NFL vs. XFL: A Comparative Study
I. Name
NFL stands for National Football League, a
solid, trustworthy name for a solid, trustworthy sports league.
XFL stands for...it stands for...erm...
Actually,
nobody knows what the X stands for.
Vince McMahon won’t tell anyone.
It could stand for Extreme Football League, but nobody’s quite
sure. The X in XFL is an unknown
quantity: that is, it operates in about the same fashion that the X in
high-school algebra did. And we all
remember how much fun that was in our
formative adolescent years.
Advantage: NFL.
II. History
The NFL was founded in 1920, when a group of Midwest pro football teams gathered in
Canton, Ohio, and drew up a plan to form the American Professional Football
Association, which wisely changed its name to the NFL two years later.
Its first president was the legendary
player-coach of the Canton Bulldogs, and arguably the greatest athlete of the
20th century, Jim Thorpe.
The XFL was founded this past year, when the omnipresent V. McMahon drew up the
plans on the back of a cocktail napkin after gathering about a dozen 2-for-1
margaritas into his bloodstream at the local TGI Friday’s.
Its first president is (hand to God) one
Basil DeVito, whose only connection to Canton, Ohio is that he is still sought
for questioning by the local authorities therein.
Advantage: NFL.
III. Franchise Saturation
The NFL has 32 teams spread across the length and breadth of this great land, and
is so intent upon covering the Contiguous 48 that it has gone so far as to
allow its own franchises to uproot and either move, attempt to move, or cast a
greedy, Visigothic eye upon any metropolis with a sports bar and an
oxygen-deprived city council ripe for the pillaging.
This mentality has resulted in howls of municipal protest in
Baltimore over its team (which moved to Indianapolis), white-hot homicidal
truculence in Cleveland over its team (which moved to Baltimore), blinkered
indifference in Los Angeles over its two teams (Oakland and St. Louis,
respectively), and gut-busting laughter in Boston (Hartford, Connecticut, until
the NFL smarted up and said "Not in this or any future lifetime").
The XFL has 8 teams spread out over a handful of second-tier cities, some of which,
such as Birmingham, have fielded football teams in no less than three previous
also-ran football leagues. Birmingham’s
last foray into pro football was with the Birmingham Barracudas of the Canadian
Football League, the result of which single-handedly turned Alabama into the 11th
province of the dominion of Canada, a situation that not even Canada, nor for
that matter Stalinist Russia, deserved.
Should the XFL expand (settle down, Sparky), its only avenues of
recourse would be to such powerhouses as Wichita, Santa Fe, and Halifax, Nova
Scotia.
Advantage: NFL.
IV. Players
The NFL fields the finest specimens of gridiron
prowess every Sunday, who regularly give their all to the athletic contests
into which they are thrown, to produce, at least this past year, a Super Bowl whose
statistic in total yards gained was outpaced by the pack of squirrels in that
commercial, you know, the one for, erm, what company was it for again?
The XFL fields a coterie of lean and hungry journeymen from literally all walks of
life -- former college standouts, grizzled ex-NFL veterans, gentlemen drummed
out of the Police Athletic League, what have you.
The XFL boasts about this, claiming that their brand of players
are immeasurably more enthusiastic about playing football, and refuse to just
go through the motions like a lot of jaded NFLers, and that this will logically
result in more exciting, daring, risk-gulping football.
Not to sound like a wet blanket, but
proffering such offensive generals as Casey Weldon, Rashan Salaam, and your
kid’s old high-school trig teacher1
doesn’t look like they’re exactly straining themselves trying to solve the
problem of boring football.
Advantage: Tie.
V. Salary Cap
The NFL has a salary cap, currently at about $67
million. A salary cap is a
league-imposed limit on how much money a team can spend per year for a 45-man
football team. If a team spends more
than $67 million to pay its players, it will...get a nasty look from the
commissioner’s office, as far as we can figure.
The point here is that the salary cap rules in the NFL are
burdened with so many loopholes, grandfather clauses, indecipherabilities, and
general stupidity that they guarantee a rise in ticket prices every year for
the average football fan.
The XFL has a more simple salary cap.
Everybody gets an average of $4,500 per game.
With a ten-week season, that’s 45 bills per player. For every win, each player gets a bonus of
$2,500. For every playoff win, they get
another $7,500. The championship team
carves up $1 million, which on a 38-man XFL team is $26,315.79.
Here, the salary cap is simple. If you go out to play, and your team gets
capped one real good by the opponent, you do not receive an increase in salary.
Advantage: XFL.
VI. Announcers/Commentators
The XFL seats the announcers and roving sideline reporters in the stands among the
paying customers. The XFL has also
employed some of its cheerleaders (more on them later) to do promo pieces on
their team’s players, such as when a random platinum-maned,
silicone-embroidered Las Vegas cheerleader introduced her team’s quarterback,
licked her lips in a display of raging fecundity, and affirmed that he was a
guy who "really knows how to score."
The NFL has categorically stated that you will never see Melissa Stark doing that
sort of thing on Monday Night Football. (More’s the pity.)
