The first installment of Vince McMahon’s wild and exaggerated answer to football, the XFL only lasted one season. After the debacle of the inaugural season the XFL went down in flames and thought to never return again. 19 years later McMahon brought back the XFL, hoping to have a better run than the initial go at it.
After a strong start to the second run of the XFL the league has once again crumbled, this time though it was not necessarily due to the product on the field. Less than a month ago on March 12, the league was still fully committed to maintaining the league for the upcoming season.
Now, a month later and the XFL is no longer running any type of operations due to the current state of, not only the United States but the world because of COVID-19.
Because both of the XFL seasons collectively lasted less than two seasons, the XFL has become somewhat of an inside joke because they have tried and failed twice. One big joke is that the AAF lasted longer and therefore was more successful than the XFL.
However, people who are not looking at this in a joking manner know that the AAF completely folded due to a lack of finances and the XFL was forced to shut down their season due to the pandemic.
Although that part is true the league did not have to fold under these circumstances, that was a decision made recently which “shocked” the sports world. Not only did the XFL fold they have now also filed for bankruptcy in the first business day after the league suspended operations and laid off almost all employees.
This all makes it seem like the second run at the XFL was a failure, however, the biggest question that occurs is whether or not the XFL would have succeeded if not for the forced cancellation of the season due to the pandemic.
From what it looks like the answer would have been yes because we’ve seen that the second run of the XFL was much more successful from not only an on-field product standpoint but entertainment value for the country.
Now while we say it would have been successful we can’t say for 100% whether or not that would be true we can only look based off what we have seen in the past and in the present and all signs pointed to it being a successful alternative to the NFL. Not only would it have been a successful alternative, but it also would have been a steppingstone for some of the players who are not able to be on NFL rosters an are hoping to one day make a team.
Now what we will see in the XFL in both its initial run and its second run is that they were both failures and that Vince McMahon failed both times trying to start up a new alternative to football, which is partly true but we can’t also forget the fact that the second go through was due to a worldwide pandemic that shut it down.
So, although the XFL will no longer be running we can’t forget the small amount of time that we did have another Football League to keep us entertained while the NFL was out of season. this will most likely be the last run at the XL for Vince McMahon, so we can only imagine what could have been?