Date: February 25, 2001, XFL Week: 4
Home Team: San Francisco Demons
Visiting Team: Las Vegas Outlaws
Game attendance: 34,000, Stadium: Pac Bell Park
TV announcers: Craig Minervini, Bob Golic
Network: UPN
The XFL was a professional American football league that played for one season in 2001. The league was founded by Vince McMahon, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of WWE (formerly known as the World Wrestling Federation, Inc.). The XFL was intended to be a major professional sports league complement to the offseason of the NFL, but it failed to find an audience and folded after its first and only season.
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 (as in the NFL), but that the league was operated as a single business 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 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 led to the first XFL injury. This type of "coin toss" has since been referred to as the "injury zone."
The XFL chose unusual names for its franchises, most of which either referenced images of uncontrolled insanity (Maniax, Rage, Xtreme), evil (Demons) or criminal activity (Enforcers [a reference to mob enforcers], Hitmen, Outlaws, and the Birmingham Blast).
After outrage from Birmingham residents (who felt that the word 'Blast' may have been misconstrued as a reference to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963 as well as Eric Rudolph's 1998 bombing of a local abortion clinic), the XFL changed the name of the Birmingham team to the more benign "Birmingham Thunderbolts."
The Los Angeles Xtreme name also formed a pun with the team's initials, "LAX" (a gimmick that had previously been used by the Los Angeles Express of the USFL).
The XFL had impressive television coverage for an upstart league, with three games televised each week on NBC, UPN, and TNN.
Contrary to popular belief, the "X" in XFL did not stand for "extreme," as in "Extreme Football League." When the league was first organized in 1999, it was originally supposed to stand for "Xtreme Football League;" however, there was already a league in formation at the same time with that name, and so promoters wanted to make sure that everyone knew that the "X" did not actually stand for anything though McMahon would comment that "if the NFL stood for the 'No Fun League', the XFL will stand for the 'extra fun league'". The other Xtreme Football League, which was also organized in 1999, merged with Arena Football before ever fielding its first game.
The XFL's opening game took place on February 3, 2001, one year after the concept of the league was announced, and immediately following the NFL's Super Bowl. The first game was between the New York/New Jersey Hitmen and the Las Vegas Outlaws at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas. The game ended with a 19-0 victory for the Outlaws, and 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 Nielsen rating.
Although the XFL began with better-than-expected TV ratings (the opening-week games actually delivered ratings double those of what NBC had promised advertisers and the Saturday broadcast had more viewers than the NFL Pro Bowl) and fair publicity, the audience declined sharply after the first week of the season, going from a 9.5 rating to a 4.6 in just one week, and the media attacked the league for what was perceived as a poor quality of play. A further problem was that the XFL itself was the brainchild of Vince McMahon, a man who was ridiculed by mainstream sports journalists due to the stigma attached to professional wrestling as being "fake"; many journalists even jokingly speculated whether any of the league's games were rigged, although nothing of this sort was ever proven.
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XFL Week 4: NY Hitman vs Chicago Enforcersby XFL1012,283 views
What's so ironic is how much the NFL took from the XFL once they folded. I honestly think if it wasn't associated with professional wrestling, it might of stood a chance.
nosuchthingasgod 3 weeks ago
He Hate Me = The most retarded nickname ever
sole2niners 1 month ago 2
XFL = Epic FAIL
huntr7777 2 months ago
COOL TEAM NAMES BUT THE OVERKILL OF THE COLOR BLACK ON EVERY SINGLE UNIFORM WAS STUPID! I REMEMBER WATCHING THE CHICAGO ENFORCERS PLAY THE NEW YORK HITMEN IN THE SNOW AND MUD! BECAUSE BOTH TEAMS WORE BLACK AS THE DOMINATE COLOR IN THEIR UNIFORM YOU COUDLNT TELL WHO WAS PLAYING WHO AFTER THE 2 ND QUARTER!
ozulu45 3 months ago
They Re-Hired Chuck DeGeorges
bhratbrat 4 months ago