Did someone sabotage the XFL when it came to their TV ratings for one of their first games ever? Charlie Ebersol seems to think so.
Ebersol, who is the son of Dick Ebersol, joined Evan Cohen & Mike Babchik on Morning Men on Mad Dog Sports Radio Sirius XM 82 Thursday to talk about his new 30 for 30 film, “This Was the XFL.”
During his appearance on “Morning Men” Thursday, Ebersol told Cohen and Babchik about a bizarre occurrence during the XFL’s second televised game ever. Ebersol gained a lot of information about the subject because his father was the chairman at NBC, which owned 50 percent of the XFL.
According to Ebersol, the production trucks used to televise games lost power right before Nielsen ratings were supposed to take their first measurement.
“Your first rating is measured by what happens in the first 15 minutes at the 15-minute mark,” Ebersol explained. “At 13 minutes in to the second game of the XFL, the production truck loses power because there’s no gas in the generator. So for three minutes — across that 15-minute barrier — there’s nothing on NBC. There’s a blank screen that says ‘we’re coming back in a second,'” Ebersol told Cohen and Babchik.
“It’s a little weird to me that two generators have no gas in them and the trucks aren’t plugged into the wall. That does not feel like a mistake that any group would ever make.”
Ebersol then went into the sabotage conspiracy.
“The NFL wanted a team in LA at the time. The XFL had beaten them there. They were in the Coliseum, they had a lot of hype, they had just put up the biggest Saturday night rating in almost 20 years. I don’t think it’s coincidental that the generator had enough gas for 13 minutes.”
Ebersol would not go far enough to blame the NFL for sabotaging the XFL, but it’s clear he believes something extremely suspicious happened.
“I’m not saying the NFL (was responsible). I’m saying that it’s beyond a reasonable doubt that it just happened.
“Either they had the world’s dumbest tech crew, but also grips and electric on production. These are things that are triple-checked by three different departments.”
The XFL only lasted one year — the 2001 season — and folded after that due to a lack of ratings and inability to find a TV audience. It is viewed as a major failure and joke within the sports world. The power failure during that second TV telecast seems to represent many of the company’s struggles.
