Waiting for the XFL to be the Ex-XFL

Posted by [email protected] | Feb 8, 2020 | Sports | 0 |

At Jeremiah’s Tavern on Monroe Avenue, Bob Page watching the Six Nations rugby series: England, Ireland, France, Scotland, Wales and Italy. Next up is soccer followed by college basketball. As for the XFL on ABC at 2pm and Fox at 5pm: “I’m not going to watch that crap.” [Photo: David Kramer, noon, 2/8/20] see Watching the Bills fall short and recalling the most famous “blacked out” game, The Comeback, January 3rd, 1993

Watching the Bills fall short and recalling the most famous “blacked out” game, The Comeback, January 3rd, 1993 is the story of raucous Bills fans at Jeremiah’s cheering the playoff drive and the sad loss to Tennessee. Several weeks later, football was over and most fans — satiated — were ready to move on.

Meg Vasey, Jeremiah’s bartender. [Photo: David Kramer, 12/21/19] From Watching the Bills fall short and recalling the most famous “blacked out” game, The Comeback, January 3rd, 1993

Not so fast. This afternoon is the opening day of a new spring football league, the XFL, a supposed rebirth of an earlier and failed iteration lasting but a single season in 2001.

In The AAF is an AAwFul idea, I lamented the newly-formed spring football league, the American Alliance of Football, that begin play after the 2019 Super Bowl:

Its [the AAF] point is to keep football junkies well lubed for ten more weeks, no matter the mediocre quality of play or the detrimental effects on those junkies. This league should be abolished before it is even borned.

As celebrated in I TOLD YOU SO: “AAF suspending operations, canceling end of season”, the AAF — unlike the old XFL — folded even before completing its inaugural season.

Opening game of the (defunct) Alliance of American Football, San Diego 15 – San Antonio 6 [Photos: David Kramer from the Saturday February, 9th, 2019 CBS broadcast] From I TOLD YOU SO: “AAF suspending operations, canceling end of season”

As for the new XFL:

Its point is to keep football junkies well lubed for ten more weeks, no matter the mediocre quality of play or the detrimental effects on those junkies. This league should be abolished before it is even borned.

For the sake of history, I did watch the league’s first kickoff and first play from scrimmage:

Following the first kickoff, the first play from scrimmage, Seattle Dragons vs. DC Defenders: 2:08 p.m.: Ja’Quan Gardner gets the first carry in XFL history. The XFL experiments with different kind of kickoff that allows for more returns and fewer dangerous collisions. “The kicker kicks from the 30-yard line and must kick the ball in the air and in play between the opponent’s 20-yard line and the end zone. The coverage team lines up on the return side 35-yard line and the return team lines up on the 30-yard line. Each team must have exactly 3 players outside the hash marks on both sides of the ball and cannot move until the ball is caught by the returner. Out of bounds kicks and kicks that fall short of the 20-yard line will result in an illegal procedure penalty, taking the ball all the way out to the kicking team’s 45 yard line. Players can move when the ball is touched by the returner or 3 seconds after the ball touches the ground (when the official waves his hand down). If the ball is kicked into the end zone and is downed it is a “Major” touchback and the ball is placed at the return side 35-yard line. If the ball bounces in bounds and then out of the end zone or is downed in the end zone, the ball is placed at the return side 15-yard line.” [Photo: David Kramer, 2:08pm, 2/8/20]

At about 3pm, upon returning to Jeremiah’s, the regulars were feasting on chicken wings while choosing from six or seven televised sporting events.

Bob Page (top right) watching former Hoosier coach Bob Knight return to Indiana University basketball court after 20-year hiatus.

At the Dragons vs. Defenders game: standing room only.

Seattle Dragons vs. DC Defenders. To be fair, the NFL Network’s replay of Super Bowl Super Bowl XLIII in the back room also had no takers.

As far as I am concerned, by the second week of February we should be mentally preparing for the Opening Day of baseball.

Foul Ball! Field at the Twelve Corners Middle School, 4/7/18. From The AAF is an AAwFul idea

Fair Oaks Ave in Brighton. Father and son practicing for the Brighton High School JV team. [Photo: David Kramer, 2/10/20]

Admittedly, when school is in session, the boys at the Talmudical Institute of Upstate New York play football during the springtime at Cobb’s Hill. The difference is I can only watch the XFL while I can play in the TIUNL.

David “Sid Luckman” Kramer about to launch a long bomb touchdown pass. [Photo: TIUNY student] From Adding Yeshiva football to the Cobb’s Hill series

SEE ALSO

The Grey Cup is a tough sell

If I were King of the N.F.L.

About The Author

[email protected]

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones. So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.