Long Bomb: How the Xfl Became TV's Biggest Fiasco

By Brett Forrest

There is no failure like televised failure. It is the most public failure. The most humbling failure. So it was odd when the two men who had assembled the biggest bomb in television history began high-fiving on the sidelines of the XFL's final game. But not everyone was celebrating. Dick Butkus bristled. Jesse Ventura just wanted it all to end. And the general public couldn't wait to watch something completely different. Brett Forrest's Long Bomb is the unofficial inside story of what really happened in the XFL, the renegade football league dreamed up by NBC and the World Wrestling Federation. Forrest reported on the XFL from its first training camp to its championship game, and he takes us inside the limousines and locker rooms and onto the field to deliver the dope that NBC's all-access cameras only promised. Along the way, Long Bomb seamlessly interweaves the story lines that arose from the doomed enterprise. When network titan NBC lost television rights to the NFL, sports department chairman Dick Ebersol was willing to do anything to get football back under his wing. Meanwhile, Vince McMahon, at the apex of his powers with the WWF, desperately wanted to prove that he was more than a two-bit huckster. Old friends, the two men shared a common hatred of the suits who ran the NFL. By combining football, wrestling, and reality TV, they planned to reinvent the way America watched sports. That's where the story begins. Long Bomb follows the plot twists toward the humiliating finale, introducing us to key figures along the way. As color commentator, Jesse Ventura was a piece of the puzzle that was supposed to explode the TV sports formula. Soon enough, he became an expendable scapegoat. Dick Butkus was meant to lend a measure of football credibility to the fledgling operation, but ultimately even he couldn't see what was worth saving or dressing up. Long Bomb also tells the story of the men who played in the XFL, which promised as much to them as it did to its viewers. Set in Las Vegas, the book follows the Outlaws, including the league's biggest star, Rod Smart. His nickname, He Hate Me, was the one thing that worked in the XFL. But the real story behind He Hate Me has never been told. Forrest deconstructs every aspect of this moment-in-time experiment that spoke volumes about the direction of the entire TV sports business. A combination of desperation and hubris, the XFL reflected a confused media landscape, where the cost of airing big games ran too high in a wilderness of splintered audiences and expanding entertainment choices. The XFL was supposed to be greater, bigger, better-more, more, more. If it worked, competing networks would have fallen over each other copying the formula. If it didn't work, man, what a train wreck.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609609920
• ISBN13: 9780609609927
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A Fun Football Book and hey, ... Cheerleaders!

The XFL went under a little over a year ago, but seems like a far more distant memory. Long Bomb is Brett Forrest's take on why the league failed so dramatically-and the people who made it possible. Forrest followed the Las Vegas Outlaws for the season, and we learn about how players got ... into the league, how quickly the network head honchos lost faith after ratings dropped, and how Vince McMahon went down fighting till the end. He shines a light on how many people worked their ... off for the league, almost making you feel sorry for McMahon and his cohorts. With the XFL gone, football won't be as easy to make fun of anymore-well, at least there's still the Cincinnati Bengals. I love it, as Forrest is a very good writer who moves you along and doesn't miss a single detail.

One of the all-time great sports books

I cannot say enough good things about this book. Mr. Forrest is a talented and unique writer who has found a rich vein to explore. Long Bomb is as good or better than the classic North Dallas 40. And Mr. Forrest is a true talent, like a modern day H.L Mencken he skewers our media culture with a razor sharp wit. If you read one book this year read this book. Full of sex, drugs, intrigue and violence, it will have you captivated from cover to cover.

This is a truly great book.

Truly fascinating. Forrest pieced together a hilarious account of what has to be one of the worst ideas in the history of television since "Cop Rock." (And even that got better ratings than the XFL.)Starting off with a bang, thanks to unprecedented hype, the XFL very quickly plummeted to unprecedented lows. Literally the lowest rated prime time show in the history of the ratings system. A show about me writing this review could get higher ratings than that.The characters are amazing. The story of the play by play announcer who continuously and publicly berates a coach in the hopes he'll snap, hit somebody and bring up the sagging ratings is astonishing. Especially when you factor in the he is also the Governor of Minnesota.The story of Ryan Clement's addiction to football is as inspiring as it pathetic.And McMahon and Ebersol. That Brett Forrest could fit both of these ego's into only 350 pages is an accomplishment in itself.Read this book. And do it soon, because it's gonna become an HBO movie any minute and as good as it'll be, the book will still be better.

Long Bomb...do not pick it up if you have a looming deadline

I?m a graduate student at New York University and I just picked up Mr. Forrest?s book for the sole purpose of researching a few pages related to Ted Turner. After reading the pages on Turner, I thought I might just check out the first few pages of Long Bomb...five hours later, I can?t say I?ve made much progress on my thesis, but I can say that I?ve been taken on a fascinating and informative tour of the hubris-filled shell that was the XFL.

LONG BOMB is the BOMB

I'll be honest with you. My first thought here was "who wants to read a book about the xfl?" But the story of this big car wreck is so entertaining, and the underlying insights about the American sports/media machine are so dead on, that I think anyone with any interst at all in books about sports or TV should own this book.Forrest is funny without being obnoxious and the material he has to work with is fantastic--Ventura, Butkus, McMahon, Ebersol. He also got lucky. Who knew that the local runningback he was paling around with would turn out to be HE HATE ME, the one thing in the league that worked?Anyway, buy this book. You won't be dissappointed.