Athletes - XFL

	Athletes - XFL

The XFL was a professional American football league which played for one season in 2001.

Foundation

Created as a joint venture between NBC and the World Wrestling Federation under the company name "XFL, LLC", the XFL was created as a "single-entity league", meaning that the teams were not individually owned and operated franchises, but that the league was operated as a single unit.

The concept of the league was first announced on February 3, 2000. The XFL was originally conceived to build on the success of the NFL and professional wrestling. It was hyped as "real" football without penalties for roughness and with fewer rules in general. The loud games featured players and coaches with microphones and cameras in the huddle and in the locker rooms. Stadiums featured trash-talking public address announcers and very scantily-clad cheerleaders. Instead of a pre-game coin toss, XFL officials put the ball on the ground and let a player from each team scramble for it to determine who received the kickoff option, which forseeably led to the first XFL injury.

The XFL had impressive television coverage for an upstart league, with three games televised each week on NBC, UPN, and TNN.

The "X" in XFL did not stand for "extreme", as in "Extreme Football League." When the league was first organized, promoters wanted to make sure that everyone knew that the "X" did not actually stand for anything. This particular XFL had no connection to an indoor league also known as the XFL (Xtreme Football League) that had launched a few years earlier but merged with AF2 before ever playing a game in its own right (although the leagues did have a connection in both having teams in Birmingham, Alabama).

2001 season

The XFL's opening game took place on February 3, 2001, one year after the concept of the league was announced. The first game was between the Las Vegas Outlaws and the New York/New Jersey Hitmen. The game (more remembered for Vince McMahon's pre-game speech that ended with the emphatic, "This is the X...F...L!"), a 19-0 victory for the Outlaws was watched on NBC by an estimated 14 million viewers. During the telecast, NBC switched over to the game between the Orlando Rage and the Chicago Enforcers, which was a closer contest than the blowout taking place in Las Vegas. The show had a 9.5 rating.

Although the XFL began with reasonable TV ratings (the opening-week games actually delivered ratings double those of what NBC had promised advertisers) and fair publicity, the TV audience declined sharply after the first week of the season and the media attacked the league for what was perceived as the poor quality of play. This perception was paired with a perception that the XFL was formed from the dregs left over after the NFL, AFL and CFL had their drafts.

XFL rule changes

Despite the early boasts of a "rules-light" game made by the WWF promoters and the nearly universally negative reviews from the mainstream sports media, by and large the XFL's on-field professional athletes played a brand of 11-man outdoor football quite recognizable to fans of the NFL or NCAA. Aside from the innovative opening game sprint to determine initial possession, the other major and obvious change was the lack of extra point kicks. To earn a point after a touchdown, teams ran a single offensive down from the two yard line (functionally identical to the NFL/NCAA two-point conversion), but for just a single point. By the championship game, two-point and three-point conversions were hastily added to the rules. Teams could opt for the bonus points by playing the conversion further back from the goal line.

Overtime

Ties were resolved in similar fashion to the NCAA game, with at least one possession by each side at the opponent's 25 yard line necessary to decide a winner. However there were some important differences as well: there were no first downs - teams had to score within four downs, and the team that had possession first in overtime could not attempt a field goal until fourth down. If that team managed to score a touchdown in less than four downs, the second team would only have that same number of downs to match or beat the result. If the score was still tied after an overtime period, the team went second in the previous OT would go first in the next OT.

The "halo" rule on kick-offs and punts

The heavily-hyped "no fair catch" rule, almost by necessity was paired with a "five yard halo" rule to protect punt returners. Both rule variations were borrowed from Canadian football. However, since few XFL players had played in the CFL, the resulting inexperience with the "halo" rule led to a tremendous number of "halo"-infraction penalties, which took much of the excitement out of the punt return game (exactly the opposite of the intended effect).

Standardized player salaries

The XFL paid standardized player salaries. Quarterbacks earned $5,000 per week, kick-punt specialists earned $3,500, and all other uniformed players earned $4,000 per week. Players on a winning team received a bonus for the week.

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