Because You Never Asked

     For those of you who are the kind of well behaved, intelligent, rational, properly functioning human being going about your business in a mature, positive, socially constructive manner; for those of you who have reached a state of evolutionary development such that the initials "XFL" mean nothing to you, I shall now explain this phenomena so that your admirable state of enlightenment can be enhanced and reinforced . although, as they say in football jargon, "after further review", I ask your forgiveness for such an arrogant remark, for I am sure it is you precious few who should be enlightening me and not the other way around. After further "further review", I now realize that the only time I ever feel as if I've accomplished something as the matter that makes up my corporal being passes anonymously through its stay on this planet, is when I've never heard of most of the celebrities now winning "Grammys", "Oscars", "Emmys", "Golden Globes", "Espys", "Tonys", on and on, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Perhaps we will know we've finally reached that shrouded, distant, seemingly always unobtainable horizon of sane human interaction when we've all heard of the person who just won the Nobel Prize for physics, chemistry or literature, or who the National Poet Laureate is, rather than that diva who just won the "Best Blow Job of the Year" award.

     But I digress. Before explaining what the XFL is to those few wise men that are oblivious to it, it should be said that there is no time to lose. Just three weeks into its existence it seems doomed to die a premature death, although, "upon further review", the XFL cannot die prematurely. The XFL should not have been born and any breath it has taken or is still to take should be considered excessive. In spite of its recent birth, it now exists on life support, so if I find myself mysteriously driven to write about it I better do it now before they make the inevitable call to Dr. Kevorkian.

     The XFL is a new professional football league. I am completely free of any intellectual angst in saying that life as we know it can survive without another football league. The United States of America needs a national outbreak of hemorrhoids before it needs one more televised football game. No matter how much you like your Italian grandmother's lasagna, you can only eat so much.

     The copulatory act responsible for engendering this Mongoloid child was the result of a peculiar marriage between the purveyors of mainstream entertainment at NBC and the silicone-steroid dementia so shamelessly pedaled by one Vince McMahon and his World Wrestling Federation. It was as if your respectable, sorority house sister had run off and married the guy with the salami-schlong in the porno movies.

     When NBC and the WWF decided to go to bed with each other, it is most probable they understood that more football was not the primary drawing card here. In fact, as explained a bit further on, a decline in TV ratings for football helped hatch the idea for this mutant, which would have more to do with the burlesque of the event than the sporting aspects of it. Vince McMahon, and even more so, Dick Ebersol (the head of sports at NBC), have done something that could be considered a first in American broadcast history: they underestimated the collective intellect of the American people, heretofore thought to be an impossible task. They sunk the unsinkable Titanic. The XFL will undoubtedly go down in history as the Edsel of TV programming.

     There is an ironic set of circumstances leading to the birth of the XFL that could be said to fall within the "coming full circle" category. Like all theories not predicated upon mathematical equations, I don't claim pure intellectual truth with what I'm about to say, but I feel confident enough to at least present the following for discussion:

     Pro football, along with the other mainstream sporting industries in America, has suffered a not inconsequential loss of TV ratings in recent years. The network moguls, if still not desperate, are definitely concerned. For this writer, the explanation is obvious: there is now such a huge buffet of sporting choices to choose from --- 24-7-365, into infinity --- that the pie has simply been cut into smaller pieces, not just with regard to the whole conglomerate of sporting choices, but within each singular sport as well. By the time Monday Night Football rolls around, the average fan has been pigging out on four days of pigskin smorgasbord that has already given him heartburn if not severe nausea. The sporting industry has not lost viewers; it has simply been spread thinner.

     With regard to football, it is Monday Night Football, the flagship of the gridiron business and something that has almost been given a holy place in the American sporting psyche, that is showing some of the worst symptoms of the ratings disease. The show has been tweaked innumerable times in an effort to find a cure, including the Dennis Miller comedian-as-announcer gambit, all to no avail.

     Somewhere along the line, someone realized that Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (a Federation of what?) was sucking the Monday Night crowd in its direction, so much so that pro wrestling was now the highest rated show on cable TV, generally to the detriment of pro football. (The sit-com crowd stuck to their backdrop of canned laughter). But there is irony here. The way in which pro football began to present itself over the last ten to fifteen years may have wetted the appetite of those who'd fall prone to the macho burlesque of pro wrestling. Much of the in-your-face posturing that is now so mainstream on the gridiron was once considered unsporting or in poor taste. Not anymore. When that blob-like, hormone fatted lineman stands over a fallen quarterback like a gladiator over a dead Christian, isn't that pro wrestling? Isn't all the various Deion dancing, Icky shuffle end zone buffoonery pro wrestling? All the strutting and chest thumping that usually follows a routine tackle; isn't that pro wrestling? The football honchos decided this was good business, and although they've tried to rein it in recently, the mustard is now on the hot dog.

     So, in some unconscious, inadvertent way, pro football opened the taste buds for those who'd desert for the WWF. If this is what made pro football exciting for someone, why not switch over to pro wrestling and get such behavior in a more concentrated, exaggerated form?

     "Yeah, kick that mother's ass!!"

     Now here's where the full circle begins to close itself. Pro football and pro wrestling are not what you'd call distant relatives. They do share a certain pedigree in the ass kicking, testosterone industry. McMahon, whose mega-success with the WWF has been fed somewhat by NFL defections, begins to believe his own scripted bluster and becomes over confident. "I'll giv'em football. I'll giv'em football the way they want it!" The result is minor league football presented with a pro wrestling ambiance. McMahon was counting on the glitz of the presentation rather than the sporting allure of football. Ebersol, perhaps still reeling from NBC's failure at the Sydney Olympics, takes the bait. He might need a job soon.

     If the Census Bureau were to begin breaking down the nation's population into emotional-intellectual categories, there might be numerous divisions starting at the top with "Genius" and ending at the bottom with "Retarded". The first rung above the bottom would be labeled "Adolescent Moron". The Census Bureau would not have to do much work counting all the "Adolescent Morons" because Vince McMahon has already done it. He's cornered the market. He owns it. With the "research" done by Vince McMahon, we now know that this category takes in an alarming amount of our population. It is probable that most pro wrestling fans are also pro football fans. But, unlike pro wrestling, not everyone who watches pro football is an "Adolescent Moron". Even people like Andy Rooney watch pro football.

     The failure of the XFL can only be seen as a hopeful sign. It shows that the "Adolescent Morons" are still in the minority. Perhaps its defeat is a line in the sand that the more reasonable people of this nation will never let them cross. "Here, but no further." Go back to your horrifying wrestling savagery on cable TV, but please, leave the rest of us alone.