At Least Give Me A Breather, Spring Football
This might sound weird coming from a guy who has spent a significant chunk of his free time making comics about football over the past eleven years, but I don’t need football all the time. It honestly seems somewhat depressing if you do. I have other interests. I do other things. I’ve actually always felt a palpable sense of relief once the Super Bowl hits because it’s like a weight gets lifted and even still drawing 3 comics a week and following free agency doesn’t feel like a burden, because now I’m less restricted by time constraints and quick news stories being outdated too fast. I’ve never gotten into college football partially because I don’t want my entire weekend to be football.
I wasn’t sure when the XFL/USFL started, and was shocked to come home after a fun day to realize…it already did. The XFL’s inaugural weekend just happened. The fuckers couldn’t even give me a week to miss football, just a little bit? I don’t want this now. I have no desire to watch a league headlined by AJ McCarron one week after watching Patrick Fuckin Mahomes. Start it mid to late March once the draft beatniks enter their insufferable phase because they’ve already exhausted all their takes. Give me some breathing room. It’s not like February is short on sports content, Basketball is about to start the good part of the season and Hockey is in full bloom.
The XFL, somehow not killed by COVID and now owned by The Rock, is back. The season will go into late April and have a championship in May. But this year is special. We don’t get one attempt to revive spring football, we get TWO. Before the XFL season is even over the revival of the USFL also returns once more and will run from April to June (a much better time-frame). This year will be even better than last year, in that the games will happen in more than one stadium! The budget must have rocketed upwards.
What makes me wonder about this is that the lack of talent has always been a problem with spring leagues. The AAF, first XFL revival, and USFL last year has mostly consisted of NFL washouts or undrafted hopefuls. How do you stretch what was already an extremely thin and sometimes unwatchable roster of players out over two leagues? How many XFL players will immediately get signed into the USFL? I’m all for Spring football (starting in…you know, SPRING) and I’m probably more partial to the XFL over the USFL but I’d be happy with either of them actually succeeding. But if they do succeed, they gotta win over people like me. The degenerate gamblers are already there. The people with nothing else going on who need football to live are already there. But the basic guy like me, who has plenty of other shit to do? What are you bringing to the table to make me sit there and watch? Especially so soon? The NFL just ended!
“But any football is better than no football!” No. My god man, are you hearing yourself? You’d watch the Saints and Texans practice squads play every weekend just to have football on your eyeballs? We don’t need football right now. If you do, seek help. Reminder, this is coming from a guy who has spent 11 years doing…all of this. Enjoy a few weeks with some extra life.
The Super Bowl is like, a giant, prime cut of steak, cooked to perfection. Then as soon as I eat the whole thing you come to me with a stale cake pop. There will be a time when I want that stale cake pop. It might even be reasonably soon. But I do not want that damn stale cake pop while the taste of steak still coats the insides of my mouth. Come back to my table in an hour after I’ve burped and farted a few times to clear some space.
Watching Paxton Lynch get benched was oddly enjoyable, though.
While they have an expanded set of stadiums, the new USFL still isn’t playing true home and away games for all teams. I know it is a very TV-focused league, being owned by Fox and all, but is there going to be an attempt at actually building a local fanbase for some of these teams? Is that coming next year?
The Houston Roughnecks didn’t fill the stadium to capacity on Saturday night… but they had several thousand people there wearing team gear that they either just bought or had stashed away from the 2020 half-season. I see Roughnecks shirts out and around Houston from time to time… heck, I even own one! Gamblers stuff? Not at all, even with the co-opted name and cool logo.
This is how I feel about the general “sports guy”. As much as I love football (and I like some other sports), I have never met an interesting person that has built their entire personality around sports fandom.
I knew the XFL was coming back but I somehow missed the part where it was set to start literally the week after the Super Bowl. Sucks too because I find it a lot more palatable than the USFL or AAF. They switch things up just enough to help mask over the fact that it’s still amateur ball without the atmosphere that CFB has going for it, but not enough so that it ruins the core of the game. I’ll probably get more invested once Mock Draft season really gets going.
I miss when the only spring/summer ball was arena football. It would start in early April, which gave you a break from regular football after the super bowl. By the time it was over in late July/early August, you had a month NFL preseason separating you and the postseason.
