Despite its faults, “Player 54” represented a first for the XFL: It was the first time a broadcast partner of the league had invested in programming outside of the actual games.
The season (series?) finale of “Player 54: Chasing the XFL Dream” aired on ESPN2 last week. In the special hour-long episode, viewers got a sneak peek at preparations, from both a team and league perspective, for the XFL Championship Game. Behind-the-scenes footage at practice and meetings for both DC and Arlington were among the highlights.
If you DIDN’T know that the final episode aired last week, you weren’t alone. Much like the XFL games themselves, ESPN frequently jerked around the day and time they’d air the show, sometimes skipping a week, sometimes not. There was no consistency to it, leaving even ardent XFL fans throwing up their hands and giving up on trying to watch (unless you have a season pass for it on your DVR of choice, or watched it via ESPN+).
The similarities between “Player 54” and the XFL games don’t end there: The advertising for the show itself seemed to be minimal across ESPN platforms. The plugs were plentiful during the games, but that’s not going to reach a broader audience necessary to get people to sample the product and inevitably sustain the league.
I watched all nine episodes of “Player 54” and thought that while it was professionally put together, there were some missed opportunities along the way (again, mirroring the XFL’s 2023 season). The attempt was to focus on a different team or game each week, highlighting players with interesting backgrounds and stories, such as Seattle’s Sama Paama, Vegas’s Sean Price, and Houston’s David Tolentino.
I get that in the first season, you want to give exposure to as many teams as possible to give viewers a chance to become fans of one or more of them. That connection, ideally established during this show, will make the fans more apt to tune in to those games. If you’re an NFL fan and I say, “New England Patriots” or “Dallas Cowboys,” an image or phrase will immediately pop into your head describing those teams. The brands, players, and coaches are well-known. If I said “Orlando Guardians” or “DC Defenders” prior to or even during the XFL season, it may be more of a struggle to word-associate. “Player 54” was ESPN and the XFL’s attempt to differentiate the teams based on their coaches and players.
Because the focus was on a different team or game each week, I’m not sure “Player 54” succeeded in what it seemingly set out to do. The show draws an influence from the NFL’s “Hard Knocks” but the contrast between the two is that “Hard Knocks” focuses on just one team, while “Player 54” focused on all. Part of the reason the final episode was the best was that it was pretty much all about DC and Arlington. We got the full hour to watch the top players and coaches in action, seeing and hearing about their preparation for the championship.
“Hard Knocks” benefits from the NFL and its teams each having large fanbases and their own personalities. They can get away with featuring just one team because they don’t need to expose a wider audience to its franchises. For the XFL, they wanted to do just that. However, they did so at the expense of what could’ve been a more compelling series.
One other point about “Hard Knocks”: Part of the allure is seeing how the sausage is made. We actually see and hear players being cut at the end of training camp, and the aftermath of that from the player perspective. The XFL, understandably, wants positive association with the league, so they shied away from showing what could be considered controversial, yet compelling, material. There was very little coverage given to the Quinten Dormady situation. The behind-the-scenes there could’ve been quite engrossing.
I’ll give the XFL the benefit of the doubt because there were some legal issues associated with that topic that may have prevented them from exposing too much about it. There were other missed opportunities in lieu of the desire to show off a culture of positivity. Because of “Hard Knocks,” the bar for a show like this is much higher than it otherwise would be. I’m not sure the XFL met that.
“Player 54” is also somewhat of a misnomer for a title. As stated above, there were times where individual players and their stories were discussed, but it never felt like the focus. That word “focus” is coming up a lot partly because it was hard to decipher what the focus was as a through-line for the entire series. Obviously it was about the XFL’s first season and the players and games within; but it lacked a connective tissue that would bring the episodes together.
Ultimately, what “Player 54” represented was a first for the XFL: It was the first time a broadcast partner of the league had invested in programming outside of the actual games. Make no mistake, that’s a big step and while there were issues with the presentation and the content, it shows the XFL and ESPN are in lockstep in the desire for the league to succeed. Like many pieces associated with the XFL, growth is the goal; ideally, the relationship and programming will grow beyond just “Player 54.”
