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The XFL: Can You Stuff Sex and Violence into a Package that Passes for Wholesome?Feb 05 '01 (Updated Feb 10 '01) Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line The football is surprisingly enjoyable, but the packaging (predictably) gets in the way. I want to begin this discussion of the XFL by proposing something very strange: I want to take a long hard look at the content of what Steve "Stone Cold" Austin has to say about the XFL. I know it's difficult to take any content seriously when it comes from a man whose income is largely derived from the sale of action figures, but in this instance what's difficult is also slightly rewarding and even somewhat amusing. So try to bear with me. Austin's endorsement of the XFL appeared an hour and ten minutes into the first game of the season (in Philadelphia we saw the New Jersey Hitmen get clobbered by the Las Vegas Outlaws). I guess Vince McMahon figured that seventy minutes was enough time for the average viewer to begin wondering what to make of the XFL. And so he decided to help out the wrestling fans (doubtless a sizable contingent of the audience) by having Steve Austin tell them what to think. I do not for one moment suppose that Steve Austin had anything more to do with the remarks he delivered than to collect a check (and probably not a very impressive one) after taping his endorsement. I also think it was downright sinister and manipulative and distasteful on at least three hundred and nine levels for McMahon's publicity crew to videotape endorsements of their league before the first game had even been played. But I recognize that expansion football leagues have traditionally been dismal failures and that McMahon and company had to do something to try to see to it that the XFL sprang kicking and screaming into the public consciousness. Although it was as shameless a piece of self-promotion as I have ever seen courtesy of McMahon (which is saying something), Austin's rant was actually quite compelling. He remarked on the fact that Paul Tagliabue (the commissioner of the NFL) had called the XFL a "non-issue" and categorized Tagliabue's pronouncement as an insult to football fans generally and to the XFL players in particular. I never would have figured that I, in all my Slouchesque pomposity, would ever hear myself say the words, "Excellent point, Mr. Stone Cold." But Austin was right. As he suggests, football is too big a sport, too grand a phenomenon, to be contained by the NFL. Witness the success of college ball (many of whose fans find the NFL to be boring). Moreover, Tagliabue's position is insufferably smug, just as the NFL practice of fining players for wearing socks of the wrong length is insufferably smug. The failure of every single football expansion league since the AFL (eventually incorporated into the NFL as the AFC) would seem to warrant Tagliabue's smugness. But the simple fact of the matter is that the NFL doesn't get to decide whether the XFL will succeed. The fans will be the ones to make that decision. And if McMahon can manipulate football fans half as cagily as he has manipulated our country's community of the cerebrally deficient into wrestling mania, then the fans might just decide that the XFL is more of an issue than Tagliabue ever imagined it could be. Despite my hyper-awareness of the fact that McMahon's publicity crew was manipulating me through the puppet of Steve Austin, I found myself suddenly pulling for the XFL. And then Austin added his tagline: "The XFL kicks a-s-s. And it's true because Steve Austin says so!" Now there are some logicians who would argue that nothing is ever true simply because somebody says so. I beg to differ. For instance, when I say, "The XFL, in the final analysis, is bad; and you can spare yourself the chore of watching a game and simply take my word for it," the reader would be wrong to do anything but to accept my pronouncement as the absolute truth. That's because I'm a witty, engaging, genuinely likable sort of fellow who isn't peddling action figures. And it doesn't hurt that I'm good at thinking. Steve Austin may or may not be good at thinking; all that he's managed to demonstrate, however, is that he is good at helping other overweight men in tights to fall down on a padded surface. So I don't think he's earned the privilege to say that anything is ever the case simply on his say-so (though he has earned the privilege of seeing me backpedal on my derision of him should we ever meet face to face). Without the tagline, I might have been able to swallow Austin's promo. As it was, however, that tagline proved to be the last straw jabbed into this camel's eye. And it's a shame that I have decided to come down against the XFL; it's a shame because there's an awful lot to like about the league. Enjoyable Elements #1: It is professional football I love professional football. I understand that it's impossible for the NFL season to last the entire year because the sport is so rough that it requires an extended recovery period for the players. For that reason, expansion leagues always sound like a good idea. #2: It has the excitement of college football My theory is that people who profess a fondness for college football are generally the victims of a certain form of nostalgic confusion that stems from watching games on television that take place in a stadium where they spent some of the most enjoyable weekends of their lives. College is as good as life gets. And whether you attend a school that is a football powerhouse in Florida or a school whose Screaming Green Eagles did more struggling than screaming (as was the case in my years at the University of North Texas), there is always something pleasant about watching the crowds and the bands and the players doing essentially the same kinds of things that they were doing back when you were discovering just how cool life really is when you don't have to live with your parents. There is an excitement in college sports that simply doesn't translate to the professional level. I think it has something to do with the fact that college kids are capable of excessiveness in everything, including enjoyment. But whatever the reason, the excitement in collegiate sports is a real and genuinely palpable phenomenon. The one XFL game that I have seen had that kind of intensity in the crowd. It was--if you'll pardon my mawkishness--almost moving. #3: Insider information I really enjoyed eavesdropping on the quarterbacks in the huddle and seeing the coaches interact with their players on the sidelines. It made the game seem closer to me, the way a football game seems in person. I tend not to watch college football on television because I don't think the excitement of the games is adequately communicated to the home viewer. Somehow the XFL's gimmicky camera that drops down on the quarterback during the huddle does an excellent job of invoking the kind of excitement that I associate with the football games that it has been my good fortune to watch in person. #4: Regular Joe-ishness The salary structure of the XFL will warm your heart right down to its very cockles, which any anatomist will tell you