The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Oliver Luck Discusses XFL After Week One

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

XFL Commissioner, Oliver Luck, joins Matt to discuss the strong start for the new league and the XFL Championship to be played here in Houston

This is Craig Vigio. Vigio. Vigio. Back to Matt Thomas on Sports Talk, 790. Oh, we're having some fun. Your home with the Stros. We'll get more to the unfortunate disaster that is daily news dump on the Astros.

But right now, we'll talk about some positive things. First and foremost, the first weekend of the XFL came across as a, I think, a pretty resigning successful mark no matter with the venue, especially in Houston, Texas. Oliver Luck, joining us from the XFL, the Grand Puba. Oliver, is the press conference the worst kept secret tomorrow, or can we talk about it right now? It's the worst kept secret in the history of professional football, but let's just talk about it tomorrow if we could. All right, very good.

Needless to say, TD, UCU studying was the place to be. I'm taking my middle son, my 17-year-olds like, Dad, I've got to go. So Sunday, we're going to the big game. Give me your – look, you're going to be very happy with everything that turned out. lot of room for growth. But give me your biggest surprise from just the logistics and the game itself from week one of your season. So we were, as you'd expect, you know, pretty pleased with the results, you know, the quality of play I thought was good. I thought quarterback play by and large, you know, was good. And quarterback play is so important, right? When folks, you know, first see a new

league, I thought, you know, the games had had a lot of excitement. There was parity, with the exception of the New York game that got out of hand a little bit. Kevin Gilbride, another old Oiler coach, you know, assistant coach, really lit it up and beat Tampa Bay pretty soundly. But other than that, the games, you know, we're close going into the fourth quarter. You know, the coolest part, here I am in D.C. at the Defender's game on Saturday.

And it was right before the, you know, the roughneck game. Cardale Jones hits a couple of nights passes, maybe three, four minutes into the first quarter. And the almost 20,000 fans there start to chant MVP, you know. They were giving like to this team, They didn't know Cardale Jones from the Man in the Moon probably. Right. You know, first three or four minutes of the, you know, existence, if you will, of the team in Washington, D.C.

But it was great to see fans come in there, have fun, chant, get excited, you know, very affordable tickets. As you know, $20, $25 gets you in the building, good seats. So it was just kind of fun to see the, you know, the fans of these various teams sort of adopt these teams and begin to, you know, sort of put life into what it had. really just been a brand, right? Just a logo. And it certainly was the case, and now you're getting social media involved. You've got an XFL app I want to get to in a second. But I do want to say, I did not attend the first game. I wanted to see it on television.

First of all, Fox and ESPN did a great job of their presentation. It had a real feel of an NFL week look to it. I don't know if that's what you want, but it had a sense of professionalism that maybe the other leagues didn't have. I loved the fact that I could hear the play calls. I'd love the fact that I could see that the challenge. center in play. I love the different options for the extra point. I love where the guys are lined up on kicks, which is, I think, is interesting in placement and then for safety. I'll say the only thing that I thought was kind of tough to watch, frankly, Oliver, was the ability for the

silent reporters to go talk to these players and coaches in both good times and in bad. What was your feeling as you watched maybe a kick or two go astray and then immediately Brock Hewer is going to talk to that guy. Yeah, you know, I don't disagree with you a little bit because it is tough, particularly when you just made a bad play. And like, I can remember making a lot of bad plays. It's noise. You come off the field and all of a sudden, boom, there's a, there's a microphone right in

your face mask, so to speak. So that's a challenge. But, you know, as we talk to Fox and ESPN and put all this together, there was a real desire to get authenticity, right, to get the real sort of brutal authenticity that you get from a football game. And, you know, that's the good and the bad, right? We even had, you probably may have heard this, had an F-bomb dropped, you know, during one of those segments, because a guy had just been flagged for, you know, for a penalty. And he comes off and he's, you know, he's totally mad of himself, right? You know, it happened to drop an F-bomb that made it through the sensors.

So that's a concern. But overall, I think the access that we want to provide to the fans, that authenticity, that sort of outweighed everything else. And we just have to be, we've got to train up our players and our coaches to know that, hey, you know, you've really got to control your temper. But ultimately, fans tell us they want to see what it's like in the sideline, what it's like in the huddle. They want to, you know, really have that sort of authentic feel for what players and coaches are going through. And, you know, it's a new world, right? You know, you and I are both a little bit older than the millennials sort of playing the game now. So, you know, they may have a different view of this.