I think the best situation is for the two leagues, a few years down the road, to merge into two “conferences” of 8 teams each. Shift the season to be about halfway between the two…start at the beginning of March, regular season goes through May, championship game early June.
I was a Battlehawks fan when the XFL started back up a few years ago and was pretty excited to see their game against San Antonio this weekend. Both cities seem like they are likely to strongly support their teams…I know STL was going to have to open up the upper level of the dome for the rest of the games before COVID shut it down.
I like that the XFL and USFL exist, and do want one or both of them to succeed so I can watch football without my personal pessimism weigh me down. Didn’t expect the XFL to start so fast though.
The problem is that if they wait too long, MLB Opening Day hits and suddenly I’d much rather watch any old baseball game on MLB.tv versus watching the XFL. This is the problem with the USFL this year. Baseball is basically unlimited content thanks to it having the best streaming package and playing nearly every day. Why would I need bad football?
Honestly, the only reason I watched the XFL this weekend is that outside of most of the NFL playoffs and 3 or 4 Jets games, I couldn’t watch much football since I work on the weekends. Sitting down and watching a game has been a rare occurrence for me. Although I agree, there should’ve been at least two weeks between NFL and XFL.
(I’ve been off for a few weeks.)
There’s always a Major League Rugby palate cleanser.
In my industry we have a concept called “critical distance”. It just means leaving space between yourself and your work in order to help you bring in fresh experiences and perspectives so you can not only enjoy your life more, but create a better end-product. Football benefits from critical distance. We need time to come down and focus on other things. Shoving two leagues into our faces with some half-recognizable names really doesn’t do anything for me, but I watched some highlights and thought that those were reasonably interesting. I’m not sure how 3 hours of watching it would go, though.
This notion that we need more football just reeks of people needing to touch grass and find something else to fill the void in their lives. If football is the only thing you have going in your life, I think that’s kind of sad. There’s always those cats who take losses so hard, but you need to get over it and find some other source of joy in your life. Play video games, take up a hobby, read, learn a skill, hang out with your friends and loved ones. Football is over, bad football isn’t going to replace it.
I thought the XFL’s take on kickoffs was pretty interesting. Don’t like the 3 point PAT though.
Other than that the quality of the football was pretty meh. I doubt I will be a regular viewer.
Personally, I’m happy with 2 weekends of no football at all, then run through draft stuff until they run of takes, and then I’m interested in spring leagues. That’s how I want it.
Fuck off, I’m full.
I agree that the XFL season starts too soon after NFL ends but screw it I’m fully invested in the XFL as a season ticket holder. The XFL allows me to take the whole family (6 of us plus usually 2 foster kids) out for a game. I have 8 lowers right next to the player tunnel; something impossible to achieve as an NFL fan without selling the family house. In 2020 I took my then 5 year old son and a few of the guys to all the games. We had a great time–an amazing time actually. We had it all, tailgating, football, sectional community, the whole enchilada; and on a budget that didn’t raise the stakes past what sports entertainment show be–simply for fun. Besides existing to give the lower-middle class the gameday experience that we hard working deserve I appreciate the XFL for not having such a self righteous pretentiousness as the NFL brass do. The XFL feels like a fan driven league. Why can’t the NFL mic 6 players/coaches up like the XFL? Why can’t they give in game interviews? Why are NFL fans kept at a distance? Sometimes it feels like the NFL has become an exclusive fraternity and they left everyone who put them there on the outside looking in. If for no other reason that to shake up the gatekeeping of a beautiful game I welcome and support the XFL.
“…but I don’t need football all the time. It honestly seems somewhat depressing if you do.”
Europe is so mad at you right now.
naaaaaaaa ima pass
It’ll be very interesting to see where both these leagues are in a few years. For the talent reason Dave mentioned along with wondering if there’s enough ad revenue & interest to support both I don’t feel like they could both survive. In the long term it would be really cool if one or both turn into a minor league and the NFL has relegation/promotion like they do in the Premiere League
The AAF was great, it’s too bad they pulled the plug so fast. Long live the Fleet.
I wish there was a week in between, but I watched the USFL last week and enjoyed it, and have been watching the XFL and have been enjoying it too. It’s football, and I love football. I hope at least one makes it. I get its not the same as the NFL as far as talent, but there are still decent plays being made.
I never got into Arena football, because it seemed like it was just Starship Troopers football, and too weird and different for me.