Columnist Dean Juipe: XFL isn’t strutting any more

Dean Juipe

Friday, Feb. 16, 2001 | 11:11 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.

It's a cliche to say the honeymoon is over, but, son of a gun, it's apropos.

Better yet for those of us who despise the league and the morally corrupt values it stands for, within the span of two weeks the XFL has gone from celebrated newcomer to vilified adolescent.

The nation's press -- and not just the Las Vegas Sun, as it initially appeared -- has turned against the football brainchild of pro wrestling impresario Vince McMahon. Virtually all the major columnists who have weighed in on the subject in the past couple of weeks have lambasted the upstart league for everything from its sleazy sideline theatrics to its lousy football.

More telling -- and more influential, when you get right down to it -- was the steep decline in the national TV ratings that the XFL experienced in its Week 2. In the span of one week it lost half its audience.

Now Week 3 arrives with the Las Vegas Outlaws certain of a big crowd for their Saturday game at Sam Boyd Stadium with Los Angeles, yet attendance doesn't drive this made-for-TV product. With NBC as a co-founder and co-conspirator, its focus is almost solely on the TV ratings.

If those ratings have yet to bottom out, the XFL may be in trouble no matter how many drunken louts fill the stands in Las Vegas.

And, chances are, the ratings will dip at least a little further if not this week then in March when the NCAA basketball tournament overshadows all other televised sports options. Midseason in the XFL will coincide with March Madness, and all but the wrestling fans may have abandoned the league by then.

Truthfully, I think there are enough wrestling fans to keep the league afloat for both the short and long term. Yet with the limited mind-set of that audience, NBC will find it difficult obtaining the advertising and sponsors it takes to fund a successful prime-time TV program. (A few major corporations are already shunning the league for "image" reasons.)

When last Saturday's XFL game bled into NBC's late-night schedule, tempers flared in the network's headquarters and a chopping block was symbolically brought in for intimidation purposes. As a result, a few of the big shots with their careers on the line have been leaning on the XFL to pick up the pace of play and get its games over with at a reasonable hour.

The league responded by changing its rules to allow the game clock to tick a little faster; as of this week, the clock will barely stop for an incomplete pass, for instance. The next step is to go to a running clock, like they do in soccer (and roller derby).

The next step after that is to go to a script, just like pro wrestling, and forget this notion of an XFL game as a legitimate sporting event.

A colleague says another week or two of declining ratings and "the chairs will be flying," which is a reference to a wrestling staple that could find its way to the football field. The idea is that the XFL will begin staging confrontations in a last-gasp attempt to pacify and retain its fan base.

If nothing else, the embattled XFL is no longer the preening rooster it was only a month ago. It may even be in the process of being completely declawed.