XFL Could Eschew Safety and Embrace Old-School Football

If enough fans say they want to see more hitting in football, the XFL may give them what they want.

WWE chairman Vince McMahon announces the creation of the XFL, a new professional football league to rival the NFL. (Robert Rosamilio/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
WWE chairman Vince McMahon announces the creation of the XFL, a new professional football league to rival the NFL. (Robert Rosamilio/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

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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