CALL IT THE EX-FL NEW LEAGUE FOLDS AFTER A SHAKY DEBUT.

Byline: Steve Irvine Staff Writer

It was less than a month ago when Jerry Crafts stood back from the celebration on the Los Angeles Coliseum field after the Los Angeles Xtreme won the first XFL championship.

He watched the confetti swirling above the crowd at midfield and listened as league founder Vince McMahon talked confidently about the future of the maligned league.

``I hope they do bring this thing back,'' said Crafts, who started 11 games for the Xtreme at offensive tackle. ``Coming back and doing this again would be pretty cool.''

It was announced Thursday, however, that there won't be a return engagement for the league, jointly owned by McMahon's World Wrestling Federation Entertainment Inc. and NBC, that lost an estimated $50 million in its lone season.

McMahon, XFL president Basil Devito and NBC chairman of Sports Dick Ebersol discussed the decision to pull the plug on the league during a conference call Thursday.

``Despite where our heart was, we just couldn't make it work from a financial standpoint,'' McMahon said. ``We tried to figure out every conceivable way to make this work. We have the ability in this wonderful country we live in to take a calculated risk. Some of them pay off, some don't.''

McMahon said the final decision to end the league didn't come until Thursday morning.

``I had no inkling this was going to happen as of lunch time today,'' Xtreme general manager J.K. McKay said. ``Everything I was aware of had us moving forward. I thought we were ready to announce a deal with UPN.''

McMahon said there were some alternative plans - such as reducing the league from eight to six teams - but it was the inability to close a deal with UPN that sealed the league's demise. He wouldn't elaborate on what ended the negotiations.

A steep ratings decline caused NBC to pull out immediately after the season. The league scored a surprising 9.5 rating in the network's debut game Feb. 3, but the March 17 NBC broadcast drew a 1.6 rating, which is believed to be the lowest primetime rating for any program on the three major networks. The championship game had a 2.1 rating.

``When you look at the first weekend, three of the four games played were incredibly competitive,'' Ebersol said. ``The national game was a 19-0 shutout and not attractive to look at. There's nothing we can do about that. I think from a prime-time standpoint we knew it wasn't going to work from early March on.''

The opening game on UPN did a 3.1 rating and 1.3 for the season. The nine games broadcast on TNN averaged a .93 rating, which is acceptable for cable standards.

The key to securing a second season was getting a network for the primary national game. A problem was that UPN doesn't control daytime programming for its affiliates and apparently felt prime time was a bad financial risk.

NBC sold ads based on an average rating of 4.5. When they didn't get those ratings, NBC lost about $10 million because advertisers wouldn't take make good ads on other programming and opted for rebates or discounts on remaining commitments.

``I think the first week showed their was an appetite for football, but we just didn't answer it in a way the public wanted,'' Ebersol said.

McKay said that the bar might have been set too high.

``The way the league was marketed and set up,'' McKay said, ``it required TV ratings that no other startup league had ever approached.''

XFL officials said they sold 1 million tickets and the total attendance for the 43 games was 988,077. But, just like with the television ratings, the numbers were bolstered by an opening-week average of 34,282. The average crowd during the final week of the regular season was 15,361 and the championship game drew 24,153 to the Coliseum.

``The game itself and the in-stadium experience was good,'' McKay said. ``I'm proud of what we brought here in Los Angeles. We brought football to fans who couldn't afford it before.''

McKay added what shouldn't be lost in the sea of television ratings and turnstiles is that there are a lot of people who lost jobs Thursday.

``There are 300-some players out of jobs,'' McKay said. ``Those jobs are lost and won't be coming back.''

Some of the players have already signed NFL contracts, including Xtreme receivers Jeremaine Copeland and Damon Dunn with Dallas and running back Saladin McCullough and kicker Jose Cortez with San Francisco. Dallas also inked Chicago running back John Avery and the list of XFL players getting the opportunity to move up grows almost daily.

``If anybody is sad about this it ought to be the NFL,'' McKay said.

McMahon said he tried to make the XFL the minor-league system for the NFL, much like NFL Europe is now.

``We knocked on that door and there wasn't any answer,'' McMahon said.

What McMahon didn't do was put blame for the failure on the league's biggest critics.

``It clearly rests on my shoulders,'' McMahon said. ``I have a pretty big mouth, but I generally back up what I say. The media has the right to say they like something or don't like something. It's not the media's fault, it's mine.''