Touchdown Meets Smackdown.

• Author: Sandomir, Richard
• Position: XFL football - Brief Article

Can Vince McMahon score big with his new XFL, football done WWF style?

Take the NFL and WWF, add a dash of Real World, and jam it into a blender. Out comes spine-jangling pigskin action drenched in attitude, with cameras and microphones everywhere. That's Vince McMahon's recipe for his new football league, the XFL.

The maestro of the scripted, sweaty, nasty soap opera that is pro wrestling is now revamping pro football. "If the NFL stands for the `No Fun League,'" says McMahon, chairman of the World Wrestling Federation, "the XFL will be the `Extra Fun League.' This is gonna be a blast!"

With the inaugural games kicking off on February 3, the XFL is going to be something, all right. McMahon is hoping to attract the millions of teen viewers who watch his WWF shows. Though the XFL won't have steel cages, WWF stars, or, most important, fixed outcomes, the wrestling influence will be there.

The vision of the 8-team, 10-game XFL is one with fireworks and pounding anthems to introduce the teams, screaming fans in cheap seats, players talking trash, and scantily clad cheerleaders encouraged to date players for the sake of real off-field storylines. In-your-face celebrating after a touchdown, which in the "no fun" NFL draws a penalty for taunting, will be expected in the XFL. Team names even sound like WWF gangs: the Memphis Maniax, Orlando Rage, New York/New Jersey Hitmen.

On the field, the game will have a few tweaks to the NFL rulebook, mainly to encourage more heavy hitting. Fair catches, where a player can opt to safely catch a kick without fear of being tackled, are forbidden. Extra points after touchdowns must be scored with a pass or run, not with a kick. A quarterback is fair game for a sack even if a defensive player has his arms around him--reversing a touch-football-style rule in what McMahon calls the "pantywaist" NFL. "This can't fail," he says.

Most other upstart sports leagues have failed, including the United States Football League, which lasted for three spring seasons in the 1980s. To hold down costs, McMahon will split the XFL's $100 million start-up with NBC, which, along with UPN and TNN, will broadcast the games. The XFL will pay most players $45,000, plus a $2,500 bonus per win. The average NFL salary is $1 million.

The XFL will get what it pays for: teams made up of NFL castoffs and college has-beens. The biggest name could be Jesse Ventura, the wrestler-turned-Minnesota-Governor, who'll be an XFL TV commentator. Yet the...