{"id":46448,"date":"2019-01-09T12:59:48","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T16:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=46448"},"modified":"2020-08-10T12:59:59","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T16:59:59","slug":"could-the-xfl-actually-save-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=46448","title":{"rendered":"Could the XFL actually save football?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I\u2019ve gone on record to say that I\u2019ve typically been in the camp that I don\u2019t think college athletes should be getting paid, because they\u2019re in essence already being paid with college educations, room, board, feed and all sorts of non-monetary privileges that are the things that typically drown all ordinary people in student debt for the vast majority of their lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read numerous articles and arguments both for and against the idea of paying student-athletes, and I most certainly see both sides of the coin.\u00a0 And although I still feel strongly that college players shouldn\u2019t be paid money, I do feel like I\u2019m softening on the idea that the reality still is that college players receive very little for their blood, sweat and tears, while the coaches, staff, schools and the fat cats of the NCAA are making literal millions of dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n

I now think the idea<\/a> of allowing players to make royalties off of their name is fair, and\/or the idea that student-athletes should<\/em> receive some sort of annuities or flexible scholarships that will allow them to protect their lives with educations and more usable<\/em> degrees, instead of forcing them to make all sorts of essential decisions while they\u2019re still eligible amateurs, often times still teenagers or just past.\u00a0 The inequity of what students receive versus what the NCAA gets is wider than a Kardashian\u2019s asshole and it just doesn\u2019t seem right to me anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, going back to the headline of this post, shortly after Clemson put the finishing touches on Alabama in round 4, and winning their second National Championship (which is a disgusting thought in its own right but that\u2019s another diatribe), the recently re-booted XFL made a strategically subtle reminder to the world<\/a>, that they are \u201cnot restricted by the rules that exist in other professional football leagues,\u201d which is basically saying \u201cunlike the NFL, we don\u2019t have rules saying you have to be X years old or have completed X number of years in college,\u201d which to the ears of the young and ambitious sounds a lot like \u201cyou can go high school to pro and start getting paid sooner<\/em>\u2026 in the XFL.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Money is the impetus for everything in the rotten world we live in, and it goes to say that money is main reason for how the world of f\u00fatbol americano is the way it is today.\u00a0 Underclassmen in the college ranks are coveted and exploited because they\u2019re young, have fresh legs, and are malleable to a school\u2019s system.\u00a0 Subsequently, their young age makes them appealing to the professional ranks since their window of peak physical performance is open longer at 20 than it is at 22, so they can be exploited and milked for longer.<\/span><\/p>\n

The rich get richer, which is why college football has seen four straight years of Alabama vs. Clemson.\u00a0 Kids want to play for winners, which is why the top schools always have their veritable picks of the litter, with there being a trickle-down effect of the top prospects often times going to the most winning schools that will have them.\u00a0 Upstarts often happen when the unheralded and underrated rise to their potentials, or more often times, when a disgruntled former prospect grows tired of riding the bench and being forced to wait their turn, and then they transfer to another school with hopes for actual playing time and exposure, but none of them in recent years have still been able to actually topple a powerhouse.<\/span><\/p>\n

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And then they go to the NFL because there\u2019s nowhere else to go, and in spite of the NFL\u2019s best efforts to try and seem cold and callous with their players and try to make them believe that everyone is truly expendable and that every player\u2019s shelf life is just a draft away from expiring, it doesn\u2019t stop them from vacuuming in godly amounts of money in the time that their active careers are running.<\/span><\/p>\n

These are the reasons why tickets the game aren\u2019t really tickets to the game anymore, and terms like personal seat licenses<\/em> exist.\u00a0 Why going to a football game costs nearly $200 for two people once you factor in stuff like parking and food on top of admission.\u00a0 Why the Rams and Chargers, despite playing in front of no fans in Los Angeles, were plucked out of St. Louis and San Diego (and still made the playoffs in spite of their shit support).<\/span><\/p>\n

In my opinion, football is kind of broken, and there\u2019s real no end in sight.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, I do think the XFL, whether they realize it or not, stands a chance at helping save it.\u00a0 By simply being an alternative and existing, they open the window for the pool of talent to possibly flow elsewhere, breaking the monopoly that college and NFL has turned into.\u00a0 And because the XFL is a professional league where their players and personnel are actually compensated, their existence will create a very interesting scenario in the future where high school prep stars and touted prospects will actually have to stop and think about their career\u2019s future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gone will be the linear path after high school, and a fork in the road will be present: will they go to college, where they\u2019ll effectively be paying for free, but have the chance at possibly becoming an NFL player, where they\u2019ll undoubtedly make money in amounts beyond their imagination?\u00a0 Or will they renounce their amateur status and go straight to the XFL, where they can get paid immediately to begin development and start getting paid playing football?<\/span><\/p>\n

Going to college is no sure bet, and an injury will derail everything in a heartbeat.\u00a0 But if they tough it out and succeed, they\u2019ll make millions.\u00a0 But if they fail, they theoretically could still fall back onto stuff like the XFL of CFL, but they\u2019ll still have to wear the denigration of failure on their sleeves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Going directly to the XFL might not guarantee them immediate millions, but at the same time, they\u2019re back in an infant stage.\u00a0 Who\u2019s to say that they might not get it right the second time around?\u00a0 Maybe they learned from their failure back in 2001 and have figured out how to run a competent football organization in 2020?\u00a0 Or maybe they didn\u2019t, and they\u2019re going to flop again and crash and burn?\u00a0 But the thing is, they\u2019ll still offer the chance at making money immediately, and that\u2019s going to be a very hard offer for lots of young talented amateurs to ignore when the time comes for them to have to decide on what\u2019s going to happen next in their careers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The point is, the sheer existence of an alternative is what football really needs.\u00a0 Not that Alabama\/Clemson are ever bad games to watch, it just puts an exclamation point on the fact of how broken the system really is.\u00a0 It\u2019s an injustice that a talent as immense as Trevor Lawrence (as much as I loathe the fact that he plays for Clemson) will get no real compensation for his efforts, and maybe it\u2019s the option of something like the XFL that will make sure that it might not have to happen to all of them, in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve gone on record to say that I\u2019ve typically been in the camp that I don\u2019t think college athletes should be getting paid, because they\u2019re in essence already being paid with college educations, room, board, feed and all sorts of non-monetary privileges that are the things that typically drown all ordinary people in student debt … Continue reading Could the XFL actually save football?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[79,106,58,55],"class_list":["post-46448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-cashmoney","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-wwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46450,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46448\/revisions\/46450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}