Once again, the XFL and USFL a...

Two quick tales to show the breadth and depth of spring football:

This past Sunday afternoon, the first Sunday after the Super Bowl, the third iteration of the XFL began with a flourish. In the day’s opener, the St. Louis BattleHawks (yes, the middle H is capitalized) trailed the San Antonio Brahmas, 15-3, with less than two minutes remaining. Then, BattleHawks QB A.J. McCarron — you may remember him from his days at Alabama, not so much from his days with the Bengals, Texans, Raiders or Falcons — led St. Louis on the kind of run only achievable in spring football. He threw one touchdown pass, nailed a three-point (!) conversion, succeeded on a 4th-and-15 play that’s the XFL’s version of an onside kick, then threw another touchdown to win the game. Oh, and in the evening game, fans of the D.C. Defenders pelted the field with lemons.

Over in the USFL, running back Reggie Corbin is preparing for the upcoming season. Once among the country’s leading rushers when he played at Illinois, Corbin had the misfortune to be in the NFL draft class of 2020. He wasn’t picked in the draft and couldn’t catch on as a free agent. When he did get an invitation to try out, in Week 16 of the 2021 season, he stepped off the plane in Seattle and tested positive for COVID. And still he kept grinding. When the USFL came calling in 2022, he joined the Michigan Panthers … and became not just the league’s leading rusher, but the face of the franchise in Detroit. The grind paid off.

Spring football’s brief, checkered history

The legacy of spring football is colorful if not particularly long. The first iteration of the USFL began play in 1983 and featured future NFL fixtures like Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Reggie White and Herschel Walker in uniform. The league flamed out after three seasons when a consortium led by then-New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump attempted to challenge the NFL both on the calendar and in the courts. The USFL “won” an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL but was awarded only $1, and the financially bleeding league ceased operations before ever playing in the fall.

The XFL began play almost two decades later, in the spring of 2001 as a testosterone-laden, volume-to-11 creation of WWE owner Vince McMahon. Crushing hits, an emphasis on violence, wrestling-promo player branding (remember “He Hate Me” and “Deathblow”?) and grinding cheerleaders all combined to draw huge audiences to the league’s debut … audiences that immediately tuned out when they realized the product was pretty awful. NBC, McMahon’s partner in the venture, pulled the plug after one season.

XFL vs. USFL, who wins?

Both the XFL and the USFL publicly shy away from direct comparisons, saying publicly that there’s room for both leagues. But is there? Both feature eight teams playing 10-week schedules. The USFL will play in four “hub” cities, while the XFL will site each team in its home city. The XFL is making the splashier debut, but the USFL has the advantage of surviving to this point.

“The USFL made it to Year 2, so right off the bat, they’ve got a better chance,” Lewis says. “The Rock’s involvement [in the XFL] is nice, but the XFL rode a lot of brand nostalgia and an ESPN ‘30 for 30’ the first time. COVID was the end of that.”

Spring rules changes: Aberration or improvement?

Upstart football leagues always serve as a kind of hothouse laboratory for new rules. The NFL adopted both the two-point conversion and instant replay after their use in the 1980s iteration of the USFL, and the 2001 XFL’s emphasis on grass rather than turf fields presaged the NFL’s similar interest.

This time around, the two leagues have in place rules that, depending on your perspective, are either pointless gimmickry or future NFL fixtures. For instance, both leagues have done away with the so-called “worst rule in football,” the rule that a team fumbling forward into the end zone loses possession of the ball. Both leagues also offer a three-point conversion — after a touchdown, a team has the option to attempt to score from the 10-yard line for three points.

Achieving liftoff

Right now, both leagues are white-knuckling their way through the calendar, doing anything and everything that needs to be done to achieve liftoff. Ward laughs that even though he’s a head coach, he’s still responsible for everything from matching up roommates to ordering room service.

“You’ve got to be creative,” he says. “Some days we don’t have the indoor facility. The high school field we use is not always open. We had five days of bad weather that put the whole league back five days. You just have to adjust.” Adjustment and flexibility are the keys for any spring football league — changing rules, changing locations, changing expectations. This is football, not physics; the rules can change if the product will improve.