Columnist Ron Kantowski: McMahon: Sex sells in XFL

Monday, Nov. 20, 2000 | 11:09 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column usually appears Thursday. His inside notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or 259-4088. Regular columnist Dean Juipe has the day off.

I knew it.

From Day One, or at least from the time Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vince McMahon rubbed their biceps together to give birth to the XFL, I've been saying the new made-for-TV (or at least NBC) pro football league's best chance for success is to follow the blueprint McMahon drafted for his wildly successful World Wrestling Federation.

You had to concede that if the XFL could put three hours of trash talking into a package featuring the usual assortment of busty, half-naked women (this time disguised as cheerleaders instead of managers), it would be a huge ratings hit.

Oh yeah -- sometimes there would be a football game going on in the background. But the results figured to be as irrelevant as the final score of a roller derby match between the LA Thunderbirds and Bay Area Bombers.

League officials, of course, belittled that notion. During news conferences around the league, including one right here in Las Vegas which will host five XFL episodes -- er, games -- at Sam Boyd Stadium, McMahon and his yes men assured a dubious media (and gullible public) that the football was going to be as real as Dick Butkus' flattop.

Some actually bought it. On draft day, as far as anybody could tell, the names of Baron von Raschke and assorted out-of-work body-slamming dwarfs did not appear among the thousands of anonymous ones on XFL draft lists. So maybe it was going to be real football, only played by nondescript players.

But then the current issue of ESPN The Magazine hit the newsstands.

In it, McMahon tells writer Curry Kirkpatrick that XFL players not only will be allowed to date the cheerleaders, they'll even be encouraged to do so. And you know where this is headed.

"Yes, our cheerleaders will date our players," McMahon is quoted in the magazine. "Yes, they'll be hot babes ... We're going to have three or four of them surround our announcers -- who'll be sitting in the stands, by the way. That'll be a great shot.

"Then, when the quarterback fumbles or the wideout drops a pass -- and we know who he's dating -- I want our reporters right back in her face on the sidelines demanding to know whether the two of them did the wild thing last night."

For those in the 10-16 age demographic, McMahon wasn't referring to the Troggs' greatest hit.

Well, that revelation doesn't exactly make my heart sing. But if I wanted to know for sure where the XFL was headed, that pretty much clarified it.

You would think that NBC, given that kids may be watching and the games won't come with a descrambler, might consider putting sideline parkas on the cheerleaders -- especially the ones shaking their pompons at Chicago's Soldier Field in the middle of February. But so far, NBC execs seem down with McMahon's idea for R-rated football.

"Whoa, so the QB is going out with the cheerleader," NBC sports chairman Dick Ebersol said. "That's been going on since high school."

Bottom line: You can forget about Gatorade becoming an official sponsor of the new league. Not when it appears that Viagra is going to be served under every XFL training table in a Dixie cup.