When it was launched for its sole season, the Xtreme Football League, a joint venture between NBC and the WWF (now WWE), was considered a joke. With all of Vince McMahon’s hype about the league being a return to old school football with big hits and big personalities, no one ever took the league seriously and attendance and TV ratings reflected it.

But with all the talk of the NFL adding more rules and harsher penalties for big, highlight reel hits and pass interference penalties getting nearly as common as offsides, maybe there’s a place for the Xtreme Football League (or the philosophy of old-school hard-hitting football) to return.

I’m willing to admit that my point of view in this post won’t be very popular and might even be offensive. Let’s face it, though, people watch football for drinking, gambling and highlight reel plays. Hell, I’m pretty sure that I’ve got the reasons for the average football fan listed in the correct order too. I’d like to say that the average fan in the stands or watching at home on TV is concerned with the safety of the players first and foremost but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. In hindsight, yes, I’m sure they are, unless the player is texting his dong to Jets sideline reporters. But at the time, there’s yelling, screaming, cheering and jumping up and down. That’s the reaction to the big play not “Ouch, I hope he’s okay.” Think of it this way: When you watch MXC (or Wipeout, if the watered down American knockoff is more your pace), are you watching to see everyone gets through the event safely or are you hoping for a painful elimination.

I’m not saying that the NFL should start dialling back on its rules about hits to the head, late hits to the quarterback, chop blocks, clipping, pass interference and the like. They put these rules in place for the sake of their game. The NFL is increasingly trading on the names of their star players. Guys like Manning, Favre and Brady do just as much to sell the game and increase awareness of the NFL as the play on the field. Take the recent Pittsburgh/Cleveland game in Week 6. It wasn’t a regional rivalry game but it was the return of Ben Roethlisberger. Jets/Minnesota in Week 5 wasn’t about two good teams meeting in what could have been a Super Bowl preview but Favre’s return to New York and his first game after the dong photos came out which was all topped off by Randy Moss’ first game back in a Vikings uniform. The league, the networks and assorted other media covering games use personalities to sell the games. So it’s natural and understandable that the NFL implements rules to protect their players, their investments, when they’re on the field.

The XFL (which was not actually an acronym for “Xtreme Football League” according to Wikipedia but I like calling the XFL by its unofficial full name) was never really about the individual player, though they did give players a bigger outlet to show off their personality than the No Fun League. No, the XFL was about a football game that would be light on the rules so that things were settled between the players rather than have officials influence the result (Week Six’s late pass interference flag against Denver which led to the Jets’ game-winning TD comes to mind). However, the league was panned from the start for the “rules-light” setup and the fact that it was owned in part by the WWF. It was doomed from the get-go because of where its roots were rather than what it actually was.

However, in a day where the CFL seems to put up exciting games on a regular basis and the NFL’s increasingly draconian rules at the very least annoys the fans, maybe there is room for a return to the sort of hybrid rules system that the XFL had. Like the CFL, the XFL allowed a man in forward motion, used the five-yard halo as opposed to the fair catch rule and allowed each team at least one possession in overtime. There are some rules that a new XFL could do without like not allowing kicked points after touchdown and only natural grass fields. But the XFL’s rules, in retrospect, were on the right path.

The XFL kept responding to low scoring by changing rules. They changed the “bump and run” rules from being allowed anytime before a pass is thrown to within five yards from the line of scrimmage. (Of course, the CFL’s one-yard from the line rule is better but this is a sorta retrospective piece.) They added two- and three-point conversions to the game (though they were all moronic to begin with) to open up the strategic options available. And they got rid of the opening scramble which was wisely dropped after a player was injured on the very first scramble in league history. (See, the XFL wasn’t entirely unsympathetic to injuries suffered by its players.)

The NFL’s rule changes now tend to lean increasingly towards player safety which, while being a noble and admirable cause, isn’t what the fans want to see. Fans don’t want their favourite players to have their Twitter accounts silenced before, during and after games. They want to see touchdown celebrations the likes of which the CFL used to have. There should be nothing wrong with a player taunting an opponent to his face. Trash talk, intimidation and getting under an opponent’s skin is a just as much a part of the game as the forward pass. Star quarterbacks are drawing penalties for getting hit only split seconds after releasing the ball and some (see Brady, Tom) beg for the penalty flags. Penalties called because the quarterback didn’t wait for the umpire to get in position before snapping the ball (though rare) are outlandish. At times, it seems as though the Tax Act contains fewer rules than the NFL rule book.

I know I’m trying to make it sound that the return to XFL-style football is about more than the big hits that the NFL is trying to legislate out of the game. The facts of the matter are these: 1) The XFL brought in rules from outside the NFL’s rule book to improve the quality of the game, even if it didn’t work as well as they’d hope; and 2) We’ve been raised in a culture where big hits are celebrated. Highlight films with big hits, sports news segments dedicated to recapping the week’s biggest hits and ESPN’s “Jacked Up” segments cram the big hits down our throats. Actually, cram is a bad word because we love the big hit. Are they dangerous? Yes. Are they spectacular? Hell yeah. There’s still a place for the highlight reel play and I’m convinced that enough people want to see the big hit that an XFL-style league with an emphasis on big hits can be successful.

So we come back to the question posed at the top of the post: Is now the right time for the XFL to return? With the possibility (and likelihood) of a strike or lockout shutting down the NFL next season, it sure seems that way from a business sense. But with complaints that star players are protected by the league and officials, maybe fans would like to get back to football where every hard hit is cheered as opposed to being flagged for 15 yards.

Right now, there’s another alternate football league that’s finding low-level success with its games televised on Versus and HDNet. The United Football League acts like something between a beer league football where old men and ambitious kids play in the hopes of an NFL scout noticing them and an NFL developmental league. Really, the league is hoping to scrape together some market share when the NFL shuts down next year. They also seem to be following in the XFL’s footsteps by launching with teams in old XFL stomping grounds. However, the UFL can’t make headlines except for signing players that should have retired (Jeff Garcia) or been incarcerated (Maurice Clarret) while filling out the rosters with scrubs that couldn’t make it in the NFL (or seemingly the CFL). Unless striking NFL players defect en masse, the UFL can’t make any in-roads offering a very similar product as the NFL but on a smaller scale. If the NFL doesn’t strike, the UFL likely won’t be long for the sporting world. At least the XFL was smart enough to schedule itself to not compete directly with the NFL.

The biggest problem with the XFL was never the rules or the presentation (it was fairly revolutionary in that it introduced the overhead camera and in-game interview) but the stigma that came from being associated professional wrestling. Fans cynically assumed that any close or exciting games were staged by the same writers that did the WWF’s wrestling programs.

A revived XFL or other alternative football league that tries to improve on-field action that doesn’t carry the stigma of being staged can be an excellent complement to the current NFL. People watching the NFL get the big names while people watching the XFL get their “video game” action in real life. And, somehow, I think that there might be some folks that watch both leagues.