On the field

The XFL's opening game took place on February 3, 2001, one year after the league was announced, less than one week following the NFL's Super Bowl XXXV. The first game was between the New York/New Jersey Hitmen and the Las Vegas Outlaws at Sam Boyd Stadium in Whitney, Nevada.

The league's regular season structure was set up so that each team played teams in its own division twice in the season, home and away (the same as the National Football League) and played against teams in the other division once. The season ran ten weeks, with no bye weeks.

The league's western division was far more competitive than the east, with the four teams' records ranging from 7–3 (for eventual champion Los Angeles) to 4–6 (Las Vegas, who finished last after losing its last three games to end up one game out of a playoff spot). In the East, New York and Chicago both were hampered by slow starts and ineffective starters before making personnel changes that improved their play, while Orlando, under quarterback Jeff Brohm, who owned the league's highest QB rating at 99.9 during the 2001 XFL season, soared to first place, winning its first six games before Brohm suffered a career-ending injury and the team regressed (the team went 2–2 in his absence). Birmingham started the season 2–1 before a rash of injuries (and tougher competition, as its two wins were against New York and Chicago) led to the team losing the last seven games. Injuries were a major problem across the league: only three of the league's eight Opening Day starting quarterbacks—Los Angeles's Tommy Maddox, San Francisco's Mike Pawlawski and Memphis's Jim Druckenmiller—were still starters by the end of the season. Birmingham and Las Vegas were both on their third-string quarterbacks by the end of the ten-week season.

The top two teams in each division qualified for the playoffs. To avoid teams having to play each other three times in a season, the league set up the semifinal round of the playoffs so that the games would feature teams from opposite divisions: the east division champion (Orlando) hosted the west division runner-up (San Francisco), and likewise for the west champion and east runner-up (Los Angeles and Chicago, respectively). Los Angeles and San Francisco each won their playoff games to advance to the XFL championship.

Off the field

The opening game ended with a 19–0 victory for the Outlaws, and was watched on NBC by an estimated 14 million viewers. During the telecast, NBC switched over to the game between the Orlando Rage and the Chicago Enforcers, which was a closer contest than the blowout taking place in Las Vegas. The opening night drew a 9.5 Nielsen rating.^[16]

The opening-week games actually delivered ratings double those of what NBC had promised advertisers (and more viewers than the 2001 Pro Bowl). The audience declined to a 4.6 in week 2,^[17] still an acceptable rating for NBC, but further ratings declines eventually led to the network abandoning the league after the season.

A further problem was that the XFL itself was the brainchild of Vince McMahon, a man who was ridiculed by mainstream sports journalists due to the stigma attached to professional wrestling as being "fake"; many journalists even jokingly speculated whether any of the league's games were rigged, although nothing of this sort was ever seriously investigated.

Ebersol was disappointed with the opening game's poor quality of play.^[18] Even longtime NBC sportscaster Bob Costas joined in the mocking of the league. Ebersol purposely allowed Costas and other NBC Sports veterans to opt out of the network's coverage of the league (hence with the exception of former NFL on NBC analyst Mike Adamle, its coverage was helmed mostly by younger unknowns and professional wrestling figures), and Costas in particular did not like McMahon's approach to the sport. In an appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in February 2001, after the league's second week of play, Costas joked: "It has to be at least a decade since I first mused out loud, 'Why doesn't somebody combine mediocre high school football with a tawdry strip club?' Finally, somebody takes my idea and runs with it."^[19] Costas interviewed a defiant McMahon for an episode of his HBO show On the Record as the league was in decline, an interview that the 2017 documentary This Was the XFL portrayed as being an omen of the league's collapse.

