If you’re a fan of Vince McMahon’s XFL, you may want to sit down while reading this. We’ve got some shocking bad news that you might not be able to handle. Well, you should be able to handle it, because—spoiler alert—it may sound a little familiar to you, but that doesn’t make this any less difficult. According to The Wrap, the XFL has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which comes just a few days after laying off pretty much all of its staff and admitting that it had no plans for a 2021 season. In other words, the XFL is dead. Again.
Well, probably. There hasn’t been an official statement on the league’s future but the XFL Twitter account did post this on the day when everybody got fired.
As fans of sports and extremeness will remember, McMahon’s last attempt to start a football league also ended after only one season in 2001, but the revived XFL can at least partially blame its death on the coronavirus. As The Wrap notes, the league started relatively strong when it launched in February, but the ratings gradually declined as the weeks went on and by the end of March the games had to be canceled anyway because of the pandemic. Basically, people were losing interest before all of this shit started to go bad, so the chances of the XFL landing on its feet in a world where people are concerned about the future of basic concepts like a movie theater or restaurant aren’t especially good.
Assuming the XFL doesn’t pull off another miraculous revival, this will—once again—leave the 2001 Los Angeles Xtreme as the one and only team to ever win the Million Dollar Game (formerly known as the Big Game At The End Of The Season, which is legitimately funny).