Comments on: The XFL is dead!

The XFL is dead!

TacoConsumer — Thu, 10 May 2001 17:18:52 -0800

The XFL is dead! Now who had May 10th in the pool?

By: gyc

gyc — Thu, 10 May 2001 18:33:19 -0800

Damn, now what am I going to watch on Saturday nights?

By: fresh-n-minty

fresh-n-minty — Thu, 10 May 2001 19:14:57 -0800

So did anyone ever actually watch a game? I kind of sat through the first one but then I pretty much forgot about it after that.

By: tomorama

tomorama — Thu, 10 May 2001 19:22:37 -0800

You got me beat. I made it through one quarter of the first game. After that, I just couldn't take it.

By: darukaru

darukaru — Thu, 10 May 2001 19:23:40 -0800

This one guy I know who is a big fan of the WWF watched it. His take on the woes of the XFL before it died was 'Well, everyone in the media hates Vince McMahon and wants to see him fail.' I haven't asked him about this development yet.

By: jpoulos

jpoulos — Thu, 10 May 2001 19:24:38 -0800

I really don't understand why everyone ridiculed it. The games weren't that bad--just a little below your average college game. I only watched one or two, but then,I don't like football very much.

By: owillis

owillis — Thu, 10 May 2001 20:02:28 -0800

The sports media never gave it a chance, and badmouthed it to no end. Sure, it had a lot of problems, but it could have overcome them. As an NFL fan, this saddens me - because another league would have pushed the NFL to be better than it already is.

By: raysmj

raysmj — Thu, 10 May 2001 20:04:01 -0800

jpoulos: it's just, you're not supposed to have football in after mid-January. It's just freakin' enough by then. Then, yes, it is Vince McMahon, but he's just about been outdone by the tackiness which is the Super Bowl anyway. Yikes, just knock it off after mid-January anyway. May this idea die for good.

By: gyc

gyc — Thu, 10 May 2001 20:09:37 -0800

The problem with the XFL was that they couldn't decide if they wanted it to be a serious football league or an entertainment show with football as part of it. Letting Jesse Ventura announce was a big mistake too. However, I liked their extra point rule and the scramble at the start of the game.

By: brucec

brucec — Thu, 10 May 2001 20:31:37 -0800

at best the XFL was a reform movement within the NFL - they will pick whatever good stuff they came up with. (note: interview players mid game was not one of them, mostly they just got out-of-breath stupidty.)

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Thu, 10 May 2001 20:43:34 -0800

I'm still waiting for women's football. When they start up a league of women's football, I'll think about tuning in. NFL? XFL? It's all a wash to me, man.

By: bargle

bargle — Thu, 10 May 2001 20:45:35 -0800

I never even saw a commercial for the XFL. I only knew that it existed from the jokes.

By: owillis

owillis — Thu, 10 May 2001 20:50:15 -0800

There's actually a women's league starting up. I've got a friend who's trying out to be a center... But I'm sadly sure the play would be the equivalent of the WNBA - that being, not good.

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Thu, 10 May 2001 20:54:38 -0800

TacoConsumer: kudos for your name, less than kudos for not using the headline XFL now EX-FLI. Better luck next time! Actually, I thought it was eminently more entertaining than football, especially Ventura's voice. Watched most of three games. I never watch football.

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Thu, 10 May 2001 20:55:27 -0800
oops

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Thu, 10 May 2001 20:56:04 -0800

oops? There. Better.

By: Bag Man

Bag Man — Thu, 10 May 2001 21:24:46 -0800

Thank God, hopefully the WWF will be next.

By: owillis

owillis — Thu, 10 May 2001 21:58:21 -0800

The WWF will not die. It's the highest rated show on cable, and damn fun to boot. I'm watching Smackdown! right now (the only thing on UPN worth watching).

By: Mrmuhnrmuh

Mrmuhnrmuh — Thu, 10 May 2001 23:02:25 -0800

WWF is far from immune. Ratings are still high at the moment, but I read in another XFL obituary that, after climbing for quite a bit (which directly contributed to the creation of the XFL in the first place), they have now leveled off. The whole wrestling thing just about fell off the face of the earth between the heyday of Hulk Hogan/Macho Man and its current incarnation. We'll see if history repeats.

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Thu, 10 May 2001 23:05:13 -0800

Professional Wrestling was best in the early 1970's, preferably on UHF stations in New York in Spanish.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Thu, 10 May 2001 23:35:43 -0800

Wrestling is slowly coming out of the closet.

By: davidmsc

davidmsc — Fri, 11 May 2001 04:56:26 -0800

As much as I hate football (and virtually all sports), I actually thought that this "marriage" would last; I figured there were enough fans of both WWF and football to sustain it. I suppose the American public is just a bit too smart to accept this hybrid as either pure entertainment or pure sport - the middle-ground was just not firm enough to support it.

By: salmacis

salmacis — Fri, 11 May 2001 05:36:16 -0800

Is the XFL the first organisation ever to go bust underestimating the intelligence of the American public? :-)

By: vanderwal

vanderwal — Fri, 11 May 2001 05:52:54 -0800

Does this prove there is a bottom to the barrel, which popular media seems to aim?

