OUT OF THE TUNNEL: ODE TO SPRING FOOTBALL

BY: RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF

Pro football is littered with the corpses of an alphabet soup of leagues that just couldn’t make it. Some were able to hang on for years, while others couldn’t even make it through one full season.

You have the AAF (2019), XFL (2001), Spring Football League (2000), The Spring League (2016-17), numerous arena leagues, the USFL and possibly another coming with the Summer League. 

They all had their own reasons for failure and, in a few cases, limited successes. Take the Arena Football League. Their first season was in 1997 and after many highs and lows (like the cancellation of the 2009 season), they finally ceased operations this past fall. It was a template that worked; playing indoors with just eight players on the field and 21 total players on the roster. Everything was manageable.

Actual outdoor pro football has been a different story. To carve out a small niche in the American football conscience, any new league has to compete with the American monoliths of football that are the NFL and NCAA Football. It’s a task that’s nearly unattainable.

The Alliance of American Football (AAF) came with incredible hype in 2019 only to quickly crumble with players left high and dry.

Now it’s XFL 2.0. We waited a few weeks to place judgment on this league and again there is some good and some bad.

The XFL has a few things that are really going for it:

The first is the backing of Vince McMahon and his Alpha Entertainment arm. The money is there, there are reports that more than $300-million has been invested to make this first season work. That’s a lot of dough which should help ensure this isn’t a one-and-done league.

Because of this cash flow, you can tell the players, coaches, fans and staff are all still invested in this league. If you watched Week 4 in the AAF, the quality of play was crumbling in front of your eyes.

The XFL’s broadcast partners are all in. ESPN/ABC and Fox have invested their time, money and talent into making these broadcasts top notch. They have their number two play callers, analysts and sideline reporters working the game. Those talents are also the ones who’ve been going on radio stations and podcasts across the country promoting these broadcasts.

The camera work is on point, the graphics are awesome and the all-around production has been top notch.

Even the new rules, some of the access (we say “some”, because being in the locker room at halftime is a little weird) and the social media machine has been very good as well.

They have also gone ‘all in’ on the gambling side of things. With the softening of state gambling laws across the U.S. there are more and more options to gamble on sports. The XFL has completely bought in on this. The spread, prop bets and over/under is posted and updated in-game. The XFL is gambling on betting to help them get over the hump.

But saying all of that, the same roadblocks stay in place. Much like many CFL fans, most football fans in the U.S. have a rooting interest in only their favourite team and passively watch the rest of the league. They completely ignore anything else. There is a lot of cross-breeding of fans between the NFL and NCAA but that is an ecosystem that cannot be broken. Whether it’s the NFL, NCAA or CFL fans, it will take a lot for people to care about anything else. This is – and always will be – the biggest roadblock. NFL and college fans just don’t care while there will always be the very touchy group of loud #pleaselikemyleague CFL fans that will crap on anything that isn’t the CFL. Good or bad this group is always incredibly obnoxious.

Another huge factor in this is the current state of the WWE. Now, we should note the WWE has nothing to do with the XFL. It has been completely funded by Vince and Alpha Entertainment, but everyone will attach the XFL with WWE.

World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange and their stock took a $20 a share tumble in little over a week at the and of January. It has recovered a bit regaining eight-dollars over the past month. 

WWE has three television brands with Raw, Smackdown and NXT. Ratings haven’t been great for their flagship shows in Raw and Smackdown and this has a lot to do with the stock slide. There was also worries about another crack at pro football. Like we said above, the WWE does not fund the XFL but when Vince McMahon, the chairman and CEO of WWE, has his fingerprints all over something it will affect the WWE.

This time around, former CFL players were a lot more patient. At the beginning of the AAF there were a lot of CFL free agents that took a chance (Dylan Wynn being one of them) with the upstart league only to be burned. This time around, there weren’t too many players that outright went to the XFL but as free agent opportunities dwindle in the CFL, or the offers aren’t as good as players wanted, some have started to head to the XFL.

The XFL has followed the same storyline as the AAF last spring. Beginning with a huge media push with great ratings and pretty good attendance only to see things slide over the following weeks. With the amount of money invested in this, the XFL will survive this season and we will see a championship game.

As for next year, it all depends if the networks are in and ad sales justify a second season crack at things.

We love spring football and it’s great to have some solid football to bridge the gap between the end of the NFL season to the beginning of the CFL. The success of the XFL will force the CFL to be better to compete for players and coaches and this is a good thing. It will make the football a lot better to watch. 

(RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF/PHOTO: XFL.COM)