Will the XFL survive? 5 reasons it might, 2 it probably won't

Before I did anything else for a living, I was a sportswriter. (Well, I washed dishes at a pizza place for three months, but I don’t count that.) And I’ve been following alternative sports leagues for most of my life, so naturally, the XFL drew my interest – just as the Alliance of American Football did last year.

I was bummed when the AAF folded eight weeks into its only season, just two weeks shy of the playoffs. I felt cheated. I live within driving distance of the Carolina Hurricanes, but I haven’t been to a single game of theirs because I’m still disgusted that their owner’s the guy who pulled the plug on the Alliance.

That said, I think I like the XFL better. Does that mean it has a chance to succeed where the Alliance and other offseason football leagues (WFL, USFL, Arena Football) ultimately failed? I think so. But how much of a chance? Read on.

Why the XFL might succeed

1. The Gambling

The XFL, like the AAF, is putting some of its eggs in the gambling basket, hoping that point spreads and over-under odds will stoke viewers’ interest. Sports fans love to gamble, and the XFL itself is gambling this will draw them in. It might.

The odds shift during the games, and the announcers make note of them, reminding viewers they can still get in on the action. This is either intriguing, if you like to gamble, or annoying as hell if you don’t and have tuned in just to watch football. I’m in the latter camp, so it doesn’t interest me, but it could build the kind of sustained interest the league needs to survive.

Obstacle No. 1: People don’t know as much about the teams or their players as they do about an established commodity like the NFL. And gamblers tend to be less willing to part with their money over unknowns.

Obstacle No. 2: If the XFL lasts more than one season, the odds are (pun intended) the commodity will remain in flux because players will be coming and going. That’s how it works in minor league baseball, and the XFL is, for all intents and purposes, a minor league – players view it as a potential stepping stone to the big time, not a place they want to hang their hats indefinitely.

2. The Markets

A few weeks into its first season, it’s already obvious the XFL has something the AAF was never quite able to establish: a professional look. It may be a minor league, but it looks a lot more like the NFL than the Alliance ever did.

There are a few reasons for this. First, it’s playing in prime media markets. Alliance teams were scattered in places like Salt Lake City, Birmingham and Orlando. No offense to those three cities, but they have precisely one big-time sports franchise among them (the Orlando Magic in the NBA). The XFL, by contrast, is in nine current NFL cities and one former site (St. Louis).

This means two things: First, it looks like it’s a top-tier endeavor, and second, it’s banking on sustaining interest that’s already there, thanks to the NFL, immediately after the NFL season ends.

There’s already talk of expansion, as there inevitably is with new leagues. But the league needs to make sure its founding members are stable first. Remember the World Football League, where franchises pulled up stakes overnight and moved (from Houston to Shreveport, New York to Charlotte) or folded altogether? That kills credibility. The USFL made the mistake of expanding too much too fast.

If I were the XFL, I’d look at maybe two sites for expansion if things are stable after Season 1. Prime candidates? I’d look the Bay Area, which is losing the Raiders and was the top attendance market for the XFL in its first incarnation. (The San Francisco Demons averaged 35,000 fans, more than any current XFL team is drawing.) I’d also consider San Antonio, the Alliance’s top draw, although a third team in Texas might be a bit much.

San Diego would be a great market if the Chargers’ betrayal hadn’t soured so many fans there on football in general, as witnessed by the tepid interest in the Alliance’s Fleet. One mildly hopeful sign for the XFL: the Los Angeles Wildcats drew 14,000 fans to their first game at Dignity Sports Park, where fewer home fans than road-team boosters showed up to watch the Los Angeles Chargers.

3. The TV Deal

The XFL also seems more like the big time because it’s on major television networks like ABC, ESPN and Fox. That’s something most spring football leagues can’t say. And all four of the league’s games are televised every week to everyone with access to those networks. That’s something even the NFL can’t say.

I remember when the old WFL was consigned to something called the TVS sports network, a syndicated outfit. It wasn’t exactly prime time. The USFL had a better deal, but left a four-year contract with ABC on the table to pursue Donald Trump’s (yes, that Donald Trump) ill-conceived fall strategy of competing head-to-head with the NFL in 1986.

If the XFL can keep its current television deal, it’s got a leg up on most of the leagues that came before it. That, of course, requires that it continues to get decent ratings, something the Alliance failed to sustain.

