What the XFL can learn from minor league baseball

Usually, when spring training begins, football season is well over. But recently, upstart football leagues, like the XFL, have widened the season well into the spring. These leagues have had middling success, rarely breaking out the past couple of seasons. I believe that the key to their success, however, lies in baseball. These leagues should do everything they can to emulate minor league baseball.

How the XFL and other football leagues can learn from minor league baseball

Expand the sport

One of the most beautiful things about MiLB is how it brings professional baseball to areas that would never even hope to host an MLB team. MLB has used MiLB as a testing ground for potential expansion since the dawn of baseball. The San Diego Padres (who have a crazy lineage of minor league teams) started out as a minor league team before MLB granted them an expansion franchise.

I think the XFL and USFL have done this well. With franchises in San Antonio, St. Louis, Orlando, Birmingham, and Memphis, these leagues have brought football to areas starved for it, and most of these areas show out for it. As a next step, I would like to see fewer teams in well-represented professional areas (looking at you, Vegas and Houston) and more teams in places like Oklahoma City and Omaha. MiLB has this down to a science, knowing exactly when an area works and pulling out of a franchise when it doesn’t.

Will minor league football ever have as many teams as the MiLB? No, of course not. Football is expensive, and each roster is double the size of that in baseball, and with fewer games, there is far less money to be made each game, but that is ok.

Don’t be the NFL

The thing that killed the USFL in the 80s was that it thought it was big enough to take on the NFL and the owners promptly bankrupted it trying to force a merger. The XFL and USFL are not the NFL, and that is OK. Minor League Baseball knows it is not MLB, and they relish in it. There is so much character in Minor League teams, from the names, to the history, to the cities, to the stadiums.

So far, spring football teams have played in venues that are well bigger than what they need. These teams will never bring in 50,000 people, so why make them play in such an empty arena? The only exceptions so far have been San Antonio and St. Louis, both of whom seem to fill their venues well.

It is OK to not to be the NFL, the XFL and USFL would best accept themselves as what they are, developmental leagues. With that, the next point.

Develop EVERYTHING

MLB uses MiLB as the testing ground for everything. Rules (like the new pitch clock), coaches, and players, (almost) all start in the minor leagues first. The X in XFL should stand for Xperimental Football League, focused entirely on developing rules, officials, staff, and players. So far, this has been true, just like in MiLB.

These spring football leagues have so far done this well, bringing on young, bubble players and using experimental rules that have been discussed for years. They are doing this well now. It would be nice to see college prospects join the leagues (similar to the draft that the USFL did recently). But MLB dictated anything they do, which the XFL and USFL only have the NFL at arm’s length right now.

Embrace anything the NFL will offer

Finally, if they want to survive, the XFL and USFL need to accept pretty much any and every bone that the NFL will throw them to legitimize them. MLB is tightly intertwined with MiLB, telling them where they will be located, what players and coaches they have, and what level of ball they will play. The XFL does not want or need that type of control, but the NFL wouldn’t offer that.

The NFL has no incentive to place bets on what is essentially a gamble. MiLB is a proven commodity at this point. MiLB teams are worth tens of millions. Vince McMahon sold the entire XFL at a little under $2 million per team in 2020.

If the NFL will throw a partnership at the league, the economics of the situation becomes much better. The ill-fated AAF basically bet its life on an NFL partnership and folded after eight weeks. The NFL won’t take over spring leagues like MLB does with MiLB, paying the players and coaches on behalf of the team. But one day, the NFL might supplement a league, but first the XFL (and USFL) must operate like the original, the successful, Minor League Baseball.