XFL Could Eschew Safety and Embrace Old-School Football

In a 2016 piece about the state of football in America, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that while the league is interested in player safety, fans are simply interested in the game.

“I’d be fooling you if I don’t say: I hear guys that say, ‘Just let them play,’” Goodell said

With a flurry of safety-related rule changes that indicate the NFL has no intention to “just let them play,” it’s possible the XFL will shaping its game in such a way so that “they” can.

When he announced the XFL, founder Vince McMahon said the league would “be asking football fans what they want and what they don’t want.” If enough fans answer that they want to see more hitting, not less, in football, McMahon and the XFL may just give them what they want.

“The time may be right for someone to roll the dice with $250 million or so in the hopes of launching a football league that would essentially operate like a modern-day XFL — loud, proud, violent, brutal, bloody, and everything that the NFL was before political, legal, and social sensitivities forced the league to change,” according to ProFootballTalk.

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Evan Bleier

Evan is a senior editor with InsideHook who earned a master’s degree in journalism from NYU and has called Brooklyn home since 2006. A fan of Boston sports, Nashville hot chicken and Kentucky bourbon, Evan has had his work published in publications including “Maxim,” Bleacher Report and “The Daily Mail.”