XFL is latest league to suspend its season, 'currently' won't play regular season games

Frank Schwab
·NFL writer
Updated ·2 min read

The XFL picked a heck of a spring to start up its league.

The new football league was doing fairly well, at least compared to other start-up professional football leagues, and then COVID-19 happened. The XFL joined most other sporting organizations by suspending its 2020 season on Thursday due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The official announcement came Thursday evening.

The optimistic words about the 2021 season is a positive for fans of the new league.

The XFL took its time to announce the suspension of the season, well after other leagues had canceled games. That led to so many jokes about XFL head Vince McMahon taking over the sporting world while all the other leagues went on a hiatus that McMahon was trending on Twitter. But the XFL couldn’t go on with its games during the outbreak.

The league had played half of its regular-season schedule. Its playoff semifinals were set to take place April 18-19, with the first championship game on April 26. Like everything else in the sporting world, nobody knows when or if the XFL will resume.

The XFL had already decided to play this week’s Los Angeles-Seattle game without fans.

As was the case with the NBA and college basketball, it became apparent that playing XFL games in an empty stadium wasn’t a viable option either.

Houston Roughnecks quarterback P.J. Walker, the league’s first star in its inaugural season, summed up the feelings of the XFL news and sports world in general.

Seattle Dragons receiver Keenan Reynolds also reacted to the news.

The XFL was having a positive season, with solid television ratings and good crowds, particularly in Seattle and St. Louis. Unlike other leagues like the Alliance of American Football and the first XFL, the 2020 XFL started with positive ratings and kept the momentum mostly going.

Undeniably, the hiatus hurts the new league from a business standpoint. Like the rest of the sports world, XFL players, coaches and staff just have to wait to see what happens next.

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