The XFL won't work

Meanwhile, NBC's Jeff Zucker, named the network's head of entertainment after the XFL deal was announced, sounds guarded. When asked how the XFL's brash bad-boy image fits on NBC, which has been touting itself to advertisers as the home of "quality shows" like "ER" and "The West Wing," Zucker told TV critics the network operated under "a big-tent philosophy and there is room for everybody." In an interview with a TV industry trade magazine, he suggested "the XFL is a good example of rolling the dice."

That's a far cry from Ebersol's boast to the press: "When 'Saturday Night Live' started, it was the one show in television that changed everything. And I look at this league in much the same way."

McMahon agrees: "I would suggest the way we're going to cover this is going to revolutionize not only the way football is covered but sports itself," McMahon told one reporter during a modest moment.

The XFL, though, could pay a steep price for creating such wildly inflated expectations.

"They have an opportunity for massive sampling with that first game," notes Stephen A. Greyser, a senior professor of marketing at the Harvard Business School who specializes in sports. "But if for some reason the product is not the right mix and doesn't measure up to the hype, than you have large runoff and bad word of mouth."

Didn't the XFL and NBC learn from Fox? A few years back, when the real bad-boy network outbid CBS for NFL rights, executives there boasted they were going to reinvent broadcast sports and change the way people watch football. Turn on an NFL game today with the sound off -- it's nearly impossible to tell whether you're watching Fox, NBC, ABC or ESPN. Football is football.

But the XFL is promising much, much more. It's hyping a faster-paced game with announcers sitting in the stands and cheerleaders interviewed during the games. It also plans an all-access broadcast with cameras and microphones everywhere, including in huddles, on the sidelines and in the locker rooms.

Beware, cautions sports-marketing consultant Dean Bonham: "I've been around professional athletes and the four-letter words get old fast."

Just ask CBS. The network thought it would be fun to mike lots of players for the Super Bowl last Sunday and give couch potatoes a real sense of the sideline excitement. Guess what? Hyped up for the big showdown, players let the profanities fly, right onto the airwaves during the pre-game show. CBS's switchboard was bombarded with angry callers.

On Sunday, CBS unveiled its mind-bending Eyevision replays at the Super Bowl, which offered viewers a three-dimensional, nearly 360-degree look back at crucial plays. In a head-scratching decision, McMahon has been bragging about how fast-paced XFL games won't have time for slow-motion instant replays, let alone 3-D versions. "That's a mistake," warns Street & Smith's Lombardo.

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While XFL's TV front is troubled, what about its potential as a no-holds-barred sports league, one whose hard-nosed players will show up the NFL, or what McMahon calls an "over-regulated, antiseptic league" made up of a bunch of "pantywaists"? Good luck.

NFL players as pampered sissies? Did McMahon not notice that this year's Super Bowl MVP, Ray Lewis, is a former murder suspect? Or that former Carolina Panthers star Rae Carruth is doing time for having his pregnant girlfriend killed? Or that Green Bay Packers All-Pro tight end Mark Chmura is currently on trial for sexual assault involving a minor?

Over-regulated? McMahon must have missed the sideline scrum that broke out at the Super Bowl between Ravens and Giants players. It looked more like a barroom brawl than a football game, yet no penalties were assigned.

Or maybe the XFL can recruit San Diego Chargers safety Rodney Harrison, who was busy this season piling up NFL fines for the illegal and sadistic hits he's laid on unprotected wide receivers.

McMahon would love Harrison, because if there's one thing the XFL is selling above all others, it's sheer violence. And in an odd turn on its own investment, the XFL's public enemy No. 1 appears to be its own quarterbacks.

Next Page: "The whole idea is to kill the quarterback"

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