For 671 days I had the coolest job in the world: Change the game of football to make it better for fans, players, and coaches. I can't thank the @XFL2020, Oliver, Vince, and everyone involved enough. Made some friends for life and will share some of my favorite memories here

This is after Vince announced the league was coming back in January 2018. I had been talking to anyone that would listen on how to make the game of football better. (missed the mark the timing by about 50 minutes...)

How I found out about the opportunity was from a text from West Virginia number. It would ultimately be Oliver texting me about it. Because of being on the west coast I slept through the announcement the next day and woke up to 12 telling me. I started working near instantly

My job description had 2 items:
1. Reimagine the game
2. Play good football week 1
Been around football long enough to know its impossible to play good football week 1 so we set out to get people from all parts of football to discuss rule changes. Here is the first doc presented

It was awesome to go in there and present a brand new way of thinking to professional and collegiate football minds. This was the first video of the reimagination committee

The next task was applying our fans interests, to our internal philosophy, to what we thought coaches and players were able to execute on. I then called and texted everyone I knew/wanted to know in the football world. Don't think anyone said no to an incoming request

I know I will forget some people but below are a list of people who had major influence on how the XFL rules turned out:
@benbbaldwin , @coachkelley1 , @bburkeESPN , @smartfootball , @NFL_DougFarrar , @PFTCommenter , @BarstoolBigCat , @Coby , @GriffWhalen , @CoachRhinODU

@friscojosh @903124S @FO_ASchatz @aireye

Then from our own team we had amazing input from:
@EricGalko @bryankilmeade @theking1 . These guys busted their asses in the office, on the field at testing sessions and at all hours.

Our first version of the XFL kickoff in September 2018 with 11 Splenda packets, 11 Sweet'N Low, and 1 Sugar Packet. Oliver went into pitch meetings talking about how it would be the innovation that would stand out the most in the XFL Game:

TY: @DanRosensweig for the tea to demo

Next was data: Our team wanted to know everything about every possible rule change and what it could mean for the game. Over 300 hours of football was watched by the @Cuse #sportsanalyticsclub which led to a predictive model of our game (4 minutes and 3 plays off actual game)

Next step was testing. We reached out to the NJCAA to see if any teams would be willing to add 2 extra practices and ulitmately play a mock half. @MGCCCBulldogs and @PRCC_Wildcats both jumped at the chance. Some of the most fun and innovative football was played there Dec 2018

At some point I will post the video highlights of the first ever XFL game. First ever TD under XFL rules was a double forward pass. Swing to the back out of the backfield and a corner route by the X. I think I ran a 4.3 Forty sprinting after the MGCC player to celebrate

The most exciting part was seeing the kickoff live for the first time. After months of people speculating on what would happen Bryan turns to me and says "What do you think will happen?" I said "I have no fucking clue". What happened is it looked like a big zone play + Kickoff

After we had the first set of rules we were tasked to bring on coaches and players. @BryanKilmeade did research on more than 100 coaches of all walks of life to try and find people who fit our goals. @EricGalko and @JuMosq had scouting reports on every QB in the past 5 years

Doug Whaley joined and we all went to the Senior Bowl and split the NFLPA bowl and East West Shrine game. East West was when @EricGalko started laying the ground work on @JTaamu10 and a handful of other hopefuls. It was a 6 month courting process. Shows the hard work he puts in

I got a call on December 24th that @CoachBobStoops was interested in being a coach in the league. It was a Christmas miracle to finally get a coach to bite and for it to be one as respected as he is. He was even better once we started working on building the league with coaches

The rest of the coaches started rolling in. Coach Trestman and Josh Moore put together 17 pages of questions and notes: most of which helped guide the season because they were so thorough in their process.

Next was Zorn who was a perfect fit for Seattle. You will never find a more beloved person to the city of Seattle than Coach Zorn. Loved the comeback period

When @CoachPepHam signed on I was over the moon. He helped give me my first shot playing in college, and then helped guide me through my injury and recovery process. I knew we would have to find a way to play fast and I was excited to see how he approached that challenge

We got together with these 4 core coaches at the first time testing with professional football level players at @Your_Call_Inc . These guys were awesome and it was the first time we saw our overtime in action.

The first time we tested overtime we had the officiating crew running back and forth across the field! Team A offense at north endzone, Team A defense at south endzone. After our back judge almost pulled a hammy on round 4 we split the officiating crew in half.

The first time we tested this overtime we had the next play start at the end of the previous play whistle. It was so fast like ping pong back and forth. When the goal was just time it dominated. We had so much fun with it and the players loved it. We brought that to TSL

By time we got to TSL in Austin (Almost a year to the day) we had put together a pretty solid rule book but never saw an actual game under our ruleset. We never had access to coaching staffs and players for extended time (we wanted longitudinal testing)

We also had our first access to our broadcast partners. We had presented the rules to them but having @XFLonFOX and @espn made the test near perfect. Can't say enough things but Judy Boyd, Dave Jones, Bill Bonnell, and Ed Placey coming out to TSL.