are way down at the bottom. Quarterbacks are paid $5,000 per game; kickers are paid $3,500; and all other players are paid $4,500. Bonus purses are awarded to winning teams (with a purse of $1,000,000 slated to be awarded to the team that wins the league championship). But what it all boils down to is the distinct possibility of a guy playing football for roughly $100,000 per year, which isn't an astronomical figure to the average American Joe. These guys are risking their necks (do I need to say 'literally'?) for the kind of money that plenty of the dual-income households in their fan base can earn in a year. Why? It must be for love of the game. And it conjures up all sorts of touching memories about how you yourself thought of becoming a professional athlete in your youth. It reminds you of something that is worth championing in life: a desire to have fun and get paid for it without screwing anybody over or doing anything that you have to be ashamed of. #5: Some perfectly good rule changes The XFL allows bump-and-run coverage, calls interference only when it is blatant (the sort of thing that would have passed for interference with me when I played football in the schoolyard), and forces teams to run or pass for an extra point following a touch down. Quarterbacks are not allowed to slide; if they want to run, they have to expose themselves to the same kinds of hits as running backs and receivers. In the months leading up to the first game, the XFL was hyped as being incredibly violent, almost barbaric. Not so. I saw no unnecessary fighting or gratuitous namecalling. This is football the way my friends and I always played it as kids. It's rough in that there's always a potential for injury. But defenders are merely predatory, not malicious. Although I have to admit that there is an awful lot to like about the XFL, it is all outweighed by the stuff that one has no choice but to hate. Detestable Elements #1: I'm an unequivocal supporter of cleavage, but . . . Listen, I like looking at cheerleaders as much as the next guy. And the reason that we guys are always saying that is that none of us are prepared to specify precisely how much we like looking at cheerleaders. Believe me, we all know that the awesomely solacing power of jiggling breasts is unhealthy and unholy and a lot of other un-things as well. But the lewdly protracted shots of cheerleaders who do routines inspired by pole-dancers at strip joints are disturbing to me because they are nothing more than a shameless attempt by NBC to make me associate 1-800-CALL-ATT with bosoms. Should this really bother me? Am I really gullible enough to be duped into associating a long distance service with breasts simply because the number appears on a graphic that dances its way up the body of some gorgeous strumpet? Heavens, yes! This kind of advertising, for all its transparency, is the most effective kind I know of. I fear that if I continue to watch the XFL I will end up buying things that I don't need and then having to subdue the urge to hump whatever package they come in. Even if I am just a slobbering slug when it comes to bevies of bouncing beauties, I am covetous of the illusion of personal dignity that I have carefully constructed over the years. I won't let NBC take that away, even if it means making my wife hide the remote from me. #2 Mark my words, those of you who voted for Bush I know people from Minnesota. They all tell me that they had nothing to do with the election of Jesse "The Body" Ventura. Then they tell me not to make any jokes about their governor because he's just a governor, after all. It's not as if he does anything that requires a particularly active or flexible intelligence. Governors are essentially head bureaucrats who simply sign the papers that the laws make them sign and then sign other papers contradicting the first papers. "Besides," they say, "I would rather have an idiot as my governor than a cheat." But then the idiot opens his mouth and they find themselves praying furiously that no one is listening. Governor Ventura is one of the commentators for the XFL. He is an idiot of the first order. And when he opens his mouth, he is an embarrassment to football, to the state of Minnesota, to the human species, and even to wrestling fans. Listening to him comment on the XFL is like flashing forward to all of the Bushapropisms that we can expect to see emblazoned in newsprint for the next four years. When Ventura speaks, I can't help thinking about the conversations that we Americans can look forward to having with people of any other nationality for the duration of Bush's term. I don't care if Bush's cabinet turns out to be the most effective in the history of the nation. I don't care if he appoints supreme court justices that make John Jay and John Marshall look like chimpanzees. I don't care if he settles the feud between the Israelis and the Palestinians once and for all. Every time he opens his mouth, he is going to make me ashamed of my nationality. And I don't want to think about that any more than I have to. Ventura makes me think about precisely that. Lordy, does he make me think about it. #3: Padding In order to give the players the kind of spunky, marketable attitude that McMahon so lavishly bestows on his wrestlers, the XFL encourages its players to introduce themselves with bravado or anger or just plain wackiness. They are also allowed to print anything they like on their jerseys (from last names to nicknames to enigmatic slogans such as "He Hate Me"). The game, in other words, is engineered for the kinds of conversations that John Madden and Pat Summerall have been having for years--the kinds that are only tangentially related to football at best. #4: Ladies and gentlemen, your umpire, Jerry Springer The single most irritating thing to me was the way that the on-the-field commentator's job appeared to be nothing more than starting some kind of taunt-fest between the teams. He tried to interview players who were out of breath, seemingly with the intention of inducing them to gloat about whatever feat they had just accomplished. But since the players--to their credit--were more focused on the game than on hurling barbs at one another, he ended up getting most of his soundbites from spectators. These soundbites were not simply broadcast to the viewers at home, but were played over the speakers in the stadium as well. One of the coaches winced as he was criticized by an NFL player on the sidelines over the PA system of the Las Vegas stadium. It was exactly like watching Jerry Springer go into the audience to have some anonymous clown from the crowd lecture the person on the stage about his or her objectionable behavior. I know that Jerry Springer is popular and that Vince McMahon sees himself as giving people what they want. And for all I know, turning a football game into a daytime talk show is what people want. But it's not what I want. And it's a shame, too, because I love to watch football. If you like football, you'll like the parts of XFL games where they actually play. But the packaging will eventually drive you nuts. And ultimately drive you away.  |
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