The Uneducated and Highly Subjective Guide to Finding Your XFL Forever Team

You’re probably expecting me to start making fun of the XFL right now, aren’t you? It’d be for good reason: Most people remember the XFL, 2001’s alt-football league/Vince McMahon fever dream, as a one-season experiment in pigskinned chaos that never fulfilled its promise to dethrone the NFL.

The gist of the XTREME (sorry) league was that it tried to steal NFL fans by promoting looser rules. Read: More truck-sticking, which we now know is slightly problematic. Plus, the players could wear anything they wanted on the back of their jerseys: There was E-rupt, Baby Boy, Chuckwagon (who could forget Chuckwagon?), Dirty Durden, and He Hate Me, who, in my humble opinion, belongs in Canton between Lombardi and Montana.

Anyway, the XFL is back! And it’s still fighting the good fight against big brother NFL. This time, it’s promoting a faster, higher-scoring version of the game (study up here if you truly care that much about the deets). There are eight teams, all of which will play the first games of XFL Pt. II’s 10-game regular season this weekend.

And that’s why we’re here today. Let’s face it, most of us didn’t get to pick who we root for, and it’s the way of the world and the luck of the draw that most of us are not born into championship-franchise fandoms. Maybe you grew up with the pre-Drew Brees, existentially woeful New Orleans Ain’ts. Or maybe your father raised you a Mets fan (which, I can attest, sentences you to a lifelong Job-like test of faith and loyalty). Or maybe you just happen to be from Cleveland. If so, in your sports-fan life, you become the underdog guy. You cherish the near miss and live for the elusive upset. You nurture heartache and disappointment as if they were desirable emotional states. You learn to hate the Yankees. If this is you, now is your chance to change all that.

But we know you’re not about to sift through every rando-heavy, 46-man-deep XFL roster. And neither are we, really. Still, our editors did bare minimum—i.e. the legwork of a five-minute Google speedrun—for you, and made extremely first-impressioned arguments for why each team deserves your support. And if you're not sold on a team at the end of this, the Canadian Football League fires back up in a month.

Here are some things I already love about the XFL. There are no fair catches. No convoluted overtime rules. And apparently you can pass the ball forward multiple times behind the line of scrimmage. That is, simply, just…chaos. I love it. Also, most importantly, there is no team called the Dallas Cowboys. Instead, there are the Renegades. And while you might be conditioned to root against the new Dallas team, hear this and repeat: the Renegades are not the Cowboys. The Renegades represent nothing short of a parallel league universe without sin and Jerry Jones. They are the promise of the future, America ridding itself of false idols, riding into a new Texas dawn with a badass bandit logo and not some dumbass star. A root for the Renegades is a call against the Cowboys, I say. Repeat: The Renegades! They are not the Dallas Cowboys! America is saved. #MakeRenegadesAmericasTeam —Josh St. Clair

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Smart money right now has it that the DC Defenders, with former Ohio State champ QB Cardale Jones, safety Matt Elam, and a load of other NFL-caliber talent—will be the dominant team in this inaugural season, and strong contenders to be champions of this brave new football world. In this wide-open, unclaimed field, you can choose to be a DC Defenders fan. Right now. It's as simple as that! Don't worry about your sports-fan bona fides—this isn't jumping on the bandwagon; it's getting in on the ground floor. With a winner! So set aside any reservations about the weirdly meta name (the “Defenders”? isn't that like calling a team the “Offensive Tackles”?) and the nonsensical logo (crisscrossing electric bolts—DC current, get it? Jee-sus) and pull up in front of the game tomorrow afternoon. It's on ABC, 2:00 Eastern. Allow yourself to actually feel good as you watch your team crush the Seattle Dragons. Consider it self-care. —John Kenney

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I know even less about the XFL than I do the NFL, if that’s even possible, but it doesn’t take a sports-ologist to identify the Houston Roughnecks as the obvious choice here. What other team sounds like a porno you’d find on VHS in the velvet-draped enclave of your local Blockbuster? I like to imagine that the Roughnecks are a group of guys ripped straight from a sexy cowboy calendar. Like a female gaze-y version of The Dukes of Hazzard where it’s the men in Daisy Dukes hosing down a car, and instead Jessica Simpson gets to watch admiringly while sipping a cold one. Are the Roughnecks any good at football? I don’t know and I don’t care. Would I pay them to wash my car in their tight football pants? Abso-fucking-lutely. —Adrienne Westenfeld