2001 schedule

2001 standings

Awards

• Most Valuable Player: Tommy Maddox, QB, Los Angeles Xtreme
• Million Dollar Game MVP: José Cortez, K, Los Angeles Xtreme
• Coach of the Year: Galen Hall, Orlando Rage

Statistical leaders

• Rushing Attempts: 153 James Bostic (Birmingham Thunderbolts)
• Rushing Yards: 800 John Avery (Chicago Enforcers)
• Rushing Touchdowns: 7 Derrick Clark (Orlando Rage)
• Receptions: 67 Jeremaine Copeland (Los Angeles Xtreme)
• Receiving Yards: 828 Stepfret Williams (Birmingham Thunderbolts)
• Receiving Touchdowns: 8 Darnell McDonald (Los Angeles Xtreme)
• Passing Attempts: 342 Tommy Maddox (Los Angeles Xtreme)
• Passing Completions: 196 Tommy Maddox (Los Angeles Xtreme)
• Passing Yards: 2,186 Tommy Maddox (Los Angeles Xtreme)
• Passing Touchdowns: 18 Tommy Maddox (Los Angeles Xtreme)
• Passing Interceptions: 10 Brian Kuklick (Orlando Rage)
• Interceptions: 5 Corey Ivy (Chicago Enforcers)
• Quarterback Sacks: 7 Antonio Edwards and Kelvin Kinney (both Las Vegas Outlaws)

Statistics

^A The Citrus Bowl, which had a total capacity of 65,438 at the time, had its upper decks closed off for XFL games.^[20]

Game balls

The league's game balls were made by Spalding, and were unique in that instead of being the standard brown, the ball was black with a red "X" going across the sides of the ball.^[21] The balls were later found to be slippery and difficult to handle, and the balls had to be rubbed with sandpaper to make them usable.^[22]

Grass stadiums

The league deliberately avoided placing teams in stadiums with artificial turf, which at the time had a bad reputation both for being unsightly as well as being more hazardous to play on compared to natural turf.^[23] The league's requirement for grass fields automatically ruled out the use of domed stadiums since no such stadium capable of accommodating a grass football field existed in the U.S. in 2001 (the only retractable roof stadiums complete at the time were used exclusively for Major League Baseball; the first retractable roof stadium for NFL use was not completed until Reliant Stadium opened for the expansion Houston Texans in 2002). Furthermore, every XFL field was designed identically, with no individual team branding on the field. Each end zone and 50 yard line was decorated with the XFL logo, with the endzones also being painted black.

Most of the league's stadiums were football-specific facilities, the only exception being San Francisco's Pacific Bell Park (home of the San Francisco Giants) which was built primarily for baseball, but (unlike many newer baseball-specific stadiums) can accommodate football. Two XFL stadiums (Giants Stadium and Soldier Field) were also then-current NFL stadiums, while two others (Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium) had previously hosted NFL games; the NFL would return to the Coliseum when the Rams returned to Los Angeles in 2016. The remaining fields were in regular use as college football venues at the time.

The home team in every stadium was required to occupy the sideline opposite the press box in order to be visible to the television cameras. Due to the odd field dimensions in San Francisco, teams playing there were permitted to occupy the same sideline (a similar arrangement existed in the NFL when the Green Bay Packers played home games at Milwaukee County Stadium and in stadiums previously used by the Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Kansas City Chiefs and Minnesota Vikings).

The all-grass field stipulation caused the league to skip over several of the country's largest markets, including Houston and Philadelphia, since they lacked a large grass stadium in 2001. In the league's two northernmost markets, Chicago and New York/New Jersey (the latter of which played in Giants Stadium during a brief window in which the stadium's usual artificial turf had been replaced by natural grass), the combination of the all-grass requirement, midwinter playing season and the fact that the XFL followed shortly after the NFL had used both fields for a full season (in Giants Stadium's case, two full seasons, since the Giants and Jets shared the stadium; the Giants also hosted two playoff games following the 2000 season) caused significant damage to the playing fields; at Chicago's Soldier Field, the wear and tear on the field was such that by midseason, the midfield logo of the NFL's Chicago Bears was clearly visible amid a stretch of dirt and dead grass.

