Memo to The Rock’s new XFL: Don’t swindle us like AAF

We’re counting on you, Rock. Please, Rock, don’t let us down like all the others did.

I’m talking to you Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — the co-owner, the face and the frontman of the new XFL, which kicks off two Saturdays from now when our own Orlando Guardians take on the soon-to-be-hated Houston Roughnecks.

Just so you know, Rock, if the XFL fails, this will be the last time we Orlandoans ever trust another start-up football league that initially promises us the moon and then traditionally delivers us a shot-down Chinese spy balloon. You’re our last hope, Rock. We can only hope you wouldn’t put your good money and, more importantly, your good name behind a league that is destined to fail.

“When you look at our ownership group, our partnerships with ESPN, ABC and the Disney family of networks and our relationship with the NFL, we’re building for long-term, sustainable success,” Russ Brandon, the XFL’s president of league operations, told me Tuesday.

I will admit, I feel much better about the future of the XFL after talking to Brandon, who was formerly the managing partner and president of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.

He’s right when he says that the ownership group is impressive. Johnson, of course, is a former University of Miami football player who was so driven by his failure to make it as an NFL player that he built himself into a professional wrestling superstar and then into one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood. The XFL’s other two owners — Johnson’s business partner and ex-wife Dany Garcia (an Orlando resident) and Gerry Cardinale, former Goldman Sachs partner and founder of the successful sports investment firm RedBird Capital — also are massive success stories.

Brandon is also right in that the XFL isn’t “running away from the NFL; we’re running to the NFL.” It was a very astute business move for the XFL to come to a partnership agreement with the NFL that entails “collaboration to innovate the game and focus on the health and safety of football players.”

And, yes, Brandon is also speaking the truth when he points out that this iteration of the XFL will have its games televised on ESPN and ABC and will benefit by having ESPN’s massive promotional push behind it. All 43 XFL games this season will be televised by ESPN, ABC or FX.

Still, as Orlandoans, we’ve seen this movie before. Actually, we’ve seen these movies before, and, believe me, they aren’t nearly as successful or entertaining as The Rock’s “Fast & Furious” sequels.

Quite frankly, we’ve got a graveyard full of defunct teams from deceased leagues with too many tombstones to count. We’ve seen nearly every alphabet football league ever concocted come through town with names such as the Orlando Panthers (Continental Football League), Orlando Renegades (original United States Football League), Orlando Rage (original XFL), Orlando Tuskers (United Football League) and, most recently, the Orlando Apollos (Alliance of American Football.).

Ah, who will ever forget the Apollos and the AAF? Certainly not the many shafted creditors they left high and dry. The AAF was supposedly well-funded, too, and was founded by Hall of Fame NFL executive Bill Polian and Charlie Ebersol, the son of former president of NBC Sports Dick Ebersol.

The league’s first major announcement was that the legendary Steve Spurrier would be head coach of the Apollos. Orlando got all excited, the Apollos were the class of the league and won seven of their first eight games. And then the league ran out of money and went belly up before the inaugural season was even over.

The Apollos, like all the others, came in with high hopes and big dreams and left nothing behind but a mountain of unpaid bills.

“I made $50,000 when I invested in the Renegades [of the United States Football League],” renowned Orlando orthopaedic surgeon Tom Winters once cracked. “Of course, I started with $250,000.”

The coach of the Orlando Renegades was none other than Lee Corso, who would go on to become ESPN’s legendary college football analyst. Corso has lived in Orlando for decades, and I once asked him why spring football leagues always seem to fail.

“They all think it’s going to happen overnight, and none of them have any patience,” Corso replied.

You tell ‘em, Coach!

I’ve always thought a professional spring football league would work as long as the investors had solid funding and were in it for the long haul.

Many sports historians will tell you that the original USFL would have been a success if league executives had stuck to their original plan of providing pro football in the spring and abiding by an affordable salary cap. However, when blustery owners such as Donald Trump took control of the league, began trying to outbid the NFL for players (see Herschel Walker) and started talking about moving to the fall to compete with the NFL, the league quickly went broke.

I also believe the second generation of the XFL, the brainchild of WWE mogul Vince McMahon, might have worked back in 2020. The league was having moderate success and was getting decent ratings on ABC, ESPN and Fox before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, canceled the season and prompted the league to file for bankruptcy.

This is why I’m willing to give The Rock and his ownership group one last chance to make spring football work in Orlando. We’re counting on you, Rock. We trust you.

To borrow from your signature WWE catchphrase, “We can smell what the Rock is cookin’.”

And hopefully what you’re cookin’ is a viable league and an entertaining product with solid funding and a long-term plan.

Rock, don’t be like those other jabronis who left us with nothing but a bunch broken promises and angry creditors.