Earlier this year the football world was rocked by the news that the CFL and XFL were officially talking about creating a business partnership. Shortly before the delayed CFL season was set to kickoff, the two parties decided to go their own ways for now.
That’s also when we learned that the XFL would be delaying their return to 2023. After the announcement there wasn’t a lot of news coming from the camp, but then November came and that all changed.
In the leagues first statement since the conclusion of the CFL talks, the XFL announced its first set of hires under the new ownership group. Headlining the announcement was that Brandon Russ would be coming in to serve as the league’s President.
With the hires announced, we expected to see more news in the near future; and thanks to co-owner Dany Garcia, we have just that.
Today Garcia shared a post on Instagram which featured an image from one of the XFL meetings. The image has a lot to share, and it confirms a few things we’ve been hoping to learn.
The biggest item here is that the XFL is set to kickoff February 18, 2023, which is the week after that years Super Bowl. This is the same strategy that the XFL took in 2020, and I like to see that they’re keeping it this time around as well. Beyond keeping their schedule in place, it ensures that the XFL and USFL won’t go head to head as the USFL kicks off in April.
We also learn that combines will be starting in June of 2022. We can only hope that the XFL goes the route of the Summer Showcase and hosts combines across the country. More importantly, we hope that fans are able to go and attend the events as they were in the leadup last time.
Lastly, we see that training camp is set to start in January 2023, giving the teams about a month to get accustomed to their coaches and teammates.
In her post, she shared that this image was from an October meeting with the XFL group, which is why the countdown numbers don’t match at the moment.
10/4/21 was a dynamic workday in our @xfl journey to kickoff. Executing on the art of possible with our skilled and seasoned team has solidified our innovative @xfl universe and brought about consistent milestone moments. I’m so proud and inspired by their great work and can’t wait for “the more” 👊🏼!
Now that the ball is rolling, we can’t wait to see what the new ownership group has under their sleeves for the return of the XFL.
Do you plan on tuning into the XFL when it kicks off in 2023? Let us know down in the comments below or join the conversation on Discord.
