the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

DON’T MESS WITH SUCCESS 215
nothing in partic ular, so sportswriter Mike Penner of the Los Angeles
Times suggested possibilities such as “Xceptionally Xaggerated Xpecta-
tions” and “Xtravagantly Xcruciating Xecution” and “Xcessively Xcit-
able Xperts Xuding Xasperation.” Everything about the XFL was fair
game for critics, including the logo of the L.A. Xtreme, which at least one
Web site compared to a stylized swastika.
The rest of the one and only XFL season is remembered mostly for
its grim and relentless television ratings slide. The two games broadcast
the following day received only a 4.2, already below the 4.5 rating that
NBC had guaranteed its advertisers, which were paying an average of
$130,000 for each thirty- second spot. By the third week, the XFL broadcasts
were the 89th-ranked televi sion show in the country. By the fourth
week, Honda, one of the league’s original sponsors, had withdrawn its ads
and the league was providing free airtime for other advertisers to compensate
for its promise of higher ratings. Even exuberantly promoted—
and ultimately empty—promises that XFL cameras would take viewers
on a fleshy tour of the cheerleaders’ locker room at halftime of a game during
Week Six brought only minor, and temporary, relief. In the seventh
week, the XFL received a 1.6, earning it the dubious distinction as the
lowest network prime-time rating in the history of Nielsen Media Research.
The rating for the Million Dollar Game was 2.5, well below the 3.3
rating that the league averaged during its twelve-week season. (By contrast,
Super Bowl XXXIX in February 2005 got a 41.3 rating, representing
143.6 million American fans.) Adding insult to injury was the
coincidence that the NFL draft was held the same weekend as the Million
Dollar Game, and even that mind- numbing auction of high-priced
horse flesh drew a 2.65. Or, as Forrest put it in Long Bomb, “If ever there
was a thing called active disinterest, this was it—several million football
fans opting to watch NFL executives gum doughnuts and slurp coffee
. . . instead of a living, breathing football championship.”
So spectacular was the XFL’s failure that in 2004 Sports Illustrated