ESPN’s Kevin Seifert has more on the story on the collaboration between the XFL and NFL. Including how the XFL sees itself as a “petri dish” to experiment, how player sharing will not be part of any partnership, how the XFL is about innovating the game of football, and how there could be regional combines this fall.
XFL president Russ Brandon explains how the XFL is a “petri dish” for the NFL.
“The NFL-XFL agreement will give the NFL a “petri dish” to experiment with proposed rules, test new equipment, and develop prospective officials and coaches.”
So the XFL and NFL could work together to develop coaches and officials, but what about players. Dany Garcia says no.
“Asked if the XFL could one day evolve into a position to use allocated NFL players or construct another kind of sharing agreement, as occurred in NFL Europe, Garcia said: “That’s a no. We are a spring league. We will play at the highest level in the spring. There is not the anticipation of any player sharing that changes the dynamic. That’s not how we’re executing our vision.”
Seifert says that the XFL and NFL met back in the fall of 2021, something Ben Fischer reported on as well.
“Garcia, Johnson and Gerry Cardinale of RedBird Capital Partners met last fall with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent to begin discussing the partnership.”
XFL Chairwoman Dany Garcia talks about how the XFL wants to be good stewards of football.
“One of the things we made clear starting off is that we were going to take a stewardship position on the game and the game of football, expanding it and being impactful to the industry,” Garcia said. “So I would say the field sees us as what we are, which is deeply leaning into innovation, and we were confident that having important conversations and articulating what we wanted to accomplish would be advantageous to anyone sitting in the room with us. We’re excited about that. Our relationships with football and the NFL are deep and longstanding, so it was a natural process.”
Russ Brandon also tells Seifert that regional combines could be in the fall.
“Brandon said the league is working on plans for regional combines this fall, where it will test new approaches to evaluating players, with an eye toward opening training camps by January 2023.”
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