Date published: 5/13/2001

SOME THINGS just don't work: your lazy uncle, marshmallows with milk, Tom Green movies.

Add one more item to that list: spring football.

It was easy (and fun!) to kick the XFL when it was down. And now that it's dead, no one's shedding any tears--aside from NBC executives and Vince McMahon's accountant.

McMahon didn't get it, just as the USFL's founders before him didn't. Football is meant to be played in the fall and late winter, and its audience won't have it any other way--especially when the quality of the football is decidedly second-rate.

Sure, Arena Leagues 1 and 2 have survived, and NFL Europe is now a decade old. But those leagues' bigwigs are satisfied with a tiny niche. They don't have McMahon's grand-scale goals. Of all the XFL's many flaws, poor timing may have been the worst.

Not so long ago, every sport had its season: baseball from spring to fall, football in fall and winter, basketball and hockey in winter through spring. Now, there's almost no off-seasons.

Toss in the rising popularity of NASCAR, golf and women's sports--not to mention McMahon's pseudo-sport, pro wrestling--and the pie can only be cut so thin. With this economic slowdown thing going on, the entertainment dollar doesn't go as far as it used to.

That's the market McMahon and NBC tried to elbow in on. Who's going to watch bad football when college basketball is in full swing and NASCAR and baseball are starting?

Plus, unlike the USFL a generation ago, the XFL tried to market the toughness of the game, not its players. When the USFL started, it signed Herschel Walker, Doug Flutie, Steve Young and Jim Kelly, to name a few--and it still lost millions and folded within three years. The XFL offered us Tommy Maddox and Jim Druckenmiller.

As a shrewd businessman, McMahon should have known that stars, not gimmicks, put butts in the seats. Pro wrestling is what it is because of its personalities: Hulk Hogan, Goldberg, The Rock, etc. The XFL's glitz wore off in a hurry when viewers discovered that its players couldn't play.

The XFL was like the new restaurant that opens in town. Everybody's curious and will try it once. But if the food stinks, no one comes back a second time.

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Date published: 5/13/2001