8 Pieces Of Overwhelming Evidence That Vince McMahon Is Not A Visionary

3. Stupid Ideas, Part III: The XFL

€that is, until nearly ten years after the announcement of the ill-fated WBF, when McMahon announced his entry into competition for talent with the National Football League, running in the NFL€™s off-season. The NFL€™s revenue of $9billion was probably the Holy Grail here, so at least this scheme had the advantage of attempting to nab the franchise from an established, highly successful entity. The intention was to combine pro football€™s established game with the pyrotechnics, kinetic storylines, glitz and glamour of the Attitude Era. Run in 50/50 tandem with NBC Universal, the XFL was one of the most ridiculous fiascos in sporting history, shutting down in 2001 after only fifteen months, and costing the WWF and NBC a reported $35million each. Part of the problem was that the XFL was never taken seriously as a sporting franchise, and the standard of play was reportedly diabolical, with media criticism focusing on the issue of style of substance and ridiculous gimmickry involved. It became a laughing stock in its first season, and ratings slumped by half after the first week of broadcast, never to even remotely recover. You€™ll note that each of these wildly expensive, utterly harebrained flops occurred when the WWF/E was riding the crest of a boom period: the WBF, after Wrestlemania and Hulk Hogan helped to make pro wrestling briefly a mainstream pop culture phenomenon; and WWF New York and the XFL after the WWF had effectively all but won the Monday Night War and was floating on the massive pile of money that the Attitude Era had raked in. The lesson here, then? Never give a carny wrestling promoter with delusions of grandeur millions and millions of dollars and free reign to go nuts with it.