that’s why I don’t want to hear any excuses. I don’t want to hear the snivelling of fans who went on and on about how much they loved this league and thought it was so much better than the NFL, then couldn’t leap on those crosses fast enough when the season got shut down. UFC’s fans, fighters, and promoters did what it took to keep it alive, and that is the only reason such a horribly embattled event is alive today. That nobody can be even bothered to fight for the XFL, that there’s no anger at all, tells me that this never had a chance, not even as the next Arena League. A WLAF-style curiosity might have been the best that could be hoped for.
(Ooh! College gymnastics! That’s another good one! I’ll do a thread on it as soon as I actually have more to talk about.)
Oliver Luck is suing Vince McMahon, alleging wrongful termination of Luck’s contract as XFL commissioner.
To run a league for ten years knowing you’re going to lose money, you’ll need a multibillionaire who loves football more than he loves money. You can’t get any other kind of investor to tie up money for that long with no expectation of a return; you either have to make money or be like Amazon used to be, which lost money for years but had so many more investors that the stock prices offered profits.
I just don’t know if there IS such a person.
Not just football; minor league football.
XFL to return in 2022 according to Dwayne Johnson.
Maybe the third time is the charm?
Lol, why?? COVID is going to really affect college football going forward and where is the XFL going to get those second tier players?
Dwayne Johnson has always been one of the most successful and savviest ex-jocks this country has produced, so this doesn’t surprise me at all. Aside from the obvious one-upping-the-despised-former-boss factor, this strikes me as a very smart PR move. He has free rein to pick his shot, meaning he can time the opening to when the epidemic is on the downswing (and before the next global catastrophe hits), and he play on all the positive buzz and appeal to fans who were unjustly robbed of an alternative to the NFL. If he plays his cards right, this is going to open a lot of doors for him. He already has one success under his belt in The Titan Games; if the XFL can go a full season without a hitch, we could be seeing the budding of the next entertainment giant, mentioned in the same breath as Merv Griffin and Ted Turner.
Note that I didn’t say that DJ can make the XFL work long-term. There’s zero chance of that. In fact, at this point I think two seasons would be pushing it. This is an ambitious superstar taking on a grand prestige project, and in the end the only thing it’s going to change is his chances of someday becoming president of something. No one should have any illusions otherwise.
Maybe. But the problem is that post pandemic he’s got to stock the teams full of minor league players. And the last thing post pandemic I’m going to want to do is stay inside and watch minor league sports on tv