If the new XFL doesn’t fail immediately, it might change the NFL’s next labor fight

The league starting in 2020 wouldn’t be an accident.

The XFL is coming back. WWE chairman Vince McMahon, who founded the XFL and led it through its one season in 2001, has moved to start another professional football league of the same name.

McMahon’s new league won’t start play until 2020, he says. It’s probably not a coincidence that 2020 is the last season covered under the current collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and its players union, the NFLPA.

McMahon might be positioning himself to exploit a labor fight

He did this the last time. The XFL came into its brief existence in 2001 when the NFL and NFLPA were in the midst of a string of two-year CBA extensions. It turned out that union executive director Gene Upshaw and commissioner Paul Tagliabue reached a deal that averted a strike or lockout and kept labor peace in the NFL. But if the league and the union hadn’t reached a deal, the XFL could’ve tried to poach out-of-work players.

The XFL wound up going after a mix of retired NFL players, former college players looking for work, and players from the CFL, NFL Europe, and Arena Football League. It might go a similar route this time around, though NFL Europe no longer exists.

In theory, the existence of another league could give players leverage

There are still three seasons left on the current CBA. But if the new XFL has a strong debut in 2020 and demonstrates it can pay players well and provide them the right benefits, it could be useful for NFL players in negotiations with team owners.

It’d be stunning (and probably stopped in court) if players on NFL contracts tried to ditch those deals to play in McMahon’s league. But if CBA negotiations were to fail and NFL players stopped getting paid because of either a strike (initiated by them) or a lockout (by the owners), they’d theoretically be free to find work in another league.

No alternative football league’s ever gained long-term traction, though

The XFL died after a year. The United Football League lived from 2009 to 2012. The Arena Football League has been in existence in some form since 1987, but it has struggled over the past decade. The United States Football League lasted from 1983 to 1985, though the failed owner of one of those teams is now president of the United States, so whatever.

There’s a reasonably detailed Wikipedia page full of tiny leagues and ones that died shortly after their births. A few of them were specifically built to take on the NFL, but none has ever come close to stopping that NFL’s runaway train full of money.

It’s not just football. The NBA and NHL have also survived easily despite smaller leagues popping up over time. Building sports leagues people want to watch is hard.

Major League Baseball doesn’t have to deal with anyone going after its players, because it enjoys an archaic antitrust exemption that allows it to ward off any potential rival leagues. (This is because of an old court ruling that says baseball isn’t “interstate commerce” and thus doesn’t face the same regulatory laws as other things that are, like baseball, obviously interstate commerce.)

All of this is to say: The NFL won’t die because of whatever McMahon builds. But if his new league doesn’t flop immediately and the NFL doesn’t achieve labor peace by around that time, the new league might alter the dynamic of the next CBA talks.