We had a 2:43 minute game but only averaged 135 plays per game. We were not able to test our Coach to player systems and schema. XFL coach to player schema is one of my favorite innovations because it was so simple to say but so hard to implement. And it was still evolving

We tested 2 more times in Mission Viejo California with different coach to player devices. It also added the first time we worked in person with @DeanBlandino . Dean is the most respected guy in officiating and was the last piece to the puzzle.

@DeanBlandino scribed the rulebook, made what we had put together make sense from an officiating standpoint, and helped create our officiating program. He was able to communicate with our coaching staffs which is often the hardest part of the rules process

In mission viejo we finally took out the halo rule. It is the biggest asset of all the testing was realizing this rule will never work in American football. We asked ourselves what are we actually solving for so instead of stopping the players at the return, just stop at snap

the first time we saw this @theking1 , @bryankilmeade, and Whaley we all looked at each other like "Holy Shit this might just work!". We didn't see this rule until our last testing session but it led to double the amount of returns you see on punt

We actually created more space for our returner (11 yards) than a 5 yard halo does. This provided a safer return opportunity for our PRs and to create big plays. We expected more big returns but teams were starting to figure out the scheme.

Ironically once the rules were set the actual hard work began. We had to bring on players and identifying the right guys (both players and agents) to take a chance on us would be hard. @EricGalko, @JuMosq, and @MarkDulgerianOS worked non stop on getting us the right fit players

@OptimumScouting took a unique approach to scouting that allowed us to still find diamonds in the rough but also be more EFFICIENT about how we scout. @EricGalko did a masterful job working with team DPPs and fitting the league ideology of the types of players we wanted

Then there is @krob2__ ... He will be a guy signaled as one who could change the game of football. Both Whaley and @theking1 worked there asses off to find the right player to break the mold.

We likely had over 1,000 players in the database to draft 560. There are talented players out there for leagues like this, there probably could have been room for 2!

The draft (FIRST Virtual Draft) was an awesome problem to solve. We wanted to have our coaches comfortable in their space, a chance for fan engagement to do something local, and all have a true shared experience. We also needed the format to be fair for all teams

All other start up leagues did some sort of regional allocation. Its because its easier to create a base of players. What makes football fun is that nothing about it is easy! We were a draft mindset org from Oliver down from the beginning because it was all about FOOTBALL

I think what the team came up with ultimately led to amazing parity. 5 separate Phases (10 rounds each position group with a 30 round open draft) all snake draft within each other. We let teams get their #1 QB on their (all team lists had different #1s) to even out the parity

We practiced our draft 3 times before ever doing it live. The first test for the stream was on my personal youtube channel... we hadn't gotten approval to do a live stream for fans and players but after we snuck the test in we got approval.

Zoom was a great partner that took meetings with me and our head of IT Scott Harniman. We investigated everything. I created a mock up in twitch, we then went to @tenomedia for some help (the best in the streaming business!) but ultimately settled for simple with Zoom

The draft that was never supposed to be aired ended up being one of our highest viewed videos on youtube. As someone who has been passionate about the benefits of livestreaming I was over the moon excited with it. I may watch all 7 hours of day 1 someday

Going back in time now lets talk about another passion project: the XFL Football. One of the cooler projects and one that I came into the league super excited about. That ball in the center is the only football I ever owned, the original XFL ball(1 of the first prototypes beside)

When we started looking at the ball we broke it up into 2 categories: What can we do to the ball to increase performance while maintaining integrity of the game | What can we do to make the ball look cool without ruining the gameplay. We didn't want to be Nerf or XFL 2001....

First internally we broke down what are the components of a football. At first glance its simple: Leather, Laces, Color, Stripe. In reality there is so much more, and one of the hardest things for us to solve for was the Ogive radius...

We talked to many ball manufacturers but the ultimately went with @teamissue because they were the most like us: passionate about creating something brand new. We met with them for the first time at AFCA San Antonio in 2019. It was there we first came up with the X-Pebble

We asked ball manufacturers "what can you do to increase performance?" They often said size of ball to fit QB hand. 1 had infinite measurements they could do, 1 had 75. When asking fans, like @PFTCommenter , about different ball sizes it turned them off. Thought teams had same

We saw some of the @teamissue specialty balls that had different versions of the pebbling on the ball. We had no clue that was a modifiable component. So I turn to bobby and Say, "lets get a better grip, something unique" Bobby and I both say "THE LOGO!"

