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.
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