The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Commissioner of the XFL, Oliver Luck, joins Matt Thomas

Episode Date: January 8, 2020

Oliver Luck joins Matt to talk XFL as Training Camps proceed in Houston and the Inaugural Season approaches

Good news. It's the Matt Thomas show for lunch. Let that boring brown bag lunch rot in the employee refrigerator. Oh, what's that smell? The Matt Thomas Show on Sports Talk 790. It was just yesterday that Oliver and some of my coworkers, we went and had breakfast at the corner bakery to talk Dynamo Soccer. Actually, it wasn't just yesterday. It was 10 years ago. And look where we are now.

I'm still doing the show here. And Oliver Luck is the commissioner of the brand new XFL. joining us here on the Matt Thomas show. Commish, good afternoon. How are things? Hey, Matt, I'm doing great. I love the old Dynamo reference. That's awesome. Hey, is there anything that from your time with the Dynamo that you have brought? I'm just talking about MLS. From a marketing standpoint, have you, anything that you sent and brought to the XFL that you learned from your days running the Dynamo organization? You know, I think you learn lessons from every stop along the way. And if I look back on, you know,

My career in the sports business, you know, I was, 10 years with NFL Europe was, you know, very educational for me in terms of, you know, both sort of the football side of things as well as the business side. And I took a lot of those lessons and tried to apply them, you know, to the dynamo when the team moved down from San Jose. And I'm sure, you know, subconsciously I brought a bunch of those learnings or those experiences to, you know, to the four. I think the thing that you have to do in a startup, and this would apply probably across the board, not just to sports, is you've got to be decisive. You've got to be decisive and aggressive because you just don't have a whole lot of time. And, you know, ideally you make very good decisions. But the fun of it all is just the speed with which everything happens and the fact that, you know,

if you think you've got it all buttoned up, there's always something you forgot. And, you know, making sure that that doesn't derail you yourself. And that, you know, I think back to the early Dynamo days, it was a hell of a lot of fun. We had a great time, great response from Houstonians. And still, a lot of things went wrong behind the scenes. Thankfully, people didn't see too much because we had such a, you know, a good team that, as you remember, went on to win two consecutive MLS cups. Well, you are working for a great marketer right now. And I'm just curious, how often do you get on weekly conference calls?

Is Vince text you at 2 o'clock in the morning, 1.30 in the afternoon? I mean, how much communication? I'm assuming it's more next. because the season is just around the corner? How much is he involved because he is sitting there running not only this brandy adventure of his, but he's got a multi-billion-dollar company known as WWE? Yeah, I mean, he's obviously got a day job with WWE, a hugely successful, publicly traded company. So he spends the vast majority of his time on that.

We talk, communicate probably two, three times a week. I'm much more focused on the football side of our operation, training camps, for example, down in Houston right now with all eight of our teams. Vince, you know, has given me, you know, quite honestly, a good bit of rope, right, to kind of structure the football side the way I want. I would say he's probably a little bit more involved with our business side folks. I mean, that's his strength, right? He's an incredible storyteller, incredible marketer.

But he's very engaged. He loves the game. He just loves the game, and he knows how important the game is to, you know, to people. Although he's not a Texan, he was born up here in the Northeast. He'd be a great Texan because he's one of those guys that just has that inherent love of football. You brought, as you mentioned, all the teams have training camp down here. Obviously, weather-wise and Houston's going to be very conducive for that, especially if you're going outdoor. What was the reason?

Is it like drill-to-drill? Are there eight different areas that the teams are separating? I mean, how much togetherness is there and how much separation is there between position players, teams, and coaches? Right. Each one of our teams has their own practice facility. We're using Rice, for example, U of H, TSU, H, TSU, H, BU, Del Mar, and then a number of high school facilities, Del Mar and Tully and Taylor, Thorne. So they all have their own facilities. They will, you know, spend time practicing on their own, and then we'll do. a bunch of joint practice sessions, you know, what old-timers would call a jamboree. And the reason is, I think, relatively simple. You know, these are brand-new teams, right? We started from scratch.

Coaches built their rosters, you know, from ground up. And really the best way we can ensure that everybody is doing well and there's a certain level of parity is to see teams, you know, train against each other, right? Everybody looks good when they're playing against air. So we wanted to make sure that, you know, the D.C. defenders who are training at Rice could get together with, you know, the roughnecks who are training over at U of H and spend, you know, two or three or four days with joint practices, joint drills, ultimately, you know, sort of scrimmages, if you will, so that we can really get a good beat on where our team may need some help. Because, you know, obviously we want parity as best we can, you know, create it and want to make sure that, you know, as team, we go into the season, you know, week number one, season number one, that, you know, ideally we got one-score games in the fourth quarter across the board because we have, you know, teams that are really met.

