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Vince McMahon, the man who put the
WWF (World Wrestling Federation) on the stock
exchange and, for better or worse, made Jesse
Ventura a household name, wants your ass. He wants
it in front of your television, tuned to your local
NBC affiliate, watching a cranked-up minor-league
football game. Stripped of its in-your-face
WWF trappings, the XFL is a simple concept.
It's a way for football junkies to get a pigskin
fix while Vinny Testaverde is off playing golf. The
fledgling eight-team league will play a 10-game
schedule, starting on 2/3/01, complete with
prime-time network coverage on NBC every Saturday
and UPN on Sunday. It all ends with the Big
Game at the End, the league's
Super-Bowl-meets-SmackDown on 4/21/01.
Dick Butkus, the league's director of
competition and an infamous NFL Hall of Fame
linebacker says, there are a bunch of Kurt Warners
out there and we're gonna make them stars. In
reality, while most of the guys will be
CFL and Arena Football veterans trying to
impress NFL scouts, the XFL is not about the
players or the game - or how badly either gets
injured. It's about the show. Add miked
cheerleaders, announcers on the sidelines, the
elimination of the fair-catch (all punts will be
run back, by someone). The bump-and-run is back,
and there is no in-the-grasp rule for quarterbacks.
In this league the play's not over until the signal
caller is eating the frozen tundra. (Sounds like a
perfect place for Tony Siragusa and company.) And,
in this league, McMahon and the owners are the only
ones getting rich. All players are contracted to
the league, the base salary for the first season is
$45,000 - with 5 thou more for quarterbacks, ten
thou less for kickers and players will share a
$100,000 pool for winning a regular-season game and
a $1 million pot for the league's championship
game. But, even with that pile of cash, the top
players in the league will just barely break into
six figures.
Teams include the Birmingham Thunderbolts at
Legion Field, Chicago Enforcers at Soldier Field,
Memphis Maniax at Liberty Bowl, Las Vegas Outlaws
at Sam Boyd Stadium, San Francisco Demons at
Pacific Bell Park, NY/NJ Hitmen at Giants
Stadium, Orlando Rage at Florida Citrus Bowl, and
Los Angeles Xtreme at the LA Coliseum.
www.xfl.com
Source: Maxim,
2/01
* * *
I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen
wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses
our society, and if we do not stop being violent we
have no future. - Edward Bond
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