The XFL & The University of Alabama Creative Writing Department, by Brian Oliu

The UAEDFL Loses By Disqualification Yet Retains The Belt

Note:  After one too many e-mails to the University of Alabama’s English Department Listserv, an e-mail was sent (to the listserv, of course) that in the future, the listserv was to be used only for official English Department business.  Therefore, a different listserv had to be constructed in order to alert our many poet-athletes of the league’s happenings.

Saints and sinners,

In the year 2000 (otherwise known as Y2K), pioneer and acquitted steroid peddler Vince McMahon had a vision.  This vision, as many visions do, came to him in a dream.  This dream, as many dreams do, came to him while he was asleep.  Yes, I am talking about the XFL, improperly monikered the ‘Xtreme Football League’ (the X stood for nothing, but as everyone knows x=y if you take the +3 from one side and make it a -3 on the other side!)  People were psyched.  New York/New Jersey Hitmen t-shirts were selling out of stores like bottles of Malibu rum.  Tatanka, Max Moon, and Bastien Booger came out of their retirement from professional (!) wrestling to cheer on this divine plan.  Strippers rejoiced at the acceptance of cheerleaders as Joan of Arcs for the feminine mystique rather than their conservatively dressed (no midriff when it’s lower than 40 degrees, Buffalo Jills?  Donna Haraway is going to smack you in the mouth) NFL counterparts.  Yes, everything was coming up Xtremely Xawesome.  And then it all changed.

Tragically the XFL with its wacky and crazy football-like substance and general disregard for both the human spirit and collarbones (kind of like Desert Shield!) folded after just one year.  When the professional wrestling tycoon was asked why the league was cut short, it was not because the hard-hitting ™ action wasn’t entertaining (there was no coin-toss, might you remember…instead they placed a ball at mid-field and representatives from each side would run after the ball, and whoever retained possession would get the ball first. This brilliant idea led to the wackiest pre-game injury ever!  Whoa nelly!), it was because of THE MEDIA and their absurd demands:  while NBC decided to pull the plug (they had Notre Dame football to fall back on!  Regretfully falling back on Notre Dame football is like falling back on a bean-bag that is actually a sea urchin with an electric charge!) they would continue to show XFL games (they meaning beacons of the audio-visual serial-novella, UPN and TNN) provided that WWF Smackdown! would change its running time from two hours to an hour and a half.  Anyone who is anyone knows that this request is absolutely ludicrous and unacceptable; with only 90 minutes, how are we to fully realize the Cormac McCarthyesque slow horrific crawl that is the ‘Undertaker vs. Triple H No Rules Non-Title Grudgematch’ booked that very evening through a series of hilarious interviews, loopholes (oh the loopholes!) and general oligarchical Magna Cartas?

And so, without the proper backing of the media outlets to get this wonderful and Carvaggio-esque take on America’s game, the XFL was no more.

Friends, we will not suffer the same fate.  Like Clipse releasing the ‘We Got It For Cheap Volume 1 & 2′ mixtapes without the consent of their record label, or the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement, our voice has been stifled, yet we grow stronger with more metaphors for Tupperware and more Raul Sendic references.

And thus, the UAEDFL becomes an extended conceit for the persistence of the human will through adversity and being unfairly grouped with such mundane things as ‘pot lucks’ and ‘lost dogs’.

One day, they will realize all that we have done for them…they might shrug it off with apathetic malaise and dismiss our banning from the listserv as a ‘casualty of the information age’ or the half-baked excuse of ‘it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.’  And there might not be a statue of David Welch threading the needle on a 2nd and long play as you walk through the doors of Morgan Hall.  They may not replace the painting of Hudson Strode in 301 with a Daniel A. Moore limited edition print of Kevin Waltman making a leaping catch in the back of the endzone.  We might never receive a grant from the Creative Writing Program for totally sweet jerseys with our names and number on the back (I would like to be #22, if you are listening). But this doesn’t make our cause any less poignant; that the tragically average collective athletic ability of the University of Alabama’s English Department will persevere and be on display (for example this weekend:

Sunday 10am at the Queen City & 15th Street Park

for all of the world to see.

A wise undergraduate of mine had this on her facebook wall, “Be the change that you see in the world.” –Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.  This quote has never been more relevant than this moment.  We are that change.

On a side note, I can now say ‘fuck’ (or douchebag!) in an e-mail and not be concerned about ‘Faculty/Instructor/Administrator/Graduate Student X’ being upset.  Joke’s on them.

Vive la resistance.

Brian ‘Field Marshal Cinque’ Oliu
Commissioner

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