the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

DON’T MESS WITH SUCCESS 217
“OH, THE HUMANITY!”
There were unmistakable hints of doom in the weeks before the
nascent XFL kicked off its first and only season. One of those hints was
more difficult to ignore than the others.
The new league was working hard to establish itself as a credible
rival to the NFL, which partners Vince McMahon and Dick Ebersol
hoped to dethrone as the undisputed heavyweight champion of television
sports. On January 6, 2001, less than a month before the XFL’s opening
games, the league unleashed its most provocative secret weapon—a fourthousand-pound,
143-foot-long blimp painted to look like the league’s
patented black- and- red football.
RECIPE FOR DISASTER
Overheated Mediocrity
Ingredients
1 blustery wrestling promoter with Big Idea
1 desperate television network
Hundreds of second-tier football players
Tons of unjusti fied
hyperbole
Gratuitous sex
Mindless violence
Pair wrestling promoter and network executive
in televi sion fishbowl.
Recruit players. Combine with
hype about sex and violence and let steep for one year,
or until overheated. Serve prematurely.