The NFL, spread out over several networks,
employs some of the finest sports reporters and commentators in the business:
Pat Summerall and John Madden on FOX; Greg Gumbel and Phil Simms on CBS; and Al
Michaels, Dan Fouts, and Dennis Miller on ABC’s Monday Night Football.
The XFL, for its part, has Jesse "The Governor" Ventura, current governor of
Minnesota and this generation’s answer to Winston Churchill.
Advantage: XFL. (Because Al Michaels can’t bend you into something
that belongs in the foyer of the Tate Gallery.)
VII. Nicknames/Logos
The NFL’s 32 teams have typical team nicknames
and logos, which are evocative of everything from mythology (Giants, Titans) to
noble fauna (Bears, Lions, Rams, Panthers, Eagles) to history (Vikings, 49ers,
Patriots). The logos look like they
belong with the teams, or at least the cities (an "NY" for New York, an "SF"
for San Francisco, and so on).
The XFL’s 8 teams are nicknamed the Hitmen, Enforcers, Rage, Bolts, Outlaws,
Maniax, Xtreme, and Demons, which are evocative of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted
List. The logos tend toward sharp
edges. The Xtreme’s logo is an X (ever
the innovators)2 stylized to
look like a pinwheel, which actually comes off looking like a starfish in a
Cuisinart. The Rage’s logo is a
corpulent-red head of a decidedly perturbed individual, teeth all a-grit and
veins a-throb, which suggests that the team would do better being called the
Constipated Teamsters.
Advantage: NFL.
VIII. Football
The NFL uses a traditional, league-specification
plain brown leather football for all of its games, with the NFL logo emblazoned
just under the laces. It is filled to
regulation pressure with air.
The XFL uses a black leather football with Satanic-looking red stripes on it, with the
XFL logo emblazoned just under the laces.
It is filled to regulation pressure with air, fragmentation shrapnel,
and exploding puff adder venom. It also
sells better.
Advantage: XFL.
IX. Coin Flip
The NFL determines the initial possession at the
start of the game by flipping a coin.
The XFL determines the initial possession at the start of the game by placing the
official XFL football at midfield, and having one player from each side scrum
for it until one of them comes up with the football.
Think back to playing Kill The Guy With The Ball when you were
six, and you’re pretty much got it.
During the second game in XFL history, one of the scrummers separated
his shoulder trying to come up with the little bugger.
That takes guts. Not a lot of brains, mind you, but guts nonetheless.
Advantage: XFL.
X. Signs
NFL fans traditionally wave signs that say
things like DEFENSE or WE’RE #1, or try to make a witty and inspiring phrase
out of the call letters of whatever network is broadcasting the game. Ungrammatically.
XFL fans wave signs that say things like CHEERLEADERS 3:16, DRUNK AS HELL, or (a
personal favorite) THE BOLTS STINK LIKE THE PASSAIC RIVER, which leads us to
surmise that there’s an Algonquin Round Table short one member somewhere.
Advantage: XFL.
XI. Cheerleaders
The XFL has cheerleaders. Sweet galloping Kierkegaard, does the XFL
have cheerleaders. We may well have
discerned what the X stands for.
The NFL has far more restrained, sophisticated, tasteful cheerleaders.
They also have the Super Bowl Halftime Show.®
You may remember the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show, or as it is
more familiarly known, "The Up With People Kids Go Straight To Hell.
Advantage: XFL.
XII. Championship Game
The NFL has the Super Bowl.
The XFL has -- we’re not kidding -- The Big Game At The End.
Advantage: XFL. (Obviously.)
XIII. People Getting The Point
People who scoff at the XFL do so for the
obvious reasons, many of which are stated above.
People who scoff at the XFL point to the class, panache, and
cultural familiarity of the institution of the NFL as self-evident
counterpoint.
People who point to the NFL as self-evident counterpoint would do well to remember the
reaction of one Ms. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, lieutenant governor of Maryland
(home state of the world-champion Baltimore Ravens), member of one of America’s
political dynasties (yes, those Kennedys), when she lavished her
lieutenant-gubernatorial praise upon her Ravens’ victory: "I loved it when we
made that football! The Giants had just
made a football, and we came right back and made another football!"
Advantage: XFL. (XFL fans may be dumb, but they ain’t that dumb.)
XIV. Expansion Potential
The NFL has 32 teams, and doesn’t really have
any more worthwhile cities to which it can expand, although San Antonio has
been troweling on the Revlon for years trying to get the NFL’s attention, if
that floats your barge.
The XFL has better prospects for expansion, simply because of the combination of
relatively inexpensive franchises and an unqualified lack of shame.
They could even expand into Canada, if Vince
& Co. can muster up the close air support quick enough to fleece the first
board of aldermen he happens upon. Just
don’t be surprised if you turn on the TV one day and hear President Jesse
Ventura doing color commentary for a game between the Tulsa Baby Seal Clubbers
and the Ottawa Complete Bastards.
Advantage: XFL.
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