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XFL Ratings Slashed By Acheron, (DT) February 12, 2001 7:48 AM PT

Most saw this one coming.  The XFL ratings dropped by half of the previous weekend's debut.  Is this bad news for the XFL, or just normalization? NBC finished last among the four major networks during prime time on Saturday.  It got only an estimated 5.1% of America's viewing public.  The week before it got around a 10.3 Neilsen number. Like the debut week, people kept turning the game off as the game progressed (about every half hour).   Now I'm not the world's biggest football fan.  I love going to my college's games (hence former LSU coach, and present Birmingham Bolts coach Gerry DiNardo's picture), but I do have a passing interest in the sport.  From what I saw opening week, there are some cool things that the XFL is doing...But there are some truely awful things as well.  For instance, giving the winning team more money for winning is a great idea, as well as the scramble for the football as opposed to a coin toss.  The bad ideas are that it's got a little too much WWF glamor to it.  The innuendos of players scoring with the cheerleaders is unnecessary.  Some of that crap has to go. I think it'll turn out to be ok, and they'll be around for at least a couple of years, but they do need to do something to get more viewers to watch the games.  NBC says that this past weekend was what they were realistically expecting.  So lets hope for the sake of football fans everywhere that the XFL continues for their sake.  Meanwhile, I, for one, am counting down the days until the CART season starts.