Columnist Dean Juipe: Hopefully, this is it for the XFL

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, April 4, 2001 | 10:33 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

As products are introduced into the marketplace, they have to gain acceptance and increase their sales as time goes on.

Be it automobiles or toothpaste, any stagnation or decline in sales will result in their removal from public view.

It's a mean, cruel world out there and only something that's making a profit will survive.

There's probably a law of economics that applies here, but that's beyond my expertise. But this isn't: Saturday might be your last chance to see the Las Vegas Outlaws and the abominable XFL live and in person.

As the league's first season ends, so may its future.

Few tears are being shed.

The XFL, which is a partnership between the World Wrestling Federation and the National Broadcasting Company, is said to be 60 percent reliant on its TV revenues to maintain its existence. But those revenues are well off initial expectations and the league will lose somewhere between $40 million and $60 million during its initial -- or, perhaps, only -- season.

The league anticipated a loss of $30 million this year and it wasn't projecting a profit until its third season. But NBC is already talking about severing its ties to the league, which might very well push the dominoes toward the XFL dissolving and going down in sports history as a bizarre and failed experiment.

The XFL's TV ratings toppled early and now regularly bring up the rear of the weekly listings. While NBC guaranteed advertisers a 4.5 market share, numbers like 2.4 on NBC and 1.2 on its UPN sidekick have become commonplace.

The live crowds have dropped as well, with the Outlaws, for instance, attracting fewer and fewer spectators for each of their home games and a season-low attendance count is expected for Saturday's finale.

I swore off attending an Outlaws game after making it to halftime of their opener, yet I'll still tune in for a few minutes every week just to see what's going on. What's obvious is that the team is poorly coached, doesn't have a quarterback who can get the ball more than 15 yards down field, and, as proven by the rock-headed plays that cost them last week's game with San Francisco, is not stocked with Ivy Leaguers.

Such an assessment is not peculiar to the Outlaws; the league-wide product is dreadful.

Worse, the drunken, sex-crazed atmosphere at the games (at least in Las Vegas) is detestable and hasn't improved. For instance, our man at last week's game said he thought the fans were more interested in seeing themselves and their colleagues on the big screen in the end zone than they were in watching the football; shots of a man standing behind a woman with his hands wrapped firmly around her breasts were enthusiastically applauded, as was a woman who kept tempting the camera with provocative poses.

Wholesome family entertainment, right?

We'll do the math for you: bad football with players no one knows or wants to, plus spectators better suited for a strip club adds up to a product that is largely unwanted by a majority of the nation's sports fans.

One year was enough of this mistake.

If the league goes under as some anticipate, I'll handle the news with unfettered glee.