Football is easily the most popular
sport in the United States. And the NFL
is easily the most popular football league.
I don't think anyone can argue with
either one of those two statements. The biggest and
highest rated sporting event every year is
the Superbowl. The NFL has all the best players,
announcers; everything associated with the league is
top notch. If right now, I made an announcement
that I wanted to start my own football league
to compete against them, you wouldn't take it
seriously. You would have the exact same
reaction you had when you heard Kanye announce
he was running for president. In both cases, your
reaction is appropriate. But what if instead of me
announcing a competing league, it was the head of
NBC sports, and the head of
the WWF? Now, all of a
sudden, you'd be curious as to what they have to say.
That's what happened; Dick Ebersol
from NBC Sports, and Vince McMahon
from the WWF came together to form the
XFL, as a joint venture
between the two companies. [Homer]: "The X is for X-treme."
Though, the X
technically
stood for nothing.
Yeah, it's weird.
So, these seem like two good people
from two good companies to come together to form a
competing football league; both with extensive
sports and television experience.
The intention of the XFL was to fill the gap
between NFL seasons with some alternative
football the fans could watch. The first ever XFL
was played in the beginning of February, 2001,
just days after the Superbowl. Though the
XFL season didn't occur at the same time as the NFL
season, it was still indirect competition.
In order to compete with the NFL, they needed
to differentiate themselves, offer something to
the fans that they couldn't get from the other league,
and honestly, I think they did that. One thing
they did differently was eliminate the fair-
catch rule. It's the rule that ensures when the ball is
kicked, the receiving team is able to catch it
without being tackled by the other team. So,
basically in the XFL, the guy catches the
ball, and then gets tackled right away. [big oof]
The NFL starts each game with the flip of a coin
to determine who gets the ball first. The XFL
starts with a player from each team
sprinting toward a football and then diving at it
to determine first possession, something they called
"The Scramble". Something VInce McMahon brought over from the
pro wrestling world is an emphasis on the
players' personalities. The WWF is very much
built on a group of characters. And
that's what he envisioned for the new league. He did this through
a few different methods. Instead of the player's last name
on the back of their jersey, it displayed a nickname
of their choosing. All the players would wear
microphones throughout the game, and there would be cameramen
actually on the field to better catch the players' reactions.
And speaking of cameras, they used a camera above
the field to catch better angles that would make the
fans feel more connected to the game. The way the
players were compensated was also unheard of.
They were paid based on how well
the teams performed. Quarterbacks make $5000
per game, the other players make $4500
except for the kickers who were $1000 less.
There was a $2500 bonus per
player if they won the game, $7500
if it was a playoff game, and the big thing was that the
championship team at the end of the
season received $1 million
that they had to split. In my opinion, the
XFL completely succeeded in finding creative
ways to differentiate themselves from the NFL.
It was marketed as being a hardcore, extreme version
of the NFL. VInce McMahon said the NFL stood for
the "No Fun League", whereas the XFL
stood for the "X-tra Fun League". The commercials for it
had explosions and wrecking balls. The entire message
of their campaign was that the NFL is lame
and the XFL is intense.
That first game in February of 2001 was a massive
ratings success: Fifty-four
million viewers. To put that into perpective,
the Superbowl that occurred days before
drew around eighty-four million viewers. So,
for the brand new competing league to draw viewers
anywhere near that of the Superbowl,
well it was a massive success.
But here's the bad news for the XFL, the ratings
dropped significantly
for the second week, and just kept
dropping further each week, until eventually
the ratings were so low, they were
actually setting records. They ended
their season in April with their big million dollar game.
[Homer again]: "Who will win this year's Million-Dollar Game?"
And this was the final XFL game
ever played. The terrible ratings
motivated NBC to pull their involvement.
Vince McMahon originally planned to keep it going
on other networks, but they had demands involving the
WWF that he just wasn't willing
to comply with. So after just a few months,
it was over, and it was a big
financial failure. I think the failure of the
XFL could be summarized into two main reasons;
here's Bob Costas to tell you reason number one.
[Bob Costas]: "It's not WWF enough for that crowd,
and it's not good enough football
for the sports-minded crowd." Thank you, Bob. It's really
important to know your audience, and who exactly is
the audience for this? I have to think
their intention was to draw in NFL fans,
as well as WWF fans. But what they
actually did was draw in
people who were fans of both
of the leagues, which is a narrow fanbase.
In my opinion, they should've dropped all the
WWF stuff, since it was
detracting all the football fans. I'm not
exaggerating when I say this league had the smell of
WWF all over it.
