The XFL is coming back, but which eight cities will get football teams?
For one infamous season in 2001, Vince McMahon and the XFL tried to give America an “extreme” version of football that featured more hitting, rowdier rules, and professional wrestling-tinged entertainment. After months of hype and initially strong ratings, audiences quickly realized that the actual games themselves were poorly played and uninteresting. Coupled with the questionable in-game content and a lack of national press coverage, the league folded after one season, leaving the Los Angeles XTreme as the one and only XFL Champion.
Ironically, while the league is remembered as a failure, many of the innovations they pioneered are now normal aspects of the NFL game-watching experience (skycams, mic’d players and coaches, cameras in locker rooms).
Now, the XFL is getting an encore. WWE Chairman & CEO Vince McMahon announced Thursday that the football league will return in early 2020. The season will begin in the weeks following the NFL’s Super Bowl and will consist of eight teams playing a 10-week regular season. The postseason will include four teams playing in two semifinal games and one championship.
In stark contrast to the original version, the new XFL will be geared towards being family-friendly and includes a no-politics, no social issue policy as a reaction to recent concerns about the NFL. According to McMahon, the league will not hire players with arrest records, players will be required to stand for the national anthem, and there won’t even be cheerleaders at games.
As for the specific cities that will host XFL teams, McMahon said the eight markets are yet to be determined. The previous version of the league includes teams from Birmingham, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Memphis, New York/East Rutherford, NJ, Orlando, and San Francisco. The fact that the league hasn’t decided on markets for the new version means that it’s possible and likely that we’ll see a shakeup in the cities involved in 2020.
So, let’s try to guess where those eight teams might end up.
New York City
First and foremost, there is no way that Vince McMahon does not put a team in the NYC area. There’s too much value in NYC as a TV market and since WWE is based out of nearby Stamford, Connecticut, they’ll be close by as well.
While it’s unlikely that the league will be able to put a team in the city itself, it’s much more likely that they’ll end up returning to East Rutherford, New Jersey, home of the NFL’s Giants and Jets. If they'd rather be in a smaller stadium with less empty seats, they could always try to make a deal to play in Red Bull Arena in Harrison, NJ.
San Diego
It seems like a no-brainer for the league to have a Los Angeles team for the same reasons but now that the NFL has two franchises there (and can barely muster good crowds), perhaps the XFL would find success by taking advantage of the places where the NFL has spurned goodwill.
The Chargers left San Diego for LA and left behind a perfectly fine stadium that needs a new tenant. San Diego is a great football market and plenty of fans there would likely love to stick it to the NFL by supporting a rival league. And if you don't think that will be part of their marketing campaign, you don't know Vince McMahon.
Oakland
Same principle at work here. The Oakland Raiders are planning to move to Las Vegas in 2019, which creates a vacuum in the market to go with the empty Oakland Coliseum (The A’s are also trying to build a new stadium elsewhere). With the NFL’s 49ers out in Santa Clara, the XFL could be the only pro football team in San Francisco or Oakland. That’s quite the opportunity.
St. Louis
Yet another market spurned by the NFL. The Rams moved to St. Louis in 1995, won a Super Bowl in 2000, and left in 2015 to return to Los Angeles. The St. Louis market seems too big not to have a professional football team and there’s certainly a chance to build a fanbase here.
The football stadium, The Dome at America’s Center, has fallen into disrepair since the Rams left, so someone is going to have to foot the bill on that. But if the city wants the stadium to start generating revenue again, here’s their chance.
Las Vegas
Yes, Las Vegas will have the Raiders by 2020, but it still makes sense for a couple reasons. First, the city remains an untapped resource for pro sport franchises, and the XFL can ride the excitement that the Raiders will generate while appealing to fans who might not be able to afford high-priced NFL tickets.
Given the politics of this “unpolitical” football league, it’s a decent bet that billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who withdrew his investment with the Raiders after feeling taken advantage of, would love to get involved with a rival team to compete with the NFL there.
Chicago
It’s a smart bet that the XFL will return to Chicago once again. The population and market size are both too big for the league to ignore. The team could either work out a deal to play at Soldiers Field or potentially get involved with the soccer stadium plans currently percolating at Lincoln Yards.
Orlando
The league will want a team in Florida and it just makes more sense to head to Orlando than it does to try for Miami. By returning to the same city as before, they’ll remain the only professional football team in town and have close proximity to football-starved fans in Tampa, Jacksonville, and Gainesville. The WWE also has a lot of history in Orlando, making it a solid market in which to harness that fanbase.
Birmingham
Birmingham makes sense for a few reasons. Number one, Alabama is a football hotbed without a pro team (though many will argue that the University of Alabama might as well be one by now). Second, it’s the center of a triangle between Atlanta, Nashville, and Memphis. Third, the values that McMahon ascribed to the league in his press conference line up pretty well with the values of the region.
That gives us eight teams but we’d also like to suggest one wild card pick.
Cleveland
Yes, the NFL has the Cleveland Browns, but do they even really qualify as a pro football team at this point? They’re so bad that their fans just threw a parade to celebrate the team’s winless season.
Here’s our idea. Start an XFL team in Cleveland. Bring in former Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel (you’re going to have to bend your arrest record rule). But all your efforts into making the Cleveland franchise the best team in the league. Sit back and rake in the profits as your Cleveland football team wins the championship and gets the kind of attention and appreciation that no other XFL team could ever dream of.