Several stories today reported that the XFL managed to halt is ratings slide this week — ratings for Saturday’s game were up to a 2.8. Unfortunately a) that’s still a lousy rating, and b) as USA Today’s Rudy Martzke points out, now the XFL is going to have to deal with competition from March Madness.
I watched half of a game on TNN on Sunday, and they have substantially improved the quality of their broadcasts — that and some nice trick play execution made the game pretty lively — but it’s almost certainly too late to rescue the drowning league.
I’d be very surprised if NBC doesn’t bail out of the XFL altogether. Vince McMahon will probably consider himself lucky if he can convince the network to simply switch the games from their current prime time slot to a daytime Saturday slot (which would make more sense, but probably wouldn’t do much to prevent the XFL from disappearing at the end of its second season at the latest).