XFL Ends Season One, Is this the end?

Covid 19 grabbed another professional league with its tentacles as the XFL was intertwined with the virus and the infant league ended its first season after the delay that was forced upon the other sports leagues as well.
The big question is this- will the league return for 2021?

The league completed half of the planned schedule, but with the forced pause in mid-season, the league had little choice in concluding the season rather than a postponement of games.
Considering that the XFL uses more college stadiums and soccer fields than they do NFL sized facilities (only Tampa Bay and New York), the option of postponement would have made dates difficult with the five facilities that have MLS soccer teams and Houston sharing with the Houston Cougars in need of their fields during the time that makeup games would be played.

The decision to end the season does make sense for those reasons, but it does raise legitimate doubt on the future of the league.
League owner Vince McMahon stated that all players would be paid their full salaries and continue to have their health care provided and that is a positive note for a potential second season as if their plans were not to come back, it would have been far easier to just not pay the bills as any potential bad PR would not matter without a second season.

I thought the league played a better brand of football than the original and I thought it was pretty comparable to the AAF, maybe even a nick better, but there is always that group that wants to compare it to the NFL.
That's silly, but with rival leagues dating all the way back to the AAFC in the late 40s football fans always want to downplay the new league compared to the NFL.
If that is the goal for new leagues, it's an unrealistic one and I'm not sure why people even bother to start them because it cannot be reached.

The biggest problem for the league (besides attendance and TV ratings) seems to be the same as many football ventures-  the quarterback play.
If there were plenty of good quarterbacks around, every NFL team would have a good one and we all know that's not true!
Other than P.J. Walker of the Houston Roughnecks, I didn't see a quarterback that raised his stock as far as playing in the NFL.
Cardale Jones looked great for two games and then awful thereafter to the point of being benched.
Jordan Ta'amu looks to be too small for the NFL, Josh Johnson might be able to be a veteran emergency type and that's about it as the passers go.

If your quarterbacks aren't great, it's hard for the games to be fun and if they aren't fun, most casual fans will not watch.
If you are looking at this as a AAA league and developmental for the NFL, that's fine.
However, the talent level for the league is going to be guys looking for a chance or someone that had failures in the NFL or players that had issues outside of football.

So what's the solution?
An alliance with the NFL is unlikely as the NFLPA wasn't interested in sending quarterbacks to the AAF and even if they did, how much difference in quality is there between the third-string passer fort the Redskins and Cardale Jones if any?
There isn't a stock of quarterbacks sitting around to pilfer, so if the league really wants to improve their quarterback play (and the other positions as well) they really only have one choice- go after college talent.
That's an expensive alternative, but if the goal is to improve the on-field play they have little choice.
That might not be the avenue that the league will go, but it's a choice that renegade football leagues soon realize after the league begins.
The business plan looks good until you start playing the games, but it's a tough choice as maintaining the status-quo will find a product that may struggle in drawing fans and chokes off revenue or if you sign top talent to improve the league and add fan interest, the bottom line soon can become untenable.
The USFL did the latter of the two choices and went under, but its three-year run is still the longest of the challenger leagues in the last fifty years and I still maintain they had the right idea- sign a few big names and mix with the other players to build a following.
The USFL was on its way under this plan under Donald Trump came along and I think it can succeed, but it's going to lose plenty of money before things turn the corner and it may still never become profitable.

I hope to see the second season of the XFL and I think a return is possible.
However, the long-term health of the league has to be in question and only Vince McMahon and his league shareholders will be able to answer if the XFL will hear the bell for season two.
Time will tell the tale of whether the D.C. Defenders are another team headed for that fabled TRS Graveyard of franchises that I cared about and have only stories and a headstone to remember them by,

This entire problem sweeping our country has taken a bit out of me of late and it took me three days to get through this post.
I hope to be working on the Browns free-agent additions soon and I may drag them out a bit since there is next to nothing else to write about in the sports world.
Thanks for sticking with me.