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I first learned about the XFL this very morning and I still don’t really understand what it is, but to me this is a no-brainer. If we’re picking teams based on likelihood to break out into choreographed song and dance (which we are), the LA Wildcats are the shoo-in. Will a prepubescent Zac Efron emerge from under a helmet singing “Getcha Head in the Game”? Probably not, but if he was going to, it would absolutely be on the Wildcats. There is also a player on the team named Chad, so, if you haven't picked up on it yet, this is a full-blown High School Musical conspiracy theory. Unless my theory proves true, there are no other reasons to watch this sport as far as I am concerned. No further questions at this time. What team? WILDCATS! —Lauren Kranc

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This Sunday, the New York Guardians will take the field at MetLife Stadium against the Tampa Bay Vipers, who are the weekend’s only favored XFL visiting team. I will be rooting for the underdog Guardians. And here’s why. This Guardians team will be the new stadium mates to the New York Jets, owners of the butt fumble, and the New York Giants, owners of an historic institutional collapse. I say that the Guardians’ ten-game season is the amusement fans that both of these franchises, neither of whom have recently come close to sniffing a winning season, sorely need. I feel for these fans, I see them riding the subway on Monday mornings proudly wearing their teams’ colors, glancing from their phones and denying the previous afternoon’s outcomes, yearning for that old swagger. The XFL will never be more than a distraction from the pageantry of autumn Sundays, nor will it ever challenge the primacy of Roger Goodell’s NFL, but maybe the Guardians can remedy a disappointing season for New York’s football fans. —Kevin McDonnell

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So, here’s the thing. I know very little about the XFL. I know that it’s owned by Vince McMahon, and I assume that there’s wrestling involved. Who knows. I’m fine letting that be a mystery. But if you’re choosing a team in this, the year of our Kansas City Chiefs, my guess is that you have to go for the St. Louis Battlehawks. Based in the same state as the Super Bowl winner, their mascot is a fucking sword with wings. An actual battlehawk. Their colors are royal, gray, and navy, which is essentially the same as being a Ravenclaw or a member of the Navy. They also play at a place called “The Dome,” and while there’s a joke to be made there that would be an absolute banger with 17-year-old high school dudes, I will leave it be. There is no other team to support than the Battlehawks. If you don’t feel the same, I hope a sword bird flies directly into your heart, you peasant. —Justin Kirkland

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I watched the promotional trailer for the Seattle Dragons because I don’t know anything about the XFL. Their tagline is, “Your darkest fantasy…in cleats.” That’s an image equal parts sexual and muddy. Does an entire football team want to have sex with me? Why would I want my darkest fantasy to be wearing a pair of dirty football cleats? Are they spiky cleats that are going to hurt me? The XFL reminds me of my favorite childhood pastime, Slam Ball. I watched the hell out of Slam Ball when I was a kid–I think I represented a pretty big fraction of their viewership. The XFL should be more like Slam Ball. If you’re going to do an extreme version of an American sport, at least give us trampolines. —Dom Nero

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What a treat for Florida Man and Florida Women that the XFL has blessed the amazi....the city of Tampa Bay, Florida with a team as electric as the Vipers. The Head Coach and GM (yeah, buddy, they do it all down there) has assembled an incredible team of guys you’ve definitely heard of, who are wholly equipped to deliver the sort of gridiron excitement Jameis Winston and the Bucs could never. After four years in the NFL with four different teams, starring QB Aaron Murray is ready to finally cash in on his status as the SEC’s all-time leader in Touchdown passes (seriously, more than Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, and Matthew Stafford.) With team colors like bad green, worse green, and yellow, your new fully decked out Vipers wardrobe will be sure to have your Floridian neighbors yelling “Get the fuck away from my garage! I’m doing science in here!” Raymond James Stadium is apparently big enough for Tampa Bay’s Bucs and its Vipers, so if the Bucs’ 7-9 season underwhelmed you (it should have), why not fork over the measly $500 for a top-tier season ticket package for the Vipes? —Ben Boskovich

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There are a few legendary team names scattered throughout the history of football: Titans. Steelers. Giants. Team 9 is not one of them. To be fair, Team 9—as it's lovingly called by the XFL (it's like calling Stitch from Lilo and Stitch Experiment 624)—isn’t really a team. Team 9 is, really, a glorified practice squad, only in the XFL, its players can jump on any team’s roster once a spot opens up. Commissioner Oliver Luck said, “I’m sure every one of these rosters is going to change by the time Week 1 rolls around. They’ll bring in new guys or someone pulls a hamstring, it’s just inevitable.” A group of football men sitting around, waiting for another football man’s ankle to go boom? Dark! Anyway. I’m behind this group of lovable outcasts. Not quite in the XFL, not quite out of it. Feeling unwanted, a phone call away from a different life, one with warmth and love, if they're lucky… something we can all relate to, right? No? Fine. Go root for the dragon team. —Brady Langmann

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