At the time, "next generation" artificial surfaces (which much more closely mimicked grass in appearance, feel and player safety) were slowly being introduced in professional football. In 2000, the Seattle Seahawks were the first professional team to play on next-generation artificial turf at the University of Washington's Husky Stadium, where the Seahawks played in 2000 and 2001 following the demolition of the Kingdome and prior to the completion of what is now Lumen Field). Giants Stadium would have a next generation artificial surface installed in 2003; Soldier Field was renovated extensively in 2002 but retained its grass field. Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium and Legion Field have also installed next-generation turf fields since the demise of the original XFL.

Opening scramble

Replacing the coin toss at the beginning of each game was an event in which one player from each team fought to recover a football 20 yards away in order to determine possession. Both players lined up side by side on one of the 30-yard lines, with the ball being placed at the 50-yard line. At the whistle, the two players would run toward the ball and attempt to gain possession; whichever player gained possession first was allowed to choose possession (as if he had won a coin toss in other leagues). The XFL's first injury infamously resulted from the opening scramble; Orlando free safety Hassan Shamsid-Deen suffered a separated shoulder prior to the Rage's 33–29 season-opening win over the Chicago Enforcers at Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium on February 3.^[24] He ended up missing the remainder of the campaign.^[25]

No PAT (point after touchdown) kicks

After every touchdown scored, no extra point after kicks were done, due to the XFL's perception that an extra-point kick was a "guaranteed point." To earn a point after a touchdown, teams ran a single offensive down from the two-yard line (functionally identical to the NFL / NCAA / CFL two-point conversion, but for just a single point as it had been before the two-point conversion was adopted). By the playoffs, two-point and three-point conversions had been added to the rules. Teams could opt for the bonus points by playing the conversion farther back from the goal line. However, touchdowns were still worth 6 points.

This rule, as originally implemented, was similar to the WFL's "Action Point", and was identical to a 1968 "Pressure Point" experiment by the NFL and the American Football League, used only in preseason interleague games that year.

In 2015, the NFL, CFL and other professional leagues would address the "guaranteed point" concerns by moving the extra point kick back to the 15-yard and 25-yard lines, respectively, thus making the length of the kick the same distance (taking into account the NFL's position of the goalposts on the end line, and the CFL's goalposts being positioned on the goal line). The Alliance of American Football (AAF) in 2019 adopted this "no extra point kick" rule from the original XFL, albeit making the scrimmage play conversion two points as in other levels of the game. The revived XFL kept the conversion system used during the playoffs.

Overtime

Ties were to be resolved in similar fashion to the NCAA and in the CFL today, with at least one possession by each team, starting from the opponent's 20-yard line. There were differences: there were no first downs and thus teams had to score within four downs, and the team that had possession first in overtime could not attempt a field goal until fourth down. If that team managed to score a touchdown in fewer than four downs, the second team would only have that same number of downs to match or beat the result. If the score was still tied after one overtime period, the team that played second on offense in the first OT would start on offense in the second OT (similar to the rules of college football overtime). The process would be repeated until a winner was determined; unlike the CFL and NFL, but like college football, games could not end in ties even in the regular season.

Bump and run

The XFL allowed full bump and run coverage early in the season. Defensive backs were allowed to hit wide receivers any time before the quarterback released the ball, as long as the hit came from the front or the side.

Following the fourth week of the season, bump and run was restricted to the first five yards from the line of scrimmage (similar to NFL and CFL) in an effort to increase offensive production.

Forward motion

Unlike the NFL, but like the World Football League and Arena Football League before it, the XFL allowed one offensive player to move toward the line of scrimmage once he was outside the tackles.

