So, I make one little comment on my facebook/twitter about how I'm excited for the U.S. college football season to start and it becomes the ol' CFL/American Football debate....for the record, I can't really stomach a full game of CFL Football.....I just don't have time for a league with "bigger balls", 8 teams and superstars made from NFL castaways....
Please don't convince me why I should give the CFL a higher spot in the pecking order or how I'm just jaded because of how Ottawa has been given the shaft over and over again with failed CFL franchises....I think I have the league placed pretty fairly near the bottom of the pole and I would have had to have cared about the league in the first place in order to be jaded....
With that in mind, the failed XFL made an appearance in the discussion for comedic purposes....as I thought about the league, I had really forgot just how awesomely bad it was....every idea seemed to fail and in an entertaining way as well, which made it the entertaining trainwreck that it was....
I could go on and on, but I've come up with my Top 5 XFL hilarious failures, in no particular order....
5) The "Opening Scramble"
The thought was to fit excitment everywhere....that included the boring coin toss as Vince McMahon thought to add a 20 yard sprint for a ball between two opposing players....whoever got the ball would win the toss and choose possession....the failure came right in Week 1 when a player injured himself for the year with a seperated shoulder during one of these scrambles....
4) Bump and Run
Unlike the rule in the NFL where bump and run is only allowed in the first five yards, the XFL extended this rule to anywhere to create more WR/CB in-fighting in the open field....problem was the rule hampered scoring so badly, there was hardly any scoring at all....bettors in Vegas (yeah, there were some) took advantage and made a killing off the sportsbooks because the oddsmakers could never set the over/under low enough....
3) The Broadcast Teams
Vince McMahon kept around most of his wrestling guys to be play-by-play and colour commentators for the XFL, which gave the league hardly any credibility whatsoever.....It was just so hard to take good ol' J.R. and Jerry "The King" Lawler seriously as estemeed football broadcasters....
2) The Cheerleaders
The XFL took a play out of the book of the movie, "The Replacements", and seemingly hired models and girls that could offer the raunchiest look or appeal....it was great entertainment for the men, but as far as being sponsor-friendly, that was another story....the models and subsequent commercials and promos were deemed too risque and had to be toned down....
I managed to find a video of only the cheerleaders that also showed the ineptitude of the broadcast team....classic XFL right here....
1) "He Hate Me"
Players were allowed to put either their name or a nickname on the back of their jersey....the idea was that the players really didn't have name recognition anyways, so maybe a fan would be able to start recognizing players by nickname instead....for Rod Smart, he became a classic when he decided to go with "He Hate Me" on his jersey....it has some sort of meaning, but who cares...
Rod Smart would later join the NFL and have limited success, but he would always be known for his "He Hate Me" moniker....even the NFL tried to help him out with this by making it impossible to put "He Hate Me" on the back of any jersey purchased on NFLShop.com as his nickname joined the likes of "Ron Mexico" and Rae Carruth...
In the end, the XFL folded after one disaster-filled season and the only true success to rise up from that steamy pile was quarterbcak Tommy Maddox, who went on to have one great season with the Pittsburgh Steelers, but at least Vince McMahon took it all in stride and was able to make fun of himself in this spoof video....