Al Haymon and Vince McMahon-History shows a similar path

I was struggling with a topic for tonight with being called into the road office and missing the Devils and Cavaliers wins.
I could have watched the Cavaliers on line,but I did have some work to do on this night,so I passed.

However,I was watching something unrelated to sports and suddenly had my column.
Al Haymon is slowly trying to take over the world of boxing and with his recent deals with NBC and Spike along with rumored deals upcoming with CBS,may be in a position to be what he envisions as the boxing answer to the Dana White owned UFC.

That might be the comparison that Al Haymon sees,but I see another one and a chance to see how either history could repeat itself or show how things could have went differently for another sport related business.
Yes,the comparison I'm making for Al Haymon is one Vincent Kennedy McMahon and his World Wrestling "Entertainment" formerly Federation.
A little over thirty years ago,pro wrestling was a business divided among several promoters in different area around the country with each having a little fiefdom cut out for their own doing.
There is a small difference as wrestling was divided by geography,while boxing's promoters are not,but the rest is the same story-a sport ran by multiple promoters with some of them doing better than others,but all operating loosely together.

Where McMahon's vision was to become one wrestling "league" and putting the rest out of business essentially came true by signing their top stars and making his company the only place to see the "best" is basically what Haymon is trying to do,there are even more similarities.
In the 70's and 80's pro wrestling drew such strong local ratings in most areas,the TV stations would pay the promotion to air their shows.
Think of networks paying rights fees for boxing for the correlation,but suddenly Vince McMahon showed up and bought the time slots,shoving the local promotions off the airwaves.
Al Haymon is buying time on the NBC family of networks,Spike TV and rumored to be soon CBS,which leads to ESPN (among others) to question why they are still paying for fights when they could GET paid.
See the similar issues?

What killed those regional promoters was the lack of vision and finances,depending on the case.
They attempted an All-Star group of their own that failed (Pro Wrestling USA) due to few of the promotion being able to work together and as a result saw each of them fall to McMahon one by one.
Boxing might have an advantage here,if Top Rank and Golden Boy can continue to work together among the smaller promoters to provide a quality alternative to Haymon being the only place in town.
I'm not against any one promoter,I just want to see the best fight the best and so often we don't get that.

Vince McMahon is now the only pro wrestling game in town and the result has been stagnation.
Competition brings creativity and I hope Al Haymon has some success,that is good for the boxing business.
However,I don't want to see him become the only place to watch quality fisticuffs and take boxing down the road of wrestling with a stale product that that becomes even more of a niche' product.
Another McMahon comparison-wrestling got so hot for a while that it was on network TV after being off mainstream television for 25+ years.
Boxing has rarely been on network TV for the last 25 years and could get the sport really hot again.
However,the star faded for McMahon and the same could happen for Haymon's group if he is not careful.

Want more parallels? Vince McMahon had one star above all the rest-Hulk Hogan,who wrestled the same lousy match again and again,no matter his opposition.
Al Haymon has one star above all the rest-Floyd Mayweather,who fights the same lousy fight again and again,no matter his competition.
McMahon had one match that the world wanted to see- Hulk Hogan vs Andre the Giant.
Haymon has one match (although he'll have to co-promote it) that the world wants to see-Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao.
Hogan vs Andre was the biggest pay per view of its time and a Mayweather-Pacquiao bout would certainly be the largest of its period.

Al Haymon has a great idea and he could make lots of money doing it,however my question is this- is it the healthiest manner to grow the sport over the long term?
Will the Top Rank-Golden Boy alliance allow them to be the alternative like WCW was for a while to McMahon's WWF?
Or will they be like WCW in the end- a strong opposition that ended as they simply couldn't create the needed stars to continue generating big business and go out of business?

Al Haymon and Vince McMahon-history may not repeat itself (although it could),but there sure is a similar business plan in order.
It'll be interesting to look back on this in a few years and check out where boxing stands at that time...