XFL

Announced on February 3, 2000, the XFL was a 50–50 joint venture between NBC and Vince McMahon's WWF — pro football remixed with pro-wrestling attitude, timed to fill the void after the NFL season. The gimmicks were the point: instead of a coin toss, two players sprinted for a loose ball in an "opening scramble"; fair catches were banned; conversions had to be run or thrown from the two-yard line; and players could print nicknames on their jerseys, which is how Las Vegas Outlaws running back Rod Smart became a folk hero named "He Hate Me" after week one.

Opening night, exactly a year after the announcement, was a legitimate smash — a 9.5 Nielsen rating and an estimated 14 million viewers. Then America got a look at the actual football. By week two the rating had collapsed to 4.6, and a March 31 broadcast bottomed out at 1.5, the lowest rating ever for a major-network primetime weekend first-run sports telecast. The Los Angeles Xtreme beat the San Francisco Demons 38–6 for the only championship on April 21, 2001, and the league folded weeks later.

The punchline aged into affection. ESPN's 30 for 30 documentary This Was the XFL recast the league as a fascinating, ahead-of-its-time fiasco, and McMahon even relaunched an XFL in 2020. But the 2001 original remains the pure artifact: one perfect season of beautiful, doomed spectacle.