Vince McMahon Is Bringing Back the XFL and Diving into the Culture Wars

Nearly two decades after the XFL's first and only season ended with the Los Angeles Xtreme besting the San Francisco Demons in the first and only Million Dollar Game, Vince McMahon's football league will return to a stadium near you in January of 2020. "I wanted to do this since the day we stopped the other one," the billionaire WWE chairman told ESPN on Thursday. Although he denied that the timing of his decision is motivated by the NFL's well-documented recent ratings slide—"What has happened there is their business," he said politely—it's hard to believe that the timing is coincidental. For a multitude of reasons, there are plenty of fans right now who have become disenchanted with the No Fun League, and for a businessman as shrewd as McMahon, the formula for giving those people what they want has never been more apparent.

The most frequently cited reason for the original XFL's failure is that the quality of play—and this is a technical term—sucked. The hits were legion, but the players, a collection of NFL fringe guys and CFL castoffs, had only a scant few weeks of practice before plunging into the regular season. The insistent inclusion of wrestling-style gimmicks in what were supposed to be unscripted sporting events made the league hard for casual fans to take seriously. With ratings floundering about midway through the year, McMachon greenlit a stunt that, in 2018, is hard to believe actually happened on network television: After promising to give viewers a peek into the cheerleaders' locker room at halftime, McMahon starred in a kayfabe skit in which the "cameraman" got "knocked out" while trying to run through the locker-room door. NBC (!!) then cut to the "unconscious" cameraman's "dream sequence," which featured cheerleaders in BDSM gear and, for some godforsaken reason, a cameo from a shirtless Rodney Dangerfield.

Suffice to say that the XFL had its fair share of design flaws, and McMahon and NBC lost a cool $70 million between them in that single year. The fundamental problem, though, was that in 2001, people really liked the NFL, which polled as the most popular league in the country by a comfortable margin. At that moment, there was no compelling reason to found another professional football league, other than "Wow, people really like football, so let's try and make some money?" The XFL was the answer to a question no one asked, and producing a bad version of a good thing, McMahon learned, couldn't quite earn the same level of fan excitement.

Professional football has not ceded its status as America's favorite sport, but for reasons that are only tangentially connected to the quality of the on-field product, the NFL has a few stubborn naysayer contingents for the first time in recent memory. Choose one or more items from this list of talking points to get mad about: rule changes designed to reduce the incidence of concussion- and CTE-related injuries, with mixed results but many more flags; inconsistent officiating that seems to get more arbitrary every year; the Jemele Hill–esque "liberal ESPN" narrative; a perceived ban on hitting quarterbacks who are even thinking about throwing the ball; the fact that no one in charge agrees on what a catch is—the list goes on and on and on.

The most vocal of the league's critics, though, are those who continue to be outraged at the sight of players kneeling during the pregame rendition of the national anthem in order to raise awareness of issues like systemic inequality and police brutality. Their anger extends beyond the players, too, to the NFL's front office, which has thus far declined to step in and force players to their feet. Roger Goodell's indecisiveness in the face of such blatant insubordination has made him as much of a villain to this brigade of disgruntled gridiron enthusiasts as Colin Kaepernick himself.

While I continue to find it hard to believe that there are many people who both care this deeply about "The Star-Spangled Banner" decorum and also are willing to give up the NFL cold turkey, such folks do exist, and at least some of them are finding other things to do with their Sunday afternoons. Never one to refrain from injecting himself into a racially charged controversy, the president of the United States weighed in last year, at one point enlisting Mike Pence's participation in a carefully choreographed walkout charade at a midseason Colts game. As evidenced by this rally speech from September, Trump quickly learned that there is considerable overlap between people who are mad about the protests, people who miss the hits, and people who like him—and that for him, attacking the NFL for all its shortcomings is a guaranteed applause line.

For one reason or another, there are football fans who look at the NFL right now and see that something they really want is missing. These same people might be interested, though, in watching an old-fashioned, smashmouth version of the game, if only such a game still existed—one where the rules aren't so complicated, the players hit like men, and the patriotism of everyone within a mile radius of the stadium is never in doubt. It is the wants and needs and hopes and dreams of those demographic groups that McMahon and his potential corporate partners will be studying in great detail as 2020 approaches.

You can already see hints about the direction in which this is headed. XFL 2.0 doesn't yet have teams, cities, or a broadcast deal, but Vince McMahon is nonetheless quite sure of some conspicuous details. Don't care for Goodell's fecklessness? As commissioner, McMahon explained, "I can say, 'Here are the rules, and as long as you are playing football in the stadium for us, you follow these rules.'" Tired of boring replay reviews, sissy penalties, and interminable explanations of arcane rules? Good news! The XFL game will be "shorter, faster-paced, family-friendly, and easier to understand." He also teased that the experience will be "fan-centric," with "all the things you like to see and less of the things you don't." This, to me, sounds like a sly wink at those who long for the halcyon days of watching "JACKED UP" every Sunday night. At the very least, given that the XFL 1.0 abolished fair catches and replaced the coin toss with a de facto one-on-one brawl for possession—and that McMahon, you know, founded the WWE—it seems doubtful that reducing the incidence of human beings colliding with one another will ever be a point of emphasis for him.

McMahon was most excited, though, when given the chance to outline his expectations for future players' participation in pregame festivities. “It’s a time-honored tradition to stand for the national anthem," he said. "People don't want social and political issues coming into play when they are trying to be entertained." Any players who "want to take a knee," he added, just in case there was any remaining ambiguity, will be expected "to do their version of that on their personal time." McMahon later asserted that he had "no idea" whether Trump—in whose administration McMahon's wife, Linda, happens to serve as head of the Small Business Administration—might back the league. With rules like these already in place, though, it's only a matter of time before he tweets about it.

Even if this XFL reboot leans in to its destiny of becoming, like, the MAGAFL, its chances of enjoying long-term success aren't very good. The NFL is too big and too entrenched in the pop-culture landscape to be vulnerable in any meaningful sense of the word. Given the collection of noodle-armed goobers who started at quarterback this season—hell, who started in the playoffs this season—I shudder to think about the caliber of players that XFL teams might trot out. Beloved giant Jared Lorenzen, who last suited up in 2014 for something called the Northern Kentucky River Monsters, has already expressed his interest in participating, which would be entertaining but not good. (Johnny Manziel, too, is psyched, but McMahon's ban on players with criminal records would seem to preclude a Johnny Football comeback.) At some point, bad football is bad football, and not even the most zealous commitment to fighting the culture wars can change that.

Nonetheless, in the 17 years that have passed since the XFL shut its doors, there has never been a better time than right now to try it again. There are enough people in this country who believe that their favorite sport has transformed into an unrecognizable shadow of its former self, and who have grown furious with a league office that refuses to force its players to treat the flag and/or the troops with the appropriate level of respect. They crave a specific brand of football that is about much more than a game. Vince McMahon knows this, and over the next 24 months, he is going to do everything in his power to deliver.