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February 2000 – There is a rule that maintains the healthy tension among the planets, moons and stars of the sporting universe. (It is not, "Don't Hide in the Trunk After You've Had Your Pregnant Girlfriend Capped," though it's sound advice.)

This governing postulate has been advanced previously by persons more observant than I, but has proven itself valid time and again:

"Nobody Learns Anything."

The Rule of "Nobody Learns Anything" (NLA) is why sub-human, washed-up convicts like Mike Tyson and Lawrence Phillips get second, third, four and fifth chances; why people still pay to watch the Los Angeles Clippers; why twice-fired head coaches rarely have trouble getting hired a third time.

The Rule of NLA presided at a Thursday press conference in New York City (February 3, 2000), at which World Wrestling Federation (WWF) owner and king smart-ass Vince McMahon stood with chums before national media and announced the formation of the XFL, a pro-football league scheduled to begin play next February.

No one attempted to hide the motive behind the XFL. McMahon believes that the football-viewing public is being jilted just after the height of ecstasy – the Super Bowl – and aims to satiate that programming jones through February, March and April.

"I personally think that figure skating sucks," said the ever-eloquent McMahon of mid-winter television. "So, where's my football?"

Apparently it's going to be in eight cities, including New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Orlando, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, with two more sites to be announced within 60 days. The league does not yet have a television contract, though Variety reported that the XFL is in negotiations with Viacom/CBS and with News Corp. about a carriage deal, which would begin upon the expiration of the WWF's current contracts in 2001.

While you are dreaming up possible nicknames for the first six franchise (New York Stone Colds? Miami Skanky Hos?), let us refresh you on the past history of spring football leagues.

The World Football League (WFL) – famous for pants color-coded by position and rampant bankruptcy – died midway through its second season in the mid-1970s. It was apparent that the country was not ready for major-league spring and summer football.

The United States Football League (USFL) – famous for a shorter football and empty stadiums – was created less than 10 years later and died of disinterest after three. It was apparent that the country was still not ready for major-league spring and summer football.

Nobody Learns Anything.

Now comes the blustery McMahon, promising an exciting, wide-open brand of ball that presumably will feature maiming, prominently and insisting that the country is ready for major-league spring and summer football.

Nobody Learns Anything.

Mike Keller, the league's vice president of football operations, claimed at the press conference that a pro-football world with 32 NFL teams, 18 Arena Football League teams (with two on the way), 15 afl2 teams, nine Indoor Professional Football League teams and six NFL Europe teams is suffering not from a dilution of talent but a "dilution of opportunity."

Drew Pearson, the former Dallas Cowboys star who is also involved with the XFL, said the new league "provides the platform for a lot of players who don't get the chance to show what they could do," referencing, of course, those untapped talents who couldn't make one of the existing 80 pro-football teams.

"I recognize a need for a league such as this," said Pearson, despite showing no evidence that Mankind had whacked him across the coconut with a steel chair anytime recently.

We don't need this. We don't really need most of the garbage that currently masquerades as pro football. A second Arena Football League? The Scottish Claymores? I am a football fanatic and cannot sit through 15 minutes of an NFL Europe broadcast. That, of course, is precisely McMahon's point. He is staking the XFL's success on "presentation," on daring and innovative ways to present the game to the television public, ways he was not prepared to reveal at the press conference.

"We are willing to take you places where the NFL is afraid to take you, because we're not afraid of anything," McMahon said.

Neither were the WFL or USFL owners, whose leagues passed into financial and football oblivion. But that doesn't really matter to Vince McMahon. He's now in legitimate American sports. And in legitimate American sports, Nobody Learns Anything.