Hello Vince,

I’m writing to you, because I see what you are attempting with the resurrection of your XFL, and I want to help. I know we see the same thing whenever we try to watch an NFL game. Confusion. Rampant pussification. Distractions left and right. I’m sorry, does nobody out there want to see the big hits anymore?

That’s rhetorical. You know damn well what Americans want. I wouldn’t pretend to understand all the ins and outs of the logistics the way you do. I’m an idea man. All I want is to become your muse. To feed your problem solving mind until the game is fixed. I don’t want any money or any credit, Vince. I just want good football.

We’ll start with an easy one. What is a catch? Secure the ball with one or two hands, with two feet or another body part in bounds, and bingo, you’ve got a catch. See that? Nice and easy. No football moves. No need to second guess it. Ask a three year old what it means to catch a ball, and they’ll give you a goddamn answer. Moving on.

Personal politics. Okay, now we’re picking up the pace, hombre. I’m not going to give anybody the satisfaction of calling out their Christian name, but I think we’ve all had enough of certain socialist boys going full-on broken arrow and taking a goddamn knee during the goddamn American National Anthem. I don’t know about you, but this here country is bigger than any one man, and I don’t take too kindly to overpaid zillionaires trying to brainwash our impressionable youth. Well we’re going to put an end to that right quick by drafting nothing but the veterans of the U.S. fucking Armed Forces. You heard me. We’re not settling for the second class players who couldn’t cut it in the NFL. No sir, we’re hiring soldiers. And not just any soldiers. We’re talking infantrymen and NAVY Seals. You played at West Point? Good for you, pussy. Give me a leatherneck who served a tour in Fallujah. Don’t give me any computer engineers, or pencil pushing bureaucrats, or flunky MPs. I’m talking about killers, not some beta who took a nap in a warehouse. I want men who’ve seen their brothers carted off with shrapnel wounds. I want men who eat, sleep, and breathe the warrior code. You think these men can’t play some football? Tell that to the Taliban. Give me a team of men who stand in salute for a full three minutes after the rendition of the National Anthem. You know how the WWE has the NXT division for talent development. Well the XFL’s just happens to be the US Armed Forces. And trust me, you’ll never find a more willing partner than the US Armed Forces.

By the by, there’s another reason you go full US soldier. Spend any amount of time on the internet and you’ll hear the common refrain about how certain ME FIRST sports boys make $40 million dollars a season to play a game, while our heroes in uniform put their very own lives on the line for nothing but national pride. So what I’m getting at is they’ll play for dog shit. Give them a warm bed and hot food, and you’re halfway there. Here’s the play: instead of a contract, you offer them benefits. And then you just…never pay out the benefits. Believe me, they’re used to it. And what are they gonna do about it anyway? Let down the fans who idolize them? If they start talking about going through with a walk, just remind them how few opportunities they’ve got out there. Hell, give them a taste of freedom. Lot of six figure work out there for former soldiers that I’m not aware of? See how comforting the space under your thumb truly is. And just to really zing them into place, wait until they’re asleep in their barracks* and pipe in some gunfire noises and turn on the strobe lights.

*If I don’t get around to mentioning the barracks, just know, they all sleep in barracks. Let’s keep costs down, you know what I mean.

But of course, I don’t expect for any of this to come up. These men are soldiers. They’ll fall in line and give you what you want. But I really can’t stress just how important it is that we farm for talent from the branches of the military.

Now let’s talk about additional revenue. Your team is probably scouting out relationships with premier advertisers. Most sports leagues do. Budweiser, Pepsi, Ford. They’re powerful accounts and can generate hundreds of millions of dollars for your league every single year. But with that money comes a weaker product. We’ve created TV timeouts. We will stop the action just to air commercials. Capitalism is fine and all, but I came here for football, not an endless string of pitchmen yapping at me. Football, damn it. And god forbid you, Vince McMahon, speak your truth to the media, only to have the advertisers suddenly decide that it wasn’t “woke” enough for their branding. What you need is a financial backer who is above bad PR. What you need is a financial backer who is above the law. What you need are the Saudis. You don’t even need to break up the game with commercials. We could use a much more subtle- tasteful even- approach. All we need are some announcers who will play ball, and occasionally mention what a progressive regime MBS is fostering. Sure, the optics would be bad, but you know what? Fuck the optics. You’re already in bed with them anyway. And if the outrage media really pushes it, remind them about what happened to the last guy who spoke truth to the Saudi crown. And it doesn’t have to end there. We’re taking China’s money as well. And Putin’s. Look, for the right price we’ll always have a soft spot for a despot with an iron fist.

Finally, I think that we need to talk about safety. I’m not going to be cynical here. It’s impossible to ignore the issue of player safety. Players are turning their brains into paste. Frankly, it’s absurd that the NFL hasn’t fully embraced this crisis. But the XFL is going to. The fact is that if you watch the game, you’ll see players use their helmets as a weapon. We’re going to remove the helmets, and force the players to embrace ‘heads up’ football, while focusing on their fundamentals. And while we’re at it, we’re doing away with shoulder pads, as those can do an incredible amount of damage to another player’s face. In fact, if we’re really looking to boil the game down to its very essence, we’ll do away with jerseys. No more grabbing an opponent by the fabric to bring them to the ground. From now on, they will be forced to make a flesh on flesh tackle. We’re gonna have hard hitting impact. Of course that could benefit the offense too much, so we’re also going to grease these men up. The lubrication will inevitably increase the likelihood of a fumble, which will lead to a mad scramble for the ball. Just picture it: a bunch of greased up men running around with their cocks flapping about in the breeze. And the play never stops. I don’t want to hear any whistles going off and see everybody being pulled out of the dogpile just because somebody is ‘down.’ Those players are going to have to grease themselves up and get back down in that pile until they move that football into the end zone. And everybody is tweaked out on cocaine and meth, their nostrils flaring, their hands relentlessly digging through the flesh of their teammates and opponents alike, furiously pawing for that football like a crazed bull elk in rut. Eventually they realize that the ball can’t be moved by hand, and the human pile must be heaved closer to the end zone. Both sides grunting and blasting with all their effort until the shirtless men forget what team they’re on. The game devolves into a mad helter skelter of desperate, lubed up, naked men howling into the void. In fact, fuck the football. Who fucking needs it anymore, am I right? Just move that pile. Always move that goddamn pile. And when the spirit wanes, we’ll pipe the sounds of gunfire and screaming over the loudspeakers, triggering whatever post traumatic stress disorder remains after years of watching their friends killed in battle.

And the season never ends. Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer. You play 48 weeks and if you’re lucky you make the four week playoff. And may God have mercy on your soul if you miss those playoffs. This ain’t no union shop, and we ain’t in the business of giving these boys a month off. While we’re on the subject of the All Mighty, we’ll create a new God. A merciless one. A God that demands the same entertainment our viewers will. We’ll call him The Beast, and we’ll demand that our players take a blood oath at the start of every game, so that the field is marked with crimson. All violence is glorious in the presence of The Beast. All Hail The Beast. All Hail The Beast. All Hail The Beast.

The point is that it is completely possible to have all the hard hitting action that football fans crave, without subjecting our players to CTE.

Vince, I can’t tell you how to do your job. You’ve consolidated professional wrestling. You’ve created Wrestlemania. And you’re going to hit it out of the park with the revamped XFL. Just remember to give the fans what they want. A refuge from outrage culture, a break from pointless commercials, and a carnival of violence. You have a chance to be better than football. You could very well become football’s Id. 

I wish you all the best. All Hail The Beast.

Ian