Their opening game began with The Rock
hyping it up. It was followed by Vince McMahon
giving it a wrestling style announcement.
[Vince McMahon]: "This is the
X-F-L!"
Which was followed by over two hours
of famous wrestler Jesse Ventura
announcing the game. For someone who's not a
WWF fan, that's a lot of WWF
to take in during your football game. The second reason
for the failure I think is even stronger than the first.
The league was too much flash and too little
substance. They successfully attracted a bunch of
viewers with their flashiness, but once everyone tuned in
and saw there wasn't much substance, they left.
In that first game, the players were no good.
The audience was watching some bad football
being played. Which is understandable, because
for one, these weren't NFL-
caliber players; almost all of them
were players that couldn't make it in the other league. I mean they were
decent players: college players that were rejected,
former NFL players, great football players
in fact, just no where near NFL caliber.
But the other reason is
because the entire league was put together
in such a rush. The players had very
little practice together and simply weren't ready
to play at this level. When you take a bunch of players
that are already not the best and
rush them out into the game, it's not a good combination.
You can tell from Day One that the core
focus of this league was to entertain, and
it sacrificed substance every step of the way.
The Scramble at the beginning of the game,
entertaining for the moment, but it led to a lot
of player injuries, which ultimately
sacrifices substance. Same thing with the elimination
of the fair catch, it's just asking for more injuries,
which leads to worse games overall
when the players are hurt and not playing. The
announcer, Jesse Ventura, he's not even close
to the best person you could have announcing
football games, but he may appear more entertaining
on the surface, so they went with him.
Even just looking at the team names, the
Orlando Rage, the Memphis Maniax,
Las Vegas Outlaws, the New York-New
Jersey Hitmen... [grunting]... really,
the Hitmen? They won't going for quality names,
they were funny, they were shocking, but they really weren't
good. The bottom line is that they cared more about
putting on a show than providing some good football,
and the fans saw right through that. There were
significant differences from the NFL, but
the differences weren't necessarily
improvements, but I do give them credit for trying. Even if they
had done everything perfectly, I'm still not so sure it would've
succeeded. It's hard to compete with the NFL.
I want to note that there is an entire "30 for 30"
documentary about the XFL.
If you want to go deeper into the subject and here the thoughts
of all the people involved in it, I strongly recommend it.
Some things featured in the documentary that I didn't cover here:
Dick Ebersol's involvement with Vince McMahon prior
to the XFL, NBC losing
NFL contracts shortly before this all happened,
details about the rush to get the league started, the XFL's
emphasis on cheerleaders, lame attempts to
draw viewers once the ratings dropped, the public's
overall distrust of Vince McMahon, and suspicion
that he may fix the games,
similar to the WWF, and so much more.
So if you wanna hear about all this, watch the 30
for 30, it's called "This Was the XFL".
Another thing I want to note is, I previously made a video
about the ABA, a basketball league from the
70's that competed with the NBA. The story of
the ABA and the XFL are
remarkably similar as to how they competed with the existing
league. I recommend you watch that video
or read up on the ABA if you're interested in the
comparison. One of the similarities was how they were able to help improve
the existing league. In NFL's case, the cameras above the
field and the microphones on the players are just the couple
of things that we have the XFL to thank for.
And of course, the big news as of
yesterday is that Vince McMahon is bringing
the XFL back, set to return in the year 2020.
Now, since it's a full two years away from even starting,
it's impossible to make many predictions about its
success, but on the positive end, Vince McMahon
seems to realize the mistakes he made from the first time.
He addressed a lot of it in the announcement
press conference. The first league was rushed together,
this time he's giving it a full two years to have it ready.
Last time there was too much wrestling involvement,
this time he assures it'll be two separate entities.
He even says he won't be publicly involved
nearly as much. He is attempting to fix the mistakes
that were made the first time, but like I said before,
it's hard to compete with the NFL. Let me
know in the comments, not just if you think the XFL
will succeed this time, but do you remember the XFL
when it was happening the first time? Were you one of the
fifty-four million people that watched that first
game on TV, or possibly one of the people
at the game, in the stands or even on the field?
I'd like to hear what your thoughts of the league were at the time,
and how they compare to your thoughts now, and for
anyone who has only heard about it after the fact,
possibly only after watching this video, what's your
impression of it? Do you agree with my reasoning for their
failure, or was there something else that you suspect was
a big factor? I'd like to hear what you have to say,
thank you for watching.