The XFL was a professional American football league that played its only season in 2001. The XFL was operated as a joint venture between the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) and NBC. The XFL was conceived as an outdoor football league that would begin play immediately after the National Football League (NFL) season ended, to take advantage of the perceived lingering public desire to watch football after the NFL and college football seasons conclude. It was promoted as having fewer rules to encourage rougher play than other major leagues, while its telecasts featured sports entertainment elements inspired by professional wrestling (and in particular, the WWF's then-current "Attitude Era"), including heat and kayfabe, and suggestively-dressed cheerleaders. Commentary crews also featured WWF commentators (such as Jesse Ventura, Jim Ross, and Jerry Lawler) joined by sportscasters and veteran football players. Despite the wrestling influence, the games and their outcomes were legitimate and not based on scripted storylines.
The XFL operated as a single entity with all teams owned by the league, in contrast to most major professional leagues, which use a franchise model with individual owners. The league had eight teams in two divisions, and each franchise was based in a market that either currently had an NFL team (New York/New Jersey, Chicago, San Francisco), had previously supported other pro leagues like the United States Football League, the original World League, or the Canadian Football League (Memphis, Orlando, Birmingham, Las Vegas), or was the largest market without a professional franchise (Los Angeles). Co-owner NBC served as the main carrier of XFL games, with UPN and TNN also carrying selected games.
The first night of play brought higher television viewership than NBC had projected, but ratings exponentially plummeted for subsequent games, with criticism directed toward its overall quality of play, on-air presentation and connection to the WWF, prompting NBC to pull out of the venture after one season. While plans were made to continue without NBC (with plans for expansion teams as well), UPN allegedly made inordinate demands of the league, which hastened its demise. The league ceased operations entirely in May 2001. Its closure was announced just a few weeks after the league's season championship game, in which the Los Angeles Xtreme defeated the San Francisco Demons, on April 21, 2001, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Despite its short-lived existence, the XFL did pioneer several on-air technologies that would later become commonplace in football telecasts, such as aerial skycams, and on-player microphones. WWE owner Vince McMahon maintained control of the XFL brand after the league ceased operations, despite many, including McMahon himself, considering the original league to be a "colossal failure." Interest in the league was revived when ESPN Films released a 30 for 30 documentary surrounding the league, and shortly after the film debuted, McMahon began preparing for a new iteration of the league in 2020. The new XFL was run by a new McMahon-controlled company independent from the present-day WWE, and did not utilize the sports entertainment elements featured in the previous incarnation. The second iteration of the XFL's inaugural season was aborted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the league suspended operations and filed for bankruptcy in April 2020, with McMahon relinquishing the XFL brand in a sale to his former WWE wrestler, Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia that August.
Founding The idea to create a rival or supplemental league to the NFL first originated in 1998, when NBC had lost the broadcast rights to the NFL's American Football Conference (AFC) to CBS, ending a business relationship that had its origins with the AFC's predecessor, the American Football League (this having also come about after NBC had previously lost the rights to the pre-merger NFL, also to CBS). NBC was moving ahead with Ted Turner owned Time Warner to create a football league of their own, but it never came to fruition. (Note that contrary to the 2001 date on the article, it was written in 1998.) Turner had previously attempted to rival the NFL when he collaborated with the NFLPA to create the Players' AII-Star Season during the 1982 players strike.
Created as a 50–50 joint venture between NBC and WWE-owned subsidiary WWE Properties International, Inc. under the company name "XFL, LLC", the XFL was created as a "single-entity league", instead of the franchise model used by the NFL and other major leagues, or hybrid model where investors in the league are given operations over teams (as used in Major League Soccer), the XFL uniformly owned and operated all of its teams as one corporation, with no individual owners. Vince McMahon's original plan was to purchase the Canadian Football League (after the CFL initially approached him about purchasing the Toronto Argonauts) and "have it migrate south," which was quickly rejected by the CFL.