In fact, our players love the fact that there's, you know, sideline folks down there because, you know, that's just part of the world that they grow up with now. Oliver Luck is the commissioner and CEO of the XFL with us here on the Matt Thomas show. Oliver, you've got a new app out. I know they were pushing it quite a bit during the television broadcast, but you're trying to get people not only involved in the stadium but on their phones as well. Yeah, this is a play XFL app, which can be downloaded at no cost, and it allows you to predict scores, predict winners,

and there's a $500,000 prize package that's a part of that. So, you know, this is in a sense one of the ways that we're trying to, to engage the gaming community, the sports wagering community. Obviously, people gamble on football, duh. We've known that forever. And we want to be very upfront and straightforward with that community. So I would encourage folks, there's no downside at all. You know, download the app and predict the games and enjoy it. It's kind of a fun thing. I'm going to assume you've had a conference call with either all the coaches or player personnel GM folks. What was their biggest challenge? because there are obviously some nuances, different things that a June Jones or Norm Chow or Bob Stoops that aren't accustomed to.

What was the biggest change for them that they had to kind of get used to? So, you know, all during training camp, but we started early December, had mini camps, December, training camp, January. And I think the biggest thing, really, for our coaches to adapt to was the 25-second play clock. You know, contrast that with the 42nd play clock in the NFL. That's tight, right? 25 seconds, you've got to make your decision as a coach where play you want to run. You've got to get that into the quarterback quarterback's got to call that play. You've got to get up the line of scrimmage.

You know, you need at least four or five seconds at the line of the scrimmage to make your checks, right? To get out of the bad play, depending on how the defense sets itself up. So that probably was the biggest, you know, change. So, you know, the guy's calling plays. The coach is calling the offensive plays. They have to be ready immediately when the previous play, you know, ends and no exact. And that took a little bit of time. That took a little bit of time.

I was happy to see we only had, I think, one delay of game during the entire weekend, you know, this past weekend. So that was good. But I think our coach, our play callers and our quarterbacks, offenses, they've had to adapt to that. So far, so good. But that was probably the single biggest sort of change from what most of these guys have been used to. And, of course, you know, it was either major college guys like Bob Stoops or Pet Malmleton or, you know, pro guys like, you know, Gil Pride and June and others. How'd they like having just two timeouts in each half?

They didn't mind that so much. You know, they just basically said, hey, we have to be smart with how we do this, and we want to save them until, you know, that end of the second half, end of the game situation. So that didn't seem to be too much of a big deal to them. All right. The last question, and this is when you've gotten 500 times from sports host and marketing people. Everybody gets a good first kick.

First week, good pop, good cover. what are you now as a sports executive for decades now, what is week two and three like going to be for your league in terms of maintaining the good momentum? Because I know television ratings were good. Crowds, the most part, were good. What's the next level in, say, the next two or three weeks? It's just trying to maintain that same kind of positive momentum, I'm assuming?

Yeah, so there'll be an inevitable dip in ratings, I think, and maybe even in attendance because there's a curiosity factor week one. We accept that. But this weekend, I'll be up in Seattle on Sunday. they're going to have over 30,000 people in CenturyLink for the Dragon's Home Opener. So I think we can, you know, fight that a little bit. All we need to do, really, is play good quality football, exciting games. You know, we're developing slowly but surely our own stars, right, guys like, you know, PJ Walker,

you know, the Houston quarterback who just, you know, was an awesome player, you know, this past weekend, our star of the star of the week. And it's just about playing continually good, crisp, watchable, fun, exciting. football. And I think that's, that's, that that'll maintain our ratings. That'll maintain our attendance at a level that, you know, we think is sufficient in order to, uh, to really build a strong foundation for this thing. We also realize, though, you know, a year one, first year out, we're going to need a year two and a year three to really establish ourselves. Vince McMahon, who's, of course, our owner and founder, it's told me multiple times. He's in this for the long haul.

So we can afford to, you know, to, uh, to be smart and not chase, you know, a sugar high, so to speak, right? Yeah. I'll really try to build a strong foundation. Well, I'll just say I got a 17-year-old at home that's very excited about checking out the first game this weekend. So you've got the young generation hooked. I think it's, again, off to a great start. I love the logo.

I love the color scheme. The people that were at TDUC Stadium seemed externally fired up. And I think that's probably a good place to watch a lot of XF football between now and the end of the year. Oliver, thank you for the time, my friend. And we look forward to hearing the grand announcement tomorrow officially. Okay. Thanks very much. You'll be surprised.

No, I won't. There's no surprise. Zero surprise. Thanks, Oliver. All right. Oliver, luck. The commissioner and CEO of the XFL joining us here on the show. And, yeah, tomorrow they're going to announce the championship games in Houston.

Not a bad deal, right? I don't know. I don't know if you'd want to have it necessarily at the home stadium where the higher seat is, but maybe that could be the case with the beloved Houston roughnecks.