Unfortunately, the reality of starting up a new professional league hit all of us XFL fans this past month with the AAF folding its doors before it can even complete one regular season. Not near as hard as the AAF fans and people of course, but it reminds us of the landmines that can present themselves in a project of this magnitude and how important management is to the success of the league. While attendance could have been better there was no way that caused the failure during the first year. It is somewhat boggling of the mind that they didn’t even have the backing to make it one year, yet still started up the league. Shouldn’t you have at least one year of operating capital in a business adventure like this before even kicking off? Oh wait, they didn’t kick off in the AAF.
I am sure there is a lot of stuff behind the scenes that our management knows (O’luck and others) that will help the XFL hopefully succeed. But we fans saw a couple things on the surface can we learn from. One thing I found intriguing is I never really heard their management speak about things. Now I don’t follow the AAF as close as others, but I didn’t see Ebersol and others up front with hardly anything. Rumors started long and hard before the league even acknowledged any big event. It started with the initial 250-million-dollar investment that “leaked” out as a financial bailout. This should have been an upfront press release touting how excited a rich person was to invest in the league. Why was it pretty much under the table and started spreading by rumors? Same thing with this league folding. Rumors for weeks, but nothing from management. They somewhat tried to do this with the announcing of a new location for their championship game. But honestly, this came out 5 weeks before the game was to be played and gave the impression they didn’t have their ducks in row. It appears that impression may have been correct.
I don’t mean to only bag on the AAF, I was hoping it succeeded. I just feel a little bit let on and let down by their operations. And this is coming from a far-off fan with nothing invested. I can only imagine how all the players coaches and close fans feel. And being where I am now, I can really feel for the superfans trying to create web pages, pod casts and discussions. This was their dream too and a bummer how it happened. The best thing I think we can learn is to stay the course we seem to be on with the XFL; good financial backing, good and open leadership, time on our side. And I hate to say this but stay away from fully collaborating with the NFL. It was only very shortly after AAF started announcing they were somewhat depending on the NFL and working as their feeder league that things started to go awry. Of course, that could be just correlation and not causation, but I think being a standalone league and only complementing the NFL is the way to sustain our league and create brand identity. It should not be only about “getting back to the NFL”. I fully believe the XFL could have career players in our league. I am not blaming the NFL here, just don’t go putting too many eggs in their basket.
Spring League Practices and Testing
During March and April, the XFL was in Texas participating in The Spring League practices. Here they were trying out new ideas and testing various game scenarios. Several of the XFL coaches were in attendance.
Among things were trying out or changing were the kicking game. There will be a new kickoff format but not much was finalized or stated as such. But Oliver Luck has emphasized they will be keeping the kick off. But one part of kicking that will not be present is the extra point. It looks like there will be three options to get points after a touchdown. They will be for one, two and three points. With a regular play from scrimmage at the 2, 5 and 10 respectively. This will of course give the options for a 9-point scoring play. Imagine a team being down 18 but still only “two scores down” trying to comeback. Will be very interesting to see who goes for what and when.
Another idea they went in-depth about in interviews and actual testing was Overtime. Part of the idea Oliver Luck said, came from soccer which he of course was involved in during his past career. And I think this has the potential to work out very well. In a nutshell there will be 44 players on the field at once. With 22 on each end playing from the 5-yard lines. If the offense scores they get one point. If the defense gets a turnover, they get one point. Each team gets five offensive tries and if still tied then it goes to sudden death. I didn’t hear which team got the sudden death ball first, but to take way the “coin flip” argument I say just give it to the home team. Done, no argument. This way OT is over with in a few minutes and both teams get multiple tries with the ball. I like it.
Something else talked about and mentioned before if you keep up with XFL is the multiple forward passes rule. This sounds more revolutionary than it really might be as you could only do it behind the line of scrimmage so therefore wouldn’t really change too much. But what I like is it doesn’t alter the game much but will get rid of any slow downs caused by reply seeing if it was backward or not, when that really doesn’t even matter in most plays like that. So, less flags and faster game is going with the XFL theme. Plus, it could indeed make a “sports Center” type play say if a QB gets the ball batted back at him, catches it, then still bombs a long TD. That could be fun to watch.
One other thing I heard mentioned, but not on many interview/outlets was the league may try Thursday night games late in the season. I am not sure if I am ready for that or not in the first year. I really like that they want to have two games on over the air TV and two games on big cable channels, so we always know when and where the games are on. And they are not too spread out this first year while we all keep up, and like the players ‘learn the pace’ of the games. I am not against it per sea, just giving a thought.
New Head Coaches and Team Presidents
This past month’s news also included the hiring of several team presidents, and just in the last week two new Head Coach/GMs. The Team Presidents are: Heather Brooks in Los Angeles, Ryan Gustafson in Seattle, Erik Moses in Washington DC and just introduced with the New York HC hiring was Janet Duch. Like I mentioned in the last TWTW column, they are hiring people with local connections to the cities for which they will reside. All four have some sort of connection of previous job in the cities they were hired for. This will give them unique perspective on the marketing side of things needed for the job. As mentioned by ‘This is the XFL Podcast’ (@xlfpodcast), this is a huge deal for them to be leaving the great jobs, like at MLS and taking a chance on this new league.
The first head coach/GM announced last week was for the New York franchise. Leading this team will be Kevin Gilbride. He brings 40 years of coaching experience including 2 as Head Coach. He also did 10 years with the Giants on the offensive side of the ball, which included their two recent Superbowl runs. Oliver luck says he will bring a quicker style of play fitting the XFL. Like other coaches, Kevin said his conversations with Mr. Luck are what ultimately led him to deciding to come on board. Along with being part of something on the ground floor and helping build it.
The next coach introduced this past Thursday was Joh Haynes for the St. Louis team. He played 12 years in the NFL. He also coached for the Cincinnati Bengals and was part of Bob Stoop’s staff during his National Championship season. One of the main things he mentioned beyond football itself was becoming part of the community, and for the team to have staying power. I think he picked the right team and fans for that message as the St. Louis fans seem to be some of the most passionate and vocal in my Twitter feed.
Good luck to these new hires. I can’t wait to seem them all build and market the teams. It is going to be a fun journey this first building year. It will be an interesting juxtaposition between them all believing in and growing the XFL brand as well as the individual styles of their respective teams.
During the St. Louis press conference Luck also teased the release of the broadcast partner names soon. He again stressed they were striving to have two games a week on over the air terrestrial TV, and then the two other games on fully distributed cable networks. I am so glad to hear this again and that they are focusing on this TV distribution. I think it is so critical for the games to be on the same place and time every week. And while we need to be on the cutting edge (ex: streaming games) for some things, we need to first concentrate on the main mediums people know and love. We will have enough growing pains this first year and don’t need to add being the ‘streaming video’ leader at this time. This will TV package should do wonders to keep the league noticeable, sustainable and growing.
+Plus Random Thoughts
Did you watch any of the NFL draft over the weekend? Of course, you probably did. Can you believe they had a stated attendance of around 600,000 people over the three days of festivities. Heck, over 200,000 showed up downtown on Friday night for day two of the actual draft. It is hard to believe an actual draft of a sport is so big. I guess Nashville had been working on this since 2011, maybe putting as much work into this as the actual Superbowl cities did not too long ago. This bodes will for the XFL actually, as like Oliver Luck has been saying there are just so many football fans and even if we get a fraction of them we will be doing good. I think the league would be happy getting that many fans in attendance for the whole first half of the season (around 25,000 per game). With good and open management (and capital) I see good sailing ahead in XFL waters.