Oliver, like the commissioner of the XFL with us here on the Matt Thomas show. The big news this week coming out of your organization was the rules and the things that you guys were going to implement. I'd like to know who was in the conference room when you all sat down and said, let's try some things. And we're going to have some fun with some of your new rules as part of one of our end-of-show games. but was there anything that was out there that you maybe can even tell us that was so preposterous that you said you know what we just can't go with that was there anything so crazy that you had to think about yeah there were a number of things there were a number of things matt we left in the cutting room floor thank goodness yeah so first to answer your question you know we brought

together a bunch of you know very i think qualified people former coaches guys like john Fox and Jim Caldwell. We brought former players and current coaches Jim Harbaugh played a role with us and all this. We brought some tech people and some health and safety people, medical officials, because 20 years ago, nobody was talking about brain health and football. Now it's a very important topic. We brought some TV people in as well because television is certainly a part of our ecosystem. So we went through all kinds of ideas, really brainstormed. and, you know, there were things that we quickly dropped. I mean, you know, we had discussions about what if you make tackles,

left and right tackles eligible to catch passes. What would that do to the game? How would you defend that? Is that a bridge too far for most folks? And the answer was, yes, that is a bridge too far because it would sort of really fundamentally change the way, you know, a defense is structured. And then there are some small things. You know, one of the things we looked at for our punt is to do what the season.

the NFL does, which is create a five-yard halo around the punt returner. You know, you can't just, you know, get right in the face of a partner. You have to give him five yards to catch the ball and then allow him to at least begin to start, you know, our return. And we tested that with a bunch of junior colleges, with a bunch of semi-pro leagues. And it turned out that it is really hard to teach American players, you know, guys who've grown up in our high school system and our college system with the NFL. It's very hard to teach them that, right, because it's hard to judge, you know, where the guy is and what five yards is. It's also very hard to officiate. Dean Blanino is our head of officiating a name that many NFL fans would know used to run the NFL's officiating department.

But Dean said that's just a really, you know, tough thing to officiate. So there were a lot of things that were left on the, you know, cutting room floor, so to speak. All right, I got two minutes. I want two questions. So first one, give me your favorite rule that we don't see. in the NFL that we will see in the XFL that you're like, you know what, this is going to be a game changer? My favorite rule is the three options that a team has after they score a touchdown.

Touchdowns worth six points, right? We're familiar with that. And then you've got a one point, a two point, and a three point option. They're all plays from scrimmage, the one pointer from the two-yard line, the two-pointer from the five-yard line, and then the three-pointer from the 10-yard line. That's pure strategy, right? Which is why I like it. You know, your first quarter, what does the coach do?

You know, do you play it safe and go for the one-point conversion from the two, or do you roll the dice a little bit? I just think that'll add strategy. And you know what? As football fans, we always second-guess our coaches, and I think this will lead to a whole bunch of second-guessing. And that's fun. That's part of why we enjoy the game so much. That's probably my favorite rule change. All right, Oliver, last question.

How is the most famous? I guess he was the valedictorian of Stratford Heistled, 2008. How's he doing? He's doing fine, thank you. He and his wife had their first child about six weeks ago. He's enjoying his retirement and having fun and doing well, but thanks for asking. Architect or sports broadcaster or both in the next five years? More likely to pursue his sort of chosen field, which is architect, than he is to be a broadcaster.

I wouldn't rule that out necessarily, but I think he's more likely to – his wife is an architect as well. they both graduated from Stanford. So I think they're mulling over where they want to spend their time and their energy. And remind the folks where I let you go when opening weekend is. It's right after the Super Bowl, correct? Yes, the weekend right after the Super Bowl, February 8th and 9th. The roughnecks are at U of H that weekend for their home opener against the L.A. Wildcats, if I'm not mistaken.

So June Jones, the head coach, the team. So we're very excited. I feel real good about what June is doing. That guy's going to score some points. He's going to be fun to watch. As he always has been, whether it's at the old gamblers or up at SMU or Hawaii or with the falcons, he's going to light up the scoreboard. All right, Oliver, it's a pleasure to visit with you.

Congratulations and all the success. Publicity and positivity is running around a lot. Good luck, and you know where you can find us have been anything from us. Thanks for the time, and good luck for the start of the season, my friend. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Great to talk to you. Appreciate it.

You got it. That's it. That's Oliver Luck, the commissioner of the XFL, former older quarterback, and one of my favorites when I was during the early days, the last days of Lovey Blue, and obviously now running things with the XFL after a run with West Virginia, Houston Dynamo, work for the NCAA for a while. He has been all over the place and now has a brand new adventure.