Rumors of Vince McMahon reviving the XFL get mainstream media buzzing

What started with a Friday night tweet raged into an all-out inferno Friday night and Saturday morning as rumors about Vince McMahon reviving the XFL were enough to get WWE to comment with some interesting news.

Journalist Brad Shepard tweeted that McMahon was looking to bring back the XFL and announce it on Thursday, January 25th. That got Deadspin’s David Bixenspan to ask WWE for a comment on this rumor which got a response that McMahon had “established and funded a separate entity from WWE” called Alpha Entertainment that would explore investment opportunities into sports and entertainment properties, including professional football.

Earlier this year, ESPN’s 30 for 30 Films aired a Charlie Ebersol-helmed XFL documentary and WWE both extended and filed for XFL trademarks.

Major media outlets have also picked up on the story including the Washington Post, New York Post, Pro Football Talk, Yahoo, and others. Notably, ESPN has posted nothing on this as of this writing.

The league got a bit of a nostalgia boost this year with the documentary and there some notable technical innovations from the one-year product that debuted and folded in 2001. However, there would be considerable challenges to re-starting the league which include investment money, player acquisition, TV distribution, infrastructure, overcoming the stigma of the previous failure, and finding eyeballs and attention in a marketplace that already has the NFL and college football with the former being notably chided for declining ratings.

As the Post points out in a transcription from the documentary, McMahon has thought about the revival in the past:

“Yes I do,” McMahon replies. “I don’t know what it would be. I don’t know if it’s going to be another XFL or what it may be or how different I would make it. It seems like in some way it would tie in either with the NFL itself or the owners.”