And it started from there, Chris Calandro and the @teamissue team immediately went to work on the X-Pebble design: this is the first prototype we ever had.
X-Pebble and multicolor laces

No stripe meant "professional" in our office but design team still pushed for something else about the ball to stand out. The X-tips (or spikes, or starburst...never had a real name) came to be and were some of the hardest parts of what @teamissue had to do. They made magic

Using our 8 summer showcases tested 8 different version of the ball. True @leanstartup method. We would give @teamissue design specs sunday, they would ship new balls thursday, we would test friday/saturday. Chart throws and interview players to get immediate feedback on quality

Here are some different versions
Colored laces: Need to have white laces to track the ball in the sky (why all tips were white)
Spread out X pebble: Negative worked space made the ball slick
Brown Leather: Lasts longest, too hard to get game ready

All those balls are the same dimension but with a different ogive radius. It was something @teamissue and I would talk about weekly. The curvature of the center of the ball to the top needed to be fatter, because players catch the fat of the ball. We got in a great spot: Suitcase

@BryanKilmeade figured out we needed a softer pebbling or wear and tear would ruin the ball to fast. @teamissue sent a single ball to a hotel in Newport Beach with the tech and I freaked in the lobby . Opening that box I felt like opening the briefcase in pulp fiction.

That ball was used all week at TSL and then it traveled with me everywhere. It took 7 months but we had finally gotten the ball to the place we wanted. @JennaBecerra01 would be mad because I would have in bed or on the couch with me when I would sleep

I couldn't be more proud of the finished product and the process. We had the best partner in @teamissue . Final version below

Leather: Red (turns brown by time fans see it by gameday)
Laces: White
Stripe: X-tip
Pebble: X
Team Specific design

Lets talk about the broadcast. Before we even had broadcast partners Oliver used to call us to everyone "the league of yes". We would be opening the door to any partner that wanted to go down this path with us. Thankfully we had the best in @ESPN and @XFLonFOX

We presented the rules and the open access concept to ESPN and FOX in early March of 2019 knowing we needed them to come to a mock broadcast at TSL in April. Having Bill Bonnell and Ed Placey of ESPN and Judy Boyd and Dave Jones of Fox there made the TSL a success

We were able to practice sideline interviews with players (shout outs @JennaBecerra01 who flew in for a day to help out), test commercial load timing, test overtime timing, and overall bounce ideas off of them. We also realized this couldn't be our last test...

We had conversations weekly with both networks, they were both so ingrained in trying to make this an amazing experience for fans. Ed Placey was adamant about ways to showcase transparency in officiating and we reviewed Rugby clips to try and match their style

When we tested again with the coach to player communication Fox was huge in making sure the process would work and more importantly patient with us when we couldn't get some of it to work. Can't thank their team enough for sticking by us when we dropped the ball

Then @lenmead organized the December broadcast summit and we got our final chance to share information with the broadcast talent and the rest of the team. It was there we made one of the last decisions on overtime to put the teams on the same side of the field @curtmenefee

I remember going over the rule and explaining why 2 ends of the field and @curtmenefee was super patient. Then he asks "There are 5 reasons to have it on the same side of the field, and 2 reasons to have on both ends of the field...why are you still doing 2 sides of the field?"

@DeanBlandino had told me for MONTHS to move the OT to 1 side of the field but even the best of us can be stubborn. The rest of the day was great because we were challenged to push the envelope even more

During a presentation we mentioned a slow build and we need to be patient with our presentation but @leefitting pushed back: We need to push the envelope, we need a big opening week one or we will lose the viewer. ESPN took pride in being the opener and wanting to push it

And you can see that in all of their talent. I spent so much time with @diannaESPN @TomLuginbill @GregMcElroy @espnSteveLevy @colecubelic @tom_hart @Joey_Galloway . They wanted to get better at the game and know how far to push it. They took the XFL awesome

@diannaESPN was running a 10k every game getting as close the the action as possible. @TomLuginbill was trying to unearth any information that would make the game more exciting. @GregMcElroy prepared like it was the superbowl every week, and @espnSteveLevy had a bulging disc

Fox was super professional, it was awesome seeing the graphics package debuted at the Super Bowl being used for all our games. @joelklatt is one of the smartest guys in the game, @curtmenefee keeps it real and professional and even worked double duty a weekend.

@JennyTaft was always thoughtful and was able to make friends with so many of the players that led to awesome interviews. @gregolsen88 brought a new perspective as a current player to the game (as did @camjordan94) that made our broadcast unique. @kevinburkhardt loved the kickoff

We had still so much left on the table. Week 6 we were bringing back direct to coach interviews after we fixed some of the tech issues on the XFL side of the headsets. We were going to open up sideline QB audio like @colecubelic did with @aaronmurray11 in our final game

Every week we were getting better on the broadcast side and I can't thank the amazing partners we had. They had patience with us first timers and were open to feedback we gave them. Everyone only cared about making the best possible presentation for fans and it showed