Punting rules

The XFL imposed a number of restrictions on punting that are not present in most other leagues' rules, the net effect of which made punts in the XFL operate under rules more akin to kickoffs. The purpose of these provisions was to keep play going after the ball was punted, encouraging the kicking team to make the ball playable and the receiving team to run it back. To this effect:

• Punting out of bounds was a ten-yard penalty, effectively outlawing the coffin corner punt commonplace at most other levels of the game.
• Any punt that traveled at least 25 yards past the line of scrimmage could be recovered by the kicking team, thus legalizing to an extent the up-and-under or garryowen common to rugby football codes. Thus, instead of letting the kicking team down the ball as is common in other leagues, the receiving team was required to try and return the punt or else lose possession.
• The kicking team was prohibited from coming within five yards of the punt returner before he gained possession of the ball. This rule, known as the halo rule in college football and also common in the CFL, was dubbed the "danger zone" in the XFL. Coming within 5 yards or less of this "danger zone" entailed a 5-yard penalty, much in the same vein as the CFL's "no yards" penalty.
• Fair catches were not recognized. (The "no fair catch" rule was one of the most heavily hyped rule differences in the XFL and a central part of the league's marketing campaign, and like the above "no yards" penalty, fair catches were not recognized in Canadian football.)

For the initial weeks of the season, the XFL forbade all players on the kicking team from going downfield before a kick was made from scrimmage on that down, similarly to a rule the NFL considered in 1974. For the rest of the season the XFL modified it to allow one player closest to each sideline downfield ahead of the kick, the same modification the NFL adopted to their change just before their 1974 exhibition games started.

Allowing the kicking team to recover a punt did encourage noticeably more quick kicks over the course of the XFL's lone season than was typically seen in the NFL over the preceding decades, including a quick kick during the Million Dollar Game (that particular kick, executed by San Francisco on a third-and-31 play, succeeded in taking Los Angeles off-guard, but the kick also backfired as the Demons could not recover the kick and Los Angeles returned it for a touchdown).^[26]

Play clock

The XFL used a play clock of 35 seconds from the end of the previous play, five seconds shorter than the contemporary NFL play clock of 40 seconds (but still longer than the CFL's 20 seconds, timed from the spotting of the football), in an effort to speed up the game.

Roster and salaries

The XFL limited each team to an unusually low 38 players, as opposed to 53 on NFL teams and 80 or more on unlimited college rosters. This was similar to the CFL, which had a comparable 40 man roster limit in 2001. This was partly to limit payroll costs, and partly because the XFL wanted to curb the use of "specialists," something which the NFL has sometimes come under criticism for. To comply with roster limits, most teams only carried two quarterbacks and one kicker who doubled as the punter.

The XFL paid standardized player salaries. Quarterbacks earned US$5,000 per week, kickers earned $3,500, and all other uniformed players earned $4,500 per week, though a few players got around these restrictions (Los Angeles Xtreme players Noel Prefontaine, the league's lone punting specialist, and Matt Malloy, a wide receiver) by having themselves listed as backup quarterbacks. Players on a winning team received a bonus of $2,500 for the week, $7,500 for winning a playoff game. The team that won the championship game split $1,000,000 (roughly $25,000 per player). Players did not receive any fringe benefits, and had to pay for their own health insurance.

Jersey nicknames

The XFL allowed its players to wear a nickname on the back of their jersey, as opposed to the legal last name most professional sports leagues have required since the 1960s. Players could change the nickname any time they wanted, and a few players chose to change the nicknames on a weekly basis depending on their opponent. The league's use of backfield camera angles gave these nicknames even greater exposure. Nevertheless, two teams, Orlando^[27] and Birmingham, imposed policies that forbade players from using nicknames. Orlando's ban was voted upon by the players, although Jeff Brohm objected. Birmingham's players were banned from doing so by coach Gerry DiNardo, a notoriously strict disciplinarian more accustomed to coaching at the college level. DiNardo previously alienated players at Vanderbilt and LSU and later did so at Indiana with his iron-fisted rule. The Thunderbolts were the only professional team he would ever coach.

