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By Mike Thompson

As a longtime fan of Major League Baseball, I freely admit that the sport has catered to the desires of television executives over the years. For example, day games used to flourish in baseball; now, the majority of games are played at night, as that’s when more people would be able to watch them on TV. Yet through it all, baseball has retained its roots. You can still go to a game and probably have a better time than you ever would watching it on TV. However, on February 3, a new football league, the XFL, debuted that doesn’t just lend itself to television. This new league wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for TV, and it shows. No sport has ever been more made-for-television than the XFL. Unfortunately, as it stands right now, the XFL doesn’t make for very good television.

The XFL was founded by Vince McMahon, who, as chairman of the World Wrestling Federation, knows all about playing down to the average Joe Six-Pack. The games are played on Saturdays, broadcast on NBC (which, along with McMahon, serves as the co-owners of the XFL), and on Sundays, broadcast on UPN. I didn’t watch the NBC game, but I caught the game on Sunday, February 4, between the Los Angeles Xtreme and the San Francisco Demons, and I didn’t really like what I saw.

The announcers of the game, Brian Bosworth and Chris Marlowe, seem underqualified to be calling nationally broadcast football games. They didn’t seem very knowledgeable and tried to cover this up by making a bunch of "edgy" comments. For example, after a certain play, Bosworth said, "That hole closed faster than Monica Lewinsky’s mouth on a Bill Clinton cigar."

While Bosworth was just annoying, Marlowe came off as a bona fide shmuck. Midway through the second quarter, the Demons were on top of the Xtreme by a score of 6-0. Keep in mind that, in football, a six-point lead is all of one touchdown, and that the game was only in the second quarter. Still, Marlowe felt it necessary to declare that "L.A. is getting their butts kicked." Sure enough, by the end of the quarter, L.A. was on top of San Francisco, 7-6. Yeah, a real sound butt-kicking there, Chris. And at halftime, Marlowe whined to Bosworth, "We didn’t get any offense. This stunk." Way to be knowledgeable about the game, Chris. I mean football is all about offense, right, Chris?

Now, the game did stink, but it wasn’t due to lack of offense. The new audio and video techniques employed in the game were very hit and miss. Unlike in other football games, where the cameras stay on the sidelines, this time the cameramen entered the field in between plays and stayed there. They ran off the field once the ball was actually in play, but you’ve got to wonder how long it’s going to be until one of the cameramen isn’t able to get out of the way in time and winds up getting hurt. This new technique is interesting, but also dangerous.

There was a surprising number of video and audio gaffes during the game. At one point, for example, a fight broke out between two players. Bosworth and Marlowe went nuts, saying that this was a great fight. It would have been greater if we had actually seen it happen. Nope. The camera stayed on one part of the field, and we had to see the fight via a replay. Great. And then, of course, the XFL reporters, in classic WWF fashion, were immediately interviewing the players involved in the fight.

The audio went dead at several points during the game, especially during the mind-numbingly dull "XFL All-Access" halftime show. In this colossal waste of time, cameramen went into the locker rooms of the Xtreme and the Demons. This might have been interesting, if there were hidden cameras used. As it was, everybody in the locker room knew they were on camera, and nothing even remotely controversial happened. To make matters worse, there was absolute silence for several seconds at a time at many points during "XFL All-Access." It wasn’t very professional. I’d have rather watched commercials, even spots for bad UPN shows.

Adding to the lack of appeal of watching XFL was the shoddy game play. In the first half, I saw more fumbles, missed passes and penalties than I ever see in college football or NFL games. Sure, there may have been a case of Opening-Day jitters, and I know there wasn’t a very long training camp for these players, but the bottom line is there’s a reason these guys weren’t already in professional football. Watching this minor-league level of play can get old very quickly and could make ratings decline fast.

The constant criticizing of the NFL also grew tiresome. Throughout the game, Bosworth and Marlowe take constant swipes at the NFL. When talking about the black coach of the Demons, Marlowe said, "It’s not easy for a black coach to get hired [in the NFL] these days." Marlowe later commented that, unlike the NFL, the XFL is the "free-expression league." He and Bosworth went on to discuss the strict rules NFL officials place on their players. "XFL lets the pros be who they are," Bosworth said. Bosworth also said, when profiling a player during the game, "Eat your heart out, NFL, because we’ve got him here in the XFL!"

Look, the announcers can bash the NFL all they want, but the NFL is clearly the superior product. And as long as the XFL continues to serve up minor-league level football with a lot of flashy bells and whistles, the NFL will stay superior, and audiences will not continue to watch. XFL is not only bad football, it’s bad television. Games can be seen Saturday nights at 8 PM on NBC, which is Channel 4 here at Marist, and can also be seen Sunday nights, usually at 7 PM, on UPN, which is Channel 9. XFL games run through April.