By: fluxcreative

fluxcreative — Fri, 11 May 2001 06:23:08 -0800

I actually went to one of the playoff games with a friend of mine who had tickets. It was pretty easy to figure out that the whole thing wasn't going to last another year when the stadium was only about 1/4 full during a playoff game. Probably the most fun I had at the game was testing various paper airplane designs to see which one I could get farthest on the field. Reminded me of high school.

By: briank

briank — Fri, 11 May 2001 06:31:19 -0800

Who's going to break the news to the XFL's fan?

By: aaron

aaron — Fri, 11 May 2001 07:05:16 -0800

Pracowity, none of those links seem to have anything to do with WWF-style "sports entertainment" wrestling.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Fri, 11 May 2001 07:29:15 -0800

> none of those links seem to have anything to do with > WWF-style "sports entertainment" wrestling. Maybe. Maybe not. You want sense from any topic at all connected with professional wrestling? I'm amazed any of you watch it.

By: andrewraff

andrewraff — Fri, 11 May 2001 07:58:11 -0800

Note to self: don't try to run a professional sports league that will have games outside in Giants stadium. In February, that is. I don't remember where all the XFL teams were located, but there's a reason the NFL plays the Superbowl in a warm weather city (or in a dome)... Take a moment to remember the kids whose dreams of playing semi-professional football without health insurance are now shattered.

By: hijinx

hijinx — Fri, 11 May 2001 08:02:32 -0800

See, what would've been smart for Mr. McMahon is to bring back the most popular (term used loosely) XFL players, put them in a wrestling ring, and have a battle royale. The last player standing then gets to be scripted into the WWF permanently, and do something EXTREME!!! to note the demise of the XFL, such as blow up a football in the middle of the ring, or send a jersey up into flames. Now Dick Butkus can go back to selling his newspaper grills.

By: ljromanoff

ljromanoff — Fri, 11 May 2001 08:05:19 -0800

After reading posts on MeFi for the past couple of weeks, I can only come to one conclusion about the failure of the XFL: it's President Bush's fault.

By: baylink

baylink — Fri, 11 May 2001 09:28:55 -0800

Yep, that's my Bush. Oh: "<tm>"

By: TacoConsumer

TacoConsumer — Fri, 11 May 2001 09:59:26 -0800

ParisParamus: I didn't use Ex-FL because CNN, ESPN and everyone else used it. It seemed redundant.

By: MarkAnd

MarkAnd — Fri, 11 May 2001 10:18:25 -0800

For me, the best part about sports is the sense of history. The sense that any possible great human athletic achievement will fit somewhere within this known universe of "what has been done": records, statistics, folklore, anecdote. The XFL always felt stupid to me. Even if the quality of play had been great (which, I am told, it was not), I still wouldn't have cared very much, because it would have meaningless to me outside of any record/stat/history construct. How would I even know really if something remarkable happened?

By: DiplomaticImmunity

DiplomaticImmunity — Fri, 11 May 2001 10:48:02 -0800

Thank God, hopefully the WWF will be next. Not for awhile anyway, this has helped them out a bit

By: ljromanoff

ljromanoff — Fri, 11 May 2001 11:35:36 -0800

The XFL always felt stupid to me. Even if the quality of play had been great (which, I am told, it was not), I still wouldn't have cared very much, because it would have meaningless to me outside of any record/stat/history construct. How would I even know really if something remarkable happened? So, by your reasoning, no new league (or sport) for that matter should ever start because there's no history? Everything has to begin somewhere.

By: MarkAnd

MarkAnd — Fri, 11 May 2001 11:40:21 -0800

No, I just think that trying to promote it with $35 million worth of marketing or whatever in the first year was dumb. I think MLS is unwatchable now, too. But they at least have a moderately sustainable business model and may survive until I think there's enough history to watch. I don't think I'm alone here either. New leagues stink.

By: swank6

swank6 — Fri, 11 May 2001 13:07:02 -0800

I went to a regular season Demons game, and I gotta say I had a pretty good time. I didn't watch any XFL before that except the first game, at which point I deemed the playing craptastic. But I ended with some tickets so I went with a couple of friends and it was cool. Not because of the football, but we had seats parked right in front of the cheerleaders. Better yet, some girls in the skybox behind us a bit started flashing our section. It was great. Unfortunately, they got kicked out after 15 minutes of making everyone happy. :) Honestly though, the quality of the football was pretty damn horrible. No one there actually cared about what was going on anyways. Football just isn't very interesting when no one catches a pass, and no one can tackle anyone period.

By: kindall

kindall — Fri, 11 May 2001 16:10:25 -0800

They should have expected to run at a loss for about five years. The fact that they're bailing out already may be a sign that they didn't have the backing they really needed to give the new league the time it needed to get on its feet.

By: owillis

owillis — Fri, 11 May 2001 19:55:24 -0800

Actually they had budgeted to lose $ for about four years, but expected 3-4 for the ratings. Instead they got around 1.5 and UPN/TNN tried to pick up rights for a lower price than they were willing to pay... Hey, they made earnings of $100 mill last year - so I think Vince is sleeping ok