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 combined the traditional game of American football with the kayfabe and stunts of professional wrestling. As WWF was, at the time, in the midst of its "Attitude Era" (which marked a shift in a mature and provocative direction for its content), the XFL's presentation likewise would reflect that approach toward football. It was hyped as "real" football without penalties for roughness and with fewer rules in general. Keen to avoid any perception that XFL games would somehow be predetermined in the sort of manner long established in professional wrestling, McMahon repeatedly emphasized that whereas the WWF was "100% (scripted) entertainment", the XFL would be "100% sport"; the winners of its games would be determined on the field. XFL games were to feature players and coaches with microphones and cameras in the huddle and locker rooms. Stadiums featured trash-talking public address announcers and scantily-clad cheerleaders who were encouraged to date the players. 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. The practice was dubbed "The Human Coin Toss" by commentators, and one player (Orlando Rage defensive back Hassan Shamsid-Deen) famously separated his shoulder on the first scramble, missing the rest of the season.
The XFL featured extensive television coverage, with three games televised each week on NBC, UPN, and TNN. To accommodate this, it placed four of its teams in the four largest U.S. media markets: New York City/North Jersey, Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Greater Los Angeles (this was during the NFL's 21-year absence from the Los Angeles metro area). The remaining four teams were placed in markets that had previously hosted teams in second-tier and/or rival major leagues: Birmingham, Memphis, Las Vegas, and Orlando. All of the XFL's markets except Las Vegas had hosted teams in the United States Football League in the 1980s; Las Vegas, along with Birmingham and Memphis, had hosted short-lived CFL teams in the 1990s.
The XFL chose unusual names for its teams, most of which either referenced images of uncontrolled insanity (Maniax, Rage, Xtreme, Demons) or criminal activity (Enforcers, Hitmen, Outlaws, and the Birmingham Blast). After outrage from Birmingham residents who noted that Birmingham had a history of notorious "blasts", including the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963 and 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" (later shortened to "Bolts").
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 the Arena Football League's minor league AF2 before ever playing a single game. In a much later article describing the origins of the league's name, Sports Illustrated stated: "The F and the L act to indicate, if only indirectly, a football league. But the X is a variable. It could mean anything."
Draft
The only main draft for the league took place over a three-day period from October 28 to 30, 2000. A total of 475 players were selected initially, with 65 additional players then selected in a supplemental draft on December 29, 2000.
Teams
Eastern Division Birmingham Thunderbolts Chicago Enforcers New York/New Jersey Hitmen Orlando Rage
Western Division Las Vegas Outlaws Los Angeles Xtreme Memphis Maniax San Francisco Demons
2001 season
On the field The XFL's opening game took place on February 3, 2001, one year after the league was announced, less than one week following the NFL's Super Bowl XXXV. The first game was between the New York/New Jersey Hitmen and Las Vegas Outlaws at Sam Boyd Stadium in Whitney, Nevada.
The league's regular season structure was set up so that each team played teams in its own division twice in the season, home and away (the same as the National Football League), and played against teams in the other division once. The season ran ten weeks, with no bye weeks.
The league's western division was far more competitive than the east, with the four teams' records ranging from 7–3 (for eventual champion Los Angeles) to 4–6 (Las Vegas, which finished last after losing its last three games to end up one game out of a playoff spot). In the East, New York and Chicago both were hampered by slow starts and ineffective starters before making personnel changes that improved their play, while Orlando, under quarterback Jeff Brohm, who owned the league's highest QB rating at 99.9 during the 2001 XFL season, soared to first place, winning its first six games before Brohm suffered a career-ending injury and the team regressed (the team went 2–2 in his absence). Birmingham started the season 2–1 before a rash of injuries (and tougher competition, as its two wins were against New York and Chicago) led to the team losing the last seven games. Injuries were a major problem across the league: only three of the league's eight Opening Day starting quarterbacks—Los Angeles's Tommy Maddox, San Francisco's Mike Pawlawski and Memphis's Jim Druckenmiller—were still starters by the end of the season. Birmingham and Las Vegas were both on their third-string quarterbacks by the end of the ten-week season.
The XFL postseason format was essentially identical to the one adopted by the AFL for its final season in 1969. The top two teams in each division qualified for the playoffs. To avoid teams having to play each other three times in a season prior to the championship game, the league set up the semifinal round of the playoffs so that the games would feature teams from opposite divisions: the east division champion (Orlando) hosted the west division runner-up (San Francisco), and likewise for the west champion and east runner-up (Los Angeles and Chicago, respectively). Los Angeles and San Francisco each won their playoff games to advance to the XFL championship.
Off the field