4. The Gimmicks

The XFL, like most alternative football leagues, has a few gimmicks designed to make the game more interesting. Unlike some of those other leagues, it’s chosen some good ones.

The main goal is to make the game more exciting and high-scoring, which is kind of the opposite of what the original XFL did (the idea there was to make it a sort of smash-mouth little brother to pro wrestling, minus the fixed storylines).

Teams have to kick off from the 30, and kickoffs into the end zone are brought back to the 35. If they go out of bounds, the ball comes all the way back to the kicking team’s 45! Punts outside the field of play are similarly discouraged, making it more likely teams will go for it on fourth down.

There’s also a cool 3-2-1 option on points after touchdown, which helps keep games within reach for trailing teams and adds an interesting element of strategy. The one thing coaches don’t seem to have figured out yet is that a 3-pointer from the 10-yard-line may be easier than going for 2 from the 5: You’re likely to throw for it in either case, and if you’re at the 10, you’ve got more real estate for receivers to run their routes.

Another cool innovation is that the clock stops after every play in the final two minutes of each half, which gives the trailing team a better chance of coming back to win – and keeps viewers engaged until the end. Up until that time, however, the play clock is just 25 seconds, which speeds up the game (although it probably tires out players a lot faster).

Despite all this, games haven’t been wild scoring affairs, largely because the teams didn’t have much practice time before it got started and the talent level just isn’t what it is in the NFL. Imagine what Drew Brees or Aaron Rodgers would do with these rules. You might see a score like Saints 64, Packers 59.

5. The Deep Pockets

League founder Vince McMahon of WWE fame is loaded, and he says he’s willing to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the league.

If he does, that could help the XFL weather any early difficulties.

But that’s a big “if.” McMahon pulled the plug on the XFL after just one season the first time he tried this, back in 2001. And just last year, Tom Dundon swooped in and promised a $250 million infusion for the Alliance – only to renege and leave the AAF high and dry. I get it. Even guys with a lot of money don’t want to waste it (unless your name’s Bloomberg and you’re running for president).

But the point is, big money is no guarantee of success for spring leagues. On the other hand, not having big money is pretty much a guarantee of failure. So the XFL still has an advantage, at least for now.

Why the XFL will likely fail

With all that going for it, the XFL has got to survive, right? Not necessarily. In fact, it probably won’t. Call me a cynic, but the league has two very big things going against it.

1. History

Alternative sports leagues just don’t make it. Yes, there’s the old AFL, but it didn’t survive on its own – it forced a merger with the NFL (its predecessor, the AAFC, did the same thing). The WNBA is doing well, but it’s bankrolled by the NBA. The first women’s pro basketball league had exciting stars like Ann Meyers, the high-scoring Molly Bolin and Nancy Lieberman, but it lasted only three years.

The sports landscape is littered with alternative leagues that didn’t make it. The WFL, USFL, Federal League (baseball), Major Indoor Soccer League, Arena Football League, National Bowling League... The list goes on and on.

Why should the XFL be any different? You might point to the reasons above, but then there’s the reason below:

2. Attention Spans

More now than ever before, they’re limited. In the Twitter world, people glance at something for a few seconds, and if it doesn’t hold their interest, they’re on to the next thing.

The Alliance learned that last year. It had a lot of interest the first week, but after that, TV ratings fell off a cliff and attendance was lackluster. There was a time when Arena Football had a sort of cool cachet, back in the ’90s when future NFL Hall of Famer Kurt Warner was slinging passes for the Iowa Barnstormers, but it dwindled to four or five teams before vanishing last year. Hardly anyone even noticed.

The XFL’s attendance has been only marginally better than the AAF’s so far, and McMahon’s deep pockets will only sustain it for so long. The fact that the hoped-for scoring binges haven’t materialized is another worrying sign. But even high-scoring games didn’t save Arena Football.

I’ll probably keep watching the XFL this season, just because I enjoy football and I’m fascinated to see how this all plays out. I’m just not sure if there are enough oddballs like me out there to keep the league going.

I hope so, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Featured photo of a New York Guardians XFL game at Met Life Stadium by Ajay Suresh, used under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.

Trump’s playbook: Hail Marys and forfeits

On Nov. 23, 1984, a young quarterback from Boston College threw a pass that will be forever engrained in the minds of college football fans.

