One of my more memorable assignments at the Chronicle came in 2001, when I was assigned to cover the inaugural XFL game in Las Vegas between the New York/New Jersey Hitmen and Las Vegas Outlaws.
That game was called on NBC by the broadcast team of Matt Vasgersian and Jesse “The Body” Ventura. Vasgersian was replaced on the lead telecast a week later by Jim Ross, the longtime WWE announcer, because league co-owner Vince McMahon wanted to give more of a wrestling-style feel to the proceedings.
Nineteen years later, the XFL lives once more. Its inaugural weekend’s games include Saturday’s game at TDECU Stadium between the Los Angeles Wildcats and Houston Roughnecks, and the telecast team on Fox Sports will be Curt Menefee and Joel Klatt.
That alone should give you an idea that the second iteration of the XFL, now solely owned by McMahon, who partnered with NBC for the 2001 league, will be considerably different than the first.
“Anybody who is under 30 doesn’t remember (the 2001 XFL),” Menefee said this week. “People who are bringing it up are older and going through their memory banks. People who don’t have that frame of reference are going to watch football and not expect … a sideshow.
“From every angle, it’s going to be football, football, football.”
For those of you under 30, the XFL got off to a roaring start with its first game, which drew a 9.5 Nielsen rating and 14 million viewers. By season’s end, though, the substandard quality of football and WWE’s attempt to mix entertainment with football had worn thin with viewers and the league was disbanded.
With that history in mind, Menefee and Klatt said this week that the new XFL should be judged by the quality of its play and downplayed the significance of the first week’s TV ratings.
“It’s not about what happens one week. It’s about long-term,” Menefee said. “The quality of football will determine whether or not it is successful. As long as the quality is good week in and week out, it will sustain itself.”
Sound and fury
That being said, the XFL and its telecast partners at Fox and Disney are using the new league as a testing ground.
One area involves new rules governing the kicking game and pace of play. Telecast also will offer several audio enhancements, including listening in on coaches’ play calls to quarterbacks, microphones on skill players and key defenders, sideline in-game interviews with players and coaches and hearing real-time updates from officials on disputed calls.
Klatt said calling an XFL game “will be absolutely similar and completely dissimilar at the same time.”
“It is football, so we will be talking about situations and whether to go for it on fourth down and how to attack defenses,” he said. “But there will be times when those situations and philosophies are impacted by rules that will be new to fans. Explaining them quickly and concisely will be important.
“We also will have access to coaches calling plays and talking to skill players, so instead of going to a replay we might go to the play call and then talk about what you’re about to see.”
The combination, Klatt said, “will be serving the diehard fan who has dreamed of getting closer to the game. People will be pleasantly surprised that the differences aren’t for shock value or entertainment but for making the sport better and bringing fans closer to the game.”
Dialing it back
Chuck McDonald, who will produce Fox’s lead XFL game each weekend, said network crews tested the audio bells and whistles at scrimmages during the XFL’s recent training camp in Houston and quickly learned that they should be handled as judiciously as any production tool.
“We overdid things just to see where the middle ground is,” he said. “People are tuning in because they miss football. We want to give them football, and if it’s a product they don’t recognize because all you’re doing is listening to (coaches and players) on microphones and not covering the game, it won’t be successful.
“We will use them no differently than if we’re doing a feature or a replay sequence. After every play, we will decide what to do. It’s part of that decision process as opposed to having it take over the broadcast.”
If the crowd is into a particular game, McDonald said, crowd noise will carry the audio along with the announcers’ comments. Interviews with players and coaches during the game, as well as being able to listen to the coaches call plays, will be sprinkled in as they contribute the flow of the game.
By the way, given recent developments, it should be noted that coaches in the press box are not allowed to listen to the live television broadcast to hear the opposing coach’s play calls as they are broadcast live to viewers.
“Anybody could break the rules, but they’re not supposed to be listening to that audio during the game,” McDonald said. “Also, if they’re getting a feed that is coming from Fox, the signal will be delayed.”
As for coaches scouting future opponents, McDonald said the live audio of coaches’ play calls will be sufficiently limited that teams won’t be able to chart another team’s offense simply from listening to XFL telecasts.
And should espionage become an issue, he said, “If you think somebody is stealing signs, you change your signs.”
The gold standard for wired-up coaches, as longtime football fans know, is the loquacious Hank Stram, the star of NFL Films’ highlight program for Super Bowl IV in 1970. McDonald isn’t yet familiar with all the XFL coaches, but he said Los Angeles coach Winston Moss is his early choice for best soundbite.
“Winston will be funny. (Houston coach) June Jones is a little more nuts and bolts,” McDonald said. “It will be interesting to see how personalities come out when they realized that people are listening to them.”
Even though Fox crews will dial back the use of audio from the frequency they used during the test games, McDonald said, “The audio will be the star of this league. The thing that blew everybody away is how much you feel a part of the game. Hearing audio in real time will blow people away if we use it right and don’t overdo it.”
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February 07, 2020 at 09:00PM
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On TV/Radio: This XFL will be more football, less sideshow - Houston Chronicle
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