Rod Smart, a running back who played in the first XFL nationally televised game, was the first player to gain notice from his nickname, "He Hate Me."^[28][29]

Camera perspectives

Although the XFL was not the first football league to feature the "sky cam",^[30] which enables TV viewers to see behind the offensive unit, it helped to popularize its unique capabilities. For the first several weeks, the league used the sky cam and on-field cameramen (nicknamed the "Bubba Cam" after WWE's cameraman, Bubba, who couldn't get medical clearance to cover the XFL)^[31] extensively, giving the television broadcasts a perspective similar to video games such as the Madden series.

During player interviews, particularly later in the season as attendances declined, the television crews took extensive efforts to avoid capturing the empty stands on camera. When they did show the stands, it was just mostly close ups of individual sections that were full. Player interviews at sparsely-attended games were often shot from a camera angle in close proximity and low to the ground pointed upward, giving the perspective of the camera being operated by a little person.^[32]

After the XFL's failure, the sky cam was adopted by the NFL's broadcasters; the device has subsequently come into use on all major networks. NBC in particular switched back to the XFL camera angles in 2017, when traditional cameras were too far away to cut through thick fog and smoke on some of the Sunday Night Football games that year; response was so positive that the network opted to use two of its Thursday Night Football games to experiment with intentionally broadcasting most of the game through that angle.^[33]

Broadcast schedule

At the beginning of the season, NBC showed a feature game at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday nights, also taping a second game. The second game, in some weeks, would air in the visiting team's home market (as was the case in week 6 for the Enforcers-Maniax game, and in week 7, for the Maniax-Hitmen game) and be put on the air nationally if the feature game was a blowout (as was the case in week one) or encountered technical difficulties (as was the case in week two). Two games were shown each Sunday: one at 4 p.m. Eastern on TNN and another at 7 p.m. Eastern on UPN. The XFL also had a fairly extensive local radio presence, often using nationally recognized disc jockeys. The morning radio duo of Rick and Bubba, for instance, was the radio broadcast team for the Birmingham Thunderbolts. Super Dave Osborne was a sideline reporter for Los Angeles Xtreme broadcasts on KLSX; WMVP carried Chicago Enforcers games.

Unusually for a professional league, the XFL did not feature a studio wraparound. The network offered XFL Gameday, a pregame show featuring radio shock jocks Opie and Anthony for the first four weeks of the season, but the show was not carried nationwide and most affiliates joined in just before the game. Halftime consisted mostly of live look-ins into the player locker rooms, as coaches discussed their strategy and halftime adjustments with their players, as well as cheerleader performances. The XFL also, at McMahon's request, followed a somewhat different format than traditional professional football telecasts: The announcers more closely followed the model of professional wrestling where the color commentator had a villain-like role, while the sideline reporters (who were predominantly male, a rare example of the XFL being more conservative than the NFL at the time, which was incorporating attractive female sideline reporters) were former players and experienced sportscasters who were relied upon for more expert analysis than usual.

In the third week of the season, the games were sped up through changes in the playing rules, and broadcasts were subjected to increased time constraints. The reason was the reaction of Lorne Michaels, creator and executive producer of Saturday Night Live, to the length of the Los Angeles Xtreme versus Chicago Enforcers game that went into double overtime. The double overtime periods combined with a power outage earlier in the game due to someone not fueling a generator before the game delayed the contest, causing the start of Saturday Night Live to be pushed back from 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time to 12:15 a.m. Sunday morning.^[17] This angered Michaels, who expected high ratings with Jennifer Lopez as the show's host.^[17] For the rest of the season, the XFL cut off coverage at 11:00 Eastern Time, regardless of whether or not the game was over (there were exceptions, for the Chicago and Memphis markets for the Enforcers-Maniax game in week 6, and in New York and Memphis markets for the Maniax-Hitmen game in week 7). NBC Sports has retained this policy for other sports it runs in Saturday night time slots since the XFL's closure; in 2018, a National Hockey League telecast was cut off under similar circumstances.^[34]