Trailing by four points and down to his last play, Doug Flutie dropped back to pass, scrambled around, and heaved a Hail Mary pass from his own 37-yard line. Flutie was small for a quarterback – just 5 feet, 9 inches – and he had already thrown the ball 45 times during the game. Throwing into a 30 mph wind, there was no way he could get the pass all the way to the University of Miami’s end zone.

Or so Miami’s defensive backs thought: Three of them moved up in front of the goal line, positioning themselves to intercept Flutie’s pass … which instead sailed over their heads and into the waiting arms of Boston College receiver Gerard Phelan.

The touchdown gave Boston College a 47-45 win on national television, and Flutie went on to win the Heisman Trophy, presented each year to the best player in college football.

After Flutie graduated, he had a chance to sign a contract with the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL, but he chose a different course. There was, at the time, a second professional football league: the United States Football League (USFL), which played its games in the spring, and the man who owned that league’s New Jersey Generals franchise was offering Flutie an $8.3 million contract.

That man was real estate tycoon Donald Trump – the same man who would win the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 2016. He was relatively unknown then, outside of the Eastern Seaboard, and ownership of the Generals catapulted him to national prominence.

Flutie’s folly?

Why did he sign Flutie? Despite his college success, pro scouts tend to shy away from quarterbacks shorter than about 6-foot-2. They have a harder time seeing over the line, and they often have to scramble around a lot – as Flutie did on that Hail Mary play – to get a good look downfield. Seattle’s Russell Wilson, who’s 2 inches taller than Flutie, has been one of the few quarterbacks shorter than 6 feet tall to have success as a pro.)

The Generals’ coach at the time, Walt Michaels, wanted to draft Randall Cunningham, an African-American quarterback out of UNLV who stood 6-3 and was a better quarterback than the scrambling Flutie. He would go on to throw for 207 touchdowns and run for 35 more, winning the Most Valuable Player award twice in a 16-year NFL career.

Flutie, who wound up throwing more interceptions than touchdown passes in just one season for the Generals, only played more than seven games in an NFL season five times, although he did put up some big numbers during eight seasons in the Canadian Football League.

But Flutie had what Trump was looking for (and Cunningham lacked). He had golden-boy looks – think Tom Cruise or Steve Garvey – a marketable name and a reputation for doing the impossible: three things Trump saw in himself. And if you get Donald Trump to look in a mirror, you’ve got his attention, just as surely as if he were the evil queen from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

Trump’s own golden boy looks have faded to orange since then, but he’s defined himself based on those other two qualities he shared with Flutie back in 1984. He’s put his name on everything from steaks to casinos, and he has repeatedly tried to do the impossible.

Far more often than not, he’s failed.

Six bankruptcies related to his resorts and casinos, and a portfolio littered with bad ideas and shuttered businesses. Trump Airlines. Trump casinos. Trump Magazine. Trump Mortgages. Trump University. Trump Vodka. Trump the Game.

Using the USFL

And then there was the USFL. The league had been founded in 1983 on a business model geared toward meeting a demand for football during the spring, after the NFL had completed its season, and using a salary cap to operate on a tighter budget. It made some sense: Don’t go head to head with the big boys, who have more money, an established reputation and a huge fan base. Instead, build your own brand in a different niche.

But some of the league’s owners soon abandoned the league’s frugal model in a race for big-name players, signing them to outsized “personal services” contracts as a way around the salary cap. They paid the price for opening up their wallets when revenues failed to keep pace with salary demands.

About the same time Flutie was making a splash during his senior year at Boston College, Trump was urging USFL owners to abandon the other major component of their business plan and throw a Hail Mary pass of their own by ditching the spring-season format and going head-to-head with the NFL in the fall.

With the red ink already rising on their ledgers, the league was hardly in a position to mount a realistic challenge to the sport’s burgeoning behemoth, so Trump hatched a plan to sue the NFL under U.S. antitrust laws, claiming it was acting as a monopoly.

A jury did indeed find in favor of the USFL, but it also found that the league had switched to a fall schedule, not in order to save itself, but to force a merger with the NFL. The result? The jury awarded the USFL just $1 in damages (trebled to $3 under rules applied to antitrust lawsuits), effectively putting the league – and Trump’s team – out of business.

His Hail Mary had fallen flat. As with his bankruptcies, he had no choice but to forfeit the game.

