Making strides

Steve Addy

Friday, Aug. 11, 2000 | 10:21 a.m.

How do you start a football team from scratch, especially when the really good players are already cashing eye-popping NFL paychecks?

In many ways, it's as easy as choosing up sides on the playground. In others, it's akin to building a 6,000-room Strip resort on a Motel 6 budget.

Las Vegas and seven other XFL franchises will have to blend those approaches to form their 38-man rosters for the league's 10-game debut season, which begins Feb. 3.

The Las Vegas club put its first cornerstones in place Thursday with the naming of general manager Bob Ackles, head coach Jim Criner and player personnel director Don Gregory, whose combined football background exceeds 100 years.

"We will be the best-run franchise in this league," said Ackles, 61, who left his job as the Miami Dolphins' director of football operations.

With the player allocation program put in place by the league, it will be up to Ackles and Co. to sort through 2,000 prospects and stock the team with the best talent available. The XFL will scout and sign the players, but in October, every team will draft for itself.

Also, the XFL will assign each franchise three colleges for which it will hold territorial draft rights. In Las Vegas' case, those schools will likely be UNLV, Nebraska and BYU. The league will also conduct six tryout camps around the country in September.

"It's going to be a very interesting way of (building a roster)," Ackles said. "We will do our own scouting, too. We'll look at tape, and then we'll draft from the (league) pool.

"It's going to be a lot of work, but that is why I signed on. It's a great opportunity to be in a start-up situation, to be able to start from the ground floor."

Though the quality of the talent will be one of the inescapable storylines in the league's early days, the XFL isn't pretending any of its players will be NFL-caliber. With salaries set at $45,000, don't expect any bidding wars or player raids between the leagues.

But Las Vegas' front office insists there are many good players available to the XFL, some on the fringes of the NFL and others merely waiting to be given a chance. Quarterbacks, in particular, are not as rare as we've been led to believe, Ackles said.

"If you look at the NFL, most teams take four or five quarterbacks (to training camp) and only keep three, so there will be quarterbacks available to us," he said.

"Sometimes the NFL (unfairly categorizes) players. If you're a linebacker, you have to be 6-foot-3 and weigh 250 pounds. They put quarterbacks in categories, too. That hasn't given some of the other quarterbacks -- the scrambler types -- a chance. (Doug) Flutie played in the Canadian league for how many years before someone in the NFL gave him a chance?"

Fresh off six seasons as coach of the Scottish Claymores of NFL Europe, 60-year-old Criner said he has seen plenty of unheralded QBs emerge, including NFL MVP Kurt Warner of the Rams, who started for the Amsterdam Admirals in 1998.

"There's a lot of guys out there like Kurt Warner who just need a chance," he said. "We will be putting in hundreds of hours over the next few months to find the best players who can make our system work."

Criner and offensive coordinator Vince Alcalde will use an H-back offense, and Criner said his draft priorities will be quarterback, tailback and wide receiver.

On defense, Criner's son Mark has been hired as coordinator; he held that post at Portland State the last two seasons. The defensive draft focus will be on pass-rushers and physical cornerbacks who can exploit the league's liberal downfield contact rules.

With a 38-man roster, versatility will also be at a premium.

"We will ask all of our players to be more involved in special teams. We'll draft players who have that kind of athleticism," Criner said.

Each team will take 70 players to training camp in January, but Criner intends to have two passing camps before that. Also in January, the other three Western teams -- San Jose, Los Angeles and Chicago -- will gather here for combined practices and scrimmages with the Las Vegas club, in lieu of preseason games.

"We want the passing game to be polished when we get to camp," Criner said. "In camp, I want us to get our running and hitting in, but we don't want our guys so beat up that they won't be ready to start the season. We want to hit the ground running."