In the face of declining ratings, NBC and the XFL aggressively promoted that the week 6 game between the Orlando Rage and Las Vegas Outlaws would feature a behind-the-scenes visit into the locker room of the Rage's cheerleaders at halftime. The heavily promoted event was actually a kayfabe sketch with McMahon and a cameraman, who knocks himself unconscious on the locker room door trying to run in. This was followed by a suggestive dream sequence with the cheerleaders, including a surprise cameo by Rodney Dangerfield.^[35] The New York Daily News reported that the scene would likely be the "[last] salacious WWF-style stunt for the rest of the season", citing internal sources indicating that NBC wished to pivot the telecasts back towards a football-oriented product, including hiring NFL alumni as analysts, and reinstating Vasgersian as the lead commentator.^[36][37][38]

Broadcast teams

Jerry Lawler and Jim Ross came over from WWF to fill similar roles on XFL broadcasts.

• NBC (national telecasts):
  • Week 1, 6–10: Matt Vasgersian, Jesse Ventura, Fred Roggin and Mike Adamle. Chris Wragge replaced Roggin for at least Week 6.
  • Week 2–5: Jim Ross, Ventura, Roggin and Adamle
• NBC (regional telecasts):
  • Week 1: Ross, Jerry Lawler, Jonathan Coachman. For week 1, Ross and Lawler were billed as their WWF personas, "J.R." and "The King."
  • Week 2–5: Vasgersian, Lawler, and Coachman. McMahon personally demoted Vasgersian to the regional telecast after openly criticizing a suggestive shot of the cheerleaders as "uncomfortable" on-air during the week 1 broadcast.
  • Week 6–10: Ross, Dick Butkus or Dan Hampton, and Coachman. Lawler left the XFL (and WWF) in protest after week five in the aftermath of the firing of his then-wife, Stacy Carter, as well as his own dissatisfaction with being pressured into commentary on XFL games; Lawler openly admitted on-air that he had virtually no interest or background in football, an unusual trait for a color analyst. After Lawler's departure, NBC brought Vasgersian back up to the main broadcast team. Hampton and Butkus rotated as the regional color analyst for the rest of the season.
• TNN: Craig Minervini, Bob Golic, Lee Reherman and Kip Lewis.
• UPN: Chris Marlowe, Brian Bosworth, Chris Wragge and Michael Barkann.

Played in the CFL

Won a Grey Cup

Played in the NFL

Played in the Super Bowl

Won a Super Bowl

• Ron Carpenter (Super Bowl XXXIV, St. Louis Rams)
• Fred Coleman (Super Bowl XXXVI, New England Patriots)
• Alvin Harper (Super Bowl XXVII, Super Bowl XXVIII, Dallas Cowboys)
• Corey Ivy (Super Bowl XXXVII, Tampa Bay Buccaneers)
• Tommy Maddox (Super Bowl XL, Pittsburgh Steelers)
• David Richie (Super Bowl XXXII, Denver Broncos)
• Bobby Singh (Super Bowl XXXIV, St. Louis Rams)

Won both an XFL Championship and Super Bowl

• Ron Carpenter (Super Bowl XXXIV, St. Louis Rams)
• Tommy Maddox (Super Bowl XL, Pittsburgh Steelers)
• David Richie (Super Bowl XXXII, Denver Broncos)
• Bobby Singh (Super Bowl XXXIV, St. Louis Rams)

Won an XFL Championship, Grey Cup, and Super Bowl

• Bobby Singh

Played in the Arena Football League

• Jerry Crafts
• Eric England
• Mike Furrey
• Mark Grieb
• James Hundon
• Kelvin Kinney
• Tommy Maddox
• Kevin Swayne
• Craig Whelihan

Wrestled for WWE

• Richard Young (Ricky Ortiz)