Shifting the blame

Trump, however, blamed the league’s other owners, writing in The Art of the Deal, “If there was a single key miscalculation I made with the USFL, it was evaluating the strength of my fellow owners.”

Trump’s handling of the USFL became the template for his strategy in business and in life: Promise great things, throw a Hail Mary pass, and hope it works. Then, when it falls incomplete and the clock runs out, blame the referee. Or the other team. Or your fans. Or anybody, except yourself for taking such an outrageous risk in the first place.

No matter how many times we might enjoy watching replays of Doug Flutie throwing that magical pass against Miami, he only did it once. Trump has had successes, but with the exception of TV’s “The Apprentice,” they’ve all been in a single arena: real estate – an industry in which he’s also seen plenty of failure even though his father paved the way for him with both capital and presumed know-how.

Trump knows something about real estate. But he doesn’t know anything about vodka, or universities, or airlines, or football.

Or governing.

The thrill of the hunt

When he entered the 2016 presidential race, Trump was just launching another Hail Mary pass in a game he knows nothing about. All that’s important to him is that it’s a game. “It’s all about the hunt,” he was quoted as saying in Timothy O’Brien’s 2005 book TrumpNation, “and once you get it, it loses some of its energy. I think competitive, successful men feel that way about women.”

It there’s a clearer way of saying that women are a piece of meat without coming right out and using those words, I don’t know what it is.

The quote not only speaks volumes about Trump’s predatory attitude toward women, as reflected in the 2005 tape from Access Hollywood that sent his presidential campaign floundering, it says something even bigger about his attitude toward life. It’s not just women who are trophies; it’s everything. When Trump says he loves women, he’s not lying; he just “loves” them in the same way Teddy Roosevelt loved bagging a lion, an elephant or a black rhino. He “loves” business associates and voters the same way. No wonder he has so few close friends.

It’s noteworthy that his sons have taken after him in the literal sense, becoming big-game hunters.

Trump’s obsession with the hunt explains why he starts ventures that quickly fail: He has neither the patience nor the inclination to see them through to the end, whether they be a marriage, an investment in a football team or an airline. He loses interest, and he’s on to the next thing. He’s like Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan: so consumed with conquest that he undermines any opportunity for lasting success, because he doesn’t really care about it.

Hail Mary presidency

Other than real estate and “The Apprentice,” he’s seldom stuck with anything long enough to make it work. Now imagine that attitude applied to the presidency. If he were to be elected and follow his familiar pattern, he would quickly lose interest and turn his attention to other things … then blame others for his – and the nation’s – failures, wash his hands of the whole mess and go on to his next big promise. His next Hail Mary.

Or maybe he’d use the office of the presidency as the platform to launch his next campaign for conquest, whether it be a war, an overhaul of the Constitution, an assault on civil liberties or his already-stated objective of building a $12 billion wall … and making Mexico pay for it. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell whether his last name is really Trump or Quixote.

But it doesn’t matter how outlandish his goals seem or how impossible. Remember, he’s all about throwing up Hail Marys to prove he can do the impossible. And this penchant is precisely what makes him so dangerous: It actually behooves him, for the sake of his ego, to create crises so he can set the stage for the adrenalin rush he gets if he manages to solve them. The more desperate the situation looks, the better.

Forget me not

This helps explain why Trump isn’t about keeping promises or taking responsibility for his failures. He famously never apologizes, because he’d be doing it all the time – and because he’s too busy looking in the mirror and talking about how wonderful he is.

And he’s so convinced of it, people believe him.

We still remember Doug Flutie, even though he never won a Super Bowl and spent much of his NFL career as a backup, because he threw that crazy pass against Miami and it worked.

“Without the Hail Mary pass, I think I could have been very easily forgotten,” Flutie would say later.

If we watch that pass over and over again and ignore his NFL career, we might come to believe that Flutie was the best quarterback ever to play the game. And if we listen to Donald Trump tell us he can “make America great again” often enough, we might believe that, too.

That’s what he’s counting on. And once we accept his proposal, the hunt will be over. We’ll be just another trophy for his wall – mounted, stuffed and displayed for all to see. Except no one will be looking at us anymore, because Trump demands that everyone look at him. We’ll be forgotten on the sidelines of history, just like the old New Jersey Generals, while Trump is off on the prowl, looking for his next conquest.

In any hunt, you have to have a quarry. We’re it. And if Trump bags us, we might as well be dead meat.