ESPN is making an XFL documentary and we're already excited
The XFL has long been dead. Long live the XFL.
Sports fans know by now to give most any documentary in ESPN's "30 for 30" series a chance -- they're consistently among the the best pieces of content produced by the sports broadcasting behemoth. Now an XFL documentary is officially in the works -- and we're already excited.
For those just catching up, the XFL was a football league co-founded by Vince McMahon (yes, he of pro wrestling fame) that lasted for just one season in 2001. It was weird. It was awful. It was glorious.
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Players were allowed to wear nicknames on the backs of their jerseys -- the most legendary of these cryptically read "He Hate Me." Team names, meanwhile, included the New York/New Jersey Hitmen, the Los Angeles XTreme and the Memphis Maniax.
But nothing encapsulates the XFL's glorious absurdity like "the scramble," which the league introduced instead of the NFL's customary pregame coin toss to determine opening possession.
The scramble went like this: One player from each team would line up 20 yards from the ball, which was placed at midfield. When the ref's whistle blew, those two players would race each other to the ball, diving, shoving and, well, scrambling to secure it. Whoever came up with the ball had then won the coin toss, so to speak.
No, stop laughing -- we're serious. Here, take a look at the first "scramble" in XFL history.
COMEDY. Now here are more "scrambles" for your viewing pleasure.
Suffice to say, the XFL never really caught on -- poor ratings, wary advertisers and general apathy set in before the season even wrapped up. It's widely ridiculed as one of the bigger fails in sports business, even though a handful of its elements were later cribbed by the NFL. (Alas, the "scramble" was not among these.)
But you're now in luck if you missed the so-bad-it's-good glory of the abbreviated XFL era. ESPN announced on Thursday that a "30 for 30" examining the league will debut Feb. 2.
A press release for the film, titled "This Was the XFL," sums the league up aptly: "A bold challenge, a fearless experiment and ultimately, a spectacular failure."
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Our DVR's already set.
Sam Laird is Mashable's Senior Sports Reporter. He covers the wide, weird world of sports from all angles -- as well as occasional other topics -- from Mashable's San Francisco bureau. Before joining Mashable in November 2011, his freelance work appeared in publications including the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Slam, and East Bay Express. Sam is a graduate of UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, and basketball and burritos take up most of his spare time. Follow him on Twitter @samcmlaird.
