That other football

Hey, I gave it a shot. Flipped on the tube Saturday afternoon. Watched a bit of the Seattle ... Dragons, is it? vs. the DC ... Defenders, I believe. Tried to be objective about what I was seeing.

First thing I saw was the Dragons QB, Beat An SEC School Once While Playing For Troy (his real name escapes me), bounce a pass ten yards shy of his intended receiver on a medium square-out.

Second thing I saw was a Defenders running back, Became The All-Time Leading Rusher In NCAA Division I History While Playing At San Diego State, get tackled for a loss.

I saw some blocking and tackling and running plays and passing plays. I saw a sort of cool color scheme (Seattle's orange-and-green) and, later, helmets that reminded me a bit of the old Houston Oilers helmets (the Houston Roughnecks' helmets). Which, again, was sort of cool.

Nothing I saw made me gush the way some of the sports radio poodles did, who were all talking about what an entertaining product the XFL put out there on the first weekend of its second incarnation.

I didn't see that. I just saw normal football being played by a bunch of normal guys. In other words, it was just football. Same as the NFL, only played by dudes who couldn't make a 53-man NFL roster.

The hook for the XFL, pushed by the various game announcers all weekend, was that we were watching football played by people who were infinitesimally less talented than NFL players. Who were the last cuts in a lot of cases. Who were players you could be seeing in the NFL again very, very soon.

In other words, what we were watching was the AHL. Or Triple-A baseball. Minor-league football, but very high end minor-league football.

The problem with selling the XFL this way, of course -- one radio poodle even compared to the NBA's G-League -- is it endangers its existence as a football entity unto itself. And that's ostensibly its goal here. That's why it's absurd to compare it to the G-League, whose teams have specific affiliations with NBA parent clubs, and whose players regularly get called up and sent down by their parent clubs.

The XFL is not that. But if the players see it that way -- if they see it merely as a portal to the NFL (or, in a lot of cases, back to the NFL) -- then that's essentially what it becomes. And the XFL winds up as a mere feeder system, perpetually losing the stars it creates to Big Daddy.

Maybe the suits running the XFL figured that was going to be its role all along. And that's fine, if so. But somehow I thought the fact it was setting up as a spring league with different rules indicated it wanted to establish itself as something wholly unique.

I don't think Brandon Silvers or Donnel Pumphrey see it that way, though. Which are the real names, respectively, of Beat An SEC School Once While Playing For Troy and Became The All-Time Leading Rusher In NCAA Division I History While Playing At San Diego State.

I know. I looked them up.