Why the XFL Won’t Last (And Why the AFL Should Care)
Matthew Pickut
Thursday February 22, 2001
Let us assume that everything in our society exists to serve a function. That is the NFL, AFL, professional wrestling, politics, corn chips, etc... exist in a society because they serve some function in the lives of individuals in that society.
The individuals in question for both football and wrestling is the highly coveted, money rich young male 18-35 demographic (a similarity which might be what convinced NBC and Vince to venture into football in the first place) but the similarities between wrestling fans and football fans end there. The fans of wrestling are looking for something vastly different from their “sport.” I watch wrestling because it offers a view of a unique sociological phenomenon, and one thing that I observe time after time is that the loudest cheers erupt for revenge, catfights and blood. Fans cheer people who do things that would be unacceptable in any other setting.
To put it simply, wrestling vicariously provides for its viewers the experiences that they cannot find anywhere else because they would be inappropriate in any other social context: revenge, personal power, and feelings of voyeurism. While football, on the other hand, provides its fans with its own list of advantages. For example: Feelings of revenge and power – but mostly strong group affiliation; (Exhibit A: Raider Nation) the second-hand feeling of victory which comes from being a sports fan, (you ever talk to a fan whose team just won the Super bowl?) and most importantly, a feeling of being connected on some level to great athletes in a highly specialized setting. (Great athletes gardening is less exciting then a well-executed double reverse).
The challenge for the XFL is to provide both the vicarious experiences needed by wrestling fans and simultaneously provide what football fans need. Succeed and you convert the hundreds of thousands of rabid wrestling fans into XFL fans and you get rich. Ah, but there, athletically speaking, is the rub: Can you provide the feelings of revenge, personal power, and sexual prowess in the setting of an unscripted football game? As hard as Vince tries, he cannot provide those things without scripted individual performers. As good as Rashaan Salaam, Mike Pawlawski or any other XFL’er is, he can’t conjure up the same payoff as the Rock can by smacking down the Undertaker while some half undressed “manager” distracts the hapless “referee.”
Without the draw of power, sex, and revenge the XFL must function solely as a football league. The XFL can accomplish group affiliation and second-hand feelings of victory after a fashion, but it cannot offer the connection to truly great athletes in a specialized setting. The XFL attempts to offer specialization by changing rules (much like the AFL, which by contrast seems to have accomplished product differentiation successfully), but fails on every level to provide the truly top talent needed to hold the attention of the football fan base.
Why should the AFL care if the XFL folds? Because the XFL offers the AFL leverage to use in dealing with the NFL. If the XFL exists as a real competitor to the NFL, it might force the NFL to be more aggressive in working with the major indoor league. As a partner in competition to the XFL, the connection between ownership groups and the impending option to buy 49.9% of the AFL make the AFL less a competitor to the NFL and a more attractive neighbor on the national football landscape. If the XFL folds without putting up a fight, the result may be to lessen the desirability of working with the AFL. Luckily, the AFL can stand on its own as a sport, but the loss of potential resources would make growth more difficult.
What needs to be seen is if the public will settle for poor football in the XFL, if NBC has deep enough pockets to withstand the losses that it will incur until the XFL can provide some semblance of what the public wants, and if the AFL can use the XFL to show off its own product. The XFL now cannot offer either the wrestling fan or the football fan what they want. It is a league the does not satisfy anyone, and if you cannot satisfy the fans you cannot exist for long.
Matthew Pickut is a pastor in northern Indiana and a long time AFL fan. He also writes for his own website: The Brown Paper Blog. He graduated from Taylor University in Upland Indiana (class of `96) with degrees in Biblical Literature and Sociology as well as a healthy respect for the medicinal properties of coffee.
