Luck said that the XFL's most important focus is to play quality football upon launchROXXE IRELAND
XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck said there are several key reasons he decided to join WWE Founder & CEO Vince McMahon’s effort to launch a new spring football league, including the fact that McMahon’s first try at the XFL was a dismal failure. “I like people who are self-aware enough to draw lessons from the past,” said Luck during a featured interview on day one of the ’18 Sports Media & Technology conference in N.Y. A bigger factor, though, is the 40 million hardcore football fans that the new XFL believes are hungering for more of the game than they get in the fall and winter. Luck: “They have this void in their lives. They would watch more NFL. They would watch more college ball. But the season ends.” He said the "important thing for us is to play quality football right out of the chute.” Luck: “The biggest oversight last time around was … the football wasn’t good enough.” Luck believes there are plenty of players who are not on NFL rosters to make things interesting on the field. When the NFL made its roster cutdown in September, he said, “there were about 900 guys that got cut." Luck: "We think you can build a quality league with those guys.”
STRONG COMPETITION: Luck said he does not know much about the Alliance of American Football, a spring football startup that plans to begin play in February, a year before the XFL. But he said he is happy with the groundwork that has been laid for the XFL in the last few years, and believes that rules changes to speed up the game, combined with the business acumen brought by many WWE veterans who are working behind the scenes, will make up for any lost ground when the XFL launches in '20. Luck: “At the end of the day, we want to be a complement to the NFL. We want the NFL to do well. At the same time, we think there are a few things we can change.”
COMING ATTRACTIONS: The XFL will announce cities and team names by the end of the year, and Luck didn’t argue with the suggestion that the teams would be placed in larger markets. “Vince likes to go big,” said Luck. The league in the first quarter of ’19 will start signing coaches and players. Things not to look for: Names on jerseys like “He Hate Me,” or any of the former XFL team names. “We want to stay away from some of the sort of gimmicky things that existed in 2001,” he said. “We hope to have proper surnames on the back of the jerseys. And I highly doubt we’ll resurrect any of the team names.”
