| NFL Raids XFL | |
April 30, 2001
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The majority of XFL players are abandoning ship. 214 of the approximately 400 XFL players have opted out of their two-year contracts with the fledgling football league in hopes of catching on with an NFL team this summer. And now that the NFL Draft is over, many teams will be looking elsewhere for economical players to fill the remaining gaps.
There are still some free agents available out there, and of course, there will be a selection of veteran players that are released by their current employer, but there will also be many XFL players that will be given a shot at the big time.
NFL teams are hoping to get lucky and find a guy that needed just a bit more polish coming out of college, and got it by playing professional football in a league that may not approach the quality of the NFL, but seems destined to ultimately become a breeding ground for the not-ready-for-prime-time players. A place where a college player that is on the "fringe" of NFL abilities, or a high school athlete that chooses an alternate route to the NFL (as the XFL has already suggested), can go to develop their skills without traveling half way around the world.
The NFL has been keeping a close eye on the XFL, despite the senior league's attempts to appear disinterested, and 15 players from the infant league have already signed contracts with NFL teams. That number may climb to as high as 100 by the time training camps open.
At first glance you might think this mass player raid would be the final straw for a ratings-starved league, but on the contrary, this is the best thing that could have happened to the XFL. By officially recognizing that the XFL has players they want, the NFL has given the new league a leg to stand on when they begin marketing for the 2002 season.
Instead of being subjected to asinine comments such as Jim Ross's, "We've got him and the NFL doesn't. Eat your heart out NFL", you'll hear (hopefully from a real football announcer), "Keep your eye on this guy! You're gonna see him in the NFL next year".
The best thing that could happen to the XFL now is for a dozen or so of these league jumpers to make it in the NFL, and maybe even a future star emerges the way Kurt Warner did after a stint in the Arena Football League.
A little added interest in the up-start league, along with a move to Saturday afternoons on cable television, may be all the XFL needs to survive. After all, the Xtreme Football League does have a distinct advantage over its predecessor, the USFL. They are paying players a base salary of $35,000. Instead of tying up millions and millions of dollars per team as the USFL did, they are paying in the neighborhood of $1.5 million per team.
Multiplied by eight teams, that works out to a total base salary of $12 million for the entire league. Add in $400,000 per week in incentive bonus money, along with the $1 million bonus for winning the championship game, and you come in with a total payroll somewhere in the neighborhood of $17-20 million dollars.
It appears to me this new league will most likely follow the path of the Arena Football League and stick around for years to come, rather than take the downhill trail the USFL left in its attempt to compete head-to-head with the NFL.
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