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Thursday, July 13, 2000
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal |
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McMahon's XFL will thrive by being everything
NFL isn't
Over the past 15 years, as more than a few contrived professional
sports leagues have pranced into Las Vegas, heavy on style but light
on substance, I've taken great pride in pulling out my driver, teeing
up their grandiose dreams and -- thwaaack! -- smacking them down
the middle of the get-outta-town highway.
World Indoor Football League? See ya!
Roller Hockey International? Who needs it!
United Soccer League? You've got to be kidding!
Now comes the XFL, talkin' big and livin' large ... and you know
what? I love it. Absolutely, positively love it. Love it as much
as any pro sports idea that has hit town since the Stars became
the city's Triple-A baseball franchise back in 1982.
Pardon me for gushing, but I think World Wrestling Federation mastermind
Vince McMahon has hit on something big with his new sass-and-badass
pro football league, which debuts in February. Moreover, I think
the league has hit on something big by selecting Las Vegas as one
of its eight inaugural franchise cities.
The target audience of this new sports venture is, as McMahon describes
it, "middle-class America" -- in other words, schlubs like you and
me and the everyday tourist schlepping the Strip who wouldn't know
Brie from Gouda, cabernet from chardonnay. Instead, we like our
beer cold, our salsa hot and our football smacking us upside the
head with serious attitude.
Well, boys, that's just what you're gonna get with the XFL.
This ain't no NFL -- the No Fun League, as McMahon all but called
the "over-regulated, antiseptic" National Football League on Wednesday
at a news conference at Sam Boyd Stadium. The XFL is bold, it's
daring and, let me be the first to suggest, the next Darwinian step
in the evolution of pro football.
Hard-hitting, with no sissy rules to protect kick returners. Dangerous,
with a no in-the-grasp rule to protect prissy quarterbacks. Explosive,
with receivers benefiting from just one foot in bounds on pass catches
and a yet-undecided plan to get away from those lame point-after
kicks.
And, yes, emotion, with players flaunting and taunting after big
plays -- all brought to you up close by way of cameras on helmets
and microphones in face guards.
Suddenly, you'll feel like you're watching pro football from right
there on the sideline, rather than some chichi corporate VIP suite
in the nosebleed section.
"Football used to be for the
common fan, but the NFL has all but taken the common fan out of
the game," McMahon unloaded. "What's with that?"
Yeah, what is with that?
No comment from the NFL, which has ignored the upstart league from
Day One. But the NFL has to be a little concerned, what with XFL
partner NBC committing to airing games in prime time every Saturday
from February through April; the marketing savvy of McMahon, who
is guaranteeing "the real football fan" will be taken care of first,
starting with tickets high-ended at only $25; and the buzz generated
from the league's aggressively physical style.
The best thing to happen to the NFL, you'll eventually see, is the
XFL.
McMahon was smart in deciding to start the season in February, right
after the NFL's Super Bowl, when fans are at the peak of talking
football, and brilliant in choosing to end it after just 10 games,
so that fan loyalties aren't divided by the start of baseball and
the postseason pushes of basketball and hockey.
Then again, every business venture McMahon undertakes is thought
out to a fault, which is why he's a millionaire -- albeit, not one
of those "jock-sniffing (NFL) owner millionaires" he joyously derides
for their insensitivity to fans.
"One thing about me, I
have an ego. But I never lose sight of what the foundation of my
success has been -- and that's the average person, the common man,"
McMahon says. "Just like with the WWF, it will be the average person,
the common man, who will make the XFL succeed."
Trust me, it will succeed. |
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