Inside The Huskies

New XFL Launches Season, Half Dozen Former Huskies Involved

Former UW linebacker Travis Feeney creates big turnover Alamodome.

Dan Raley

In this story:

Travis Feeney strip-sacked the football, picked it up and rumbled 31 yards on Sunday afternoon in the Alamodome — ending up not all that far from where Ja'Lynn Polk came down following a 35-yard flea-flicker pass from Michael Penix Jr. 

It you're not making any sense of this sequence, Feeney, a former University of Washington linebacker, turned up in San Antonio as part of the new XFL's opening weekend, providing his big takeaway for the St. Louis BattleHawks.

All of this happened 52 days following the previous nationally televised football game, college or pro, that was held in San Antonio, which was the Alamo Bowl and the Huskies handing Texas a 27-20 defeat.

The 6-foot-4, 240-pound Feeney is one of a half-dozen ex-Huskies who have turned up on rosters in this latest version of the XFL, which consists of eight teams playing a 10-game schedule plus playoffs, with Seattle fielding a team.

 

 

Feeney, who played for Steve Sarkisian and Chris Petersen teams at the UW and went to the Pittsburgh Steelers as a sixth-round draft pick in 2016, plays for St. Louis with Husky teammate and defensive tackle Taniela Tupou, who went undrafted in 2016.

Punter Race Porter, who finished up with the Huskies in 2021, is a member of the Houston Roughnecks; cornerback Jordan Miller, whose final UW season was 2018, plays for the Arlington Renegades; defensive tackle Sama Paama, a 6-foot-4, 347-pound Hawaiian who appeared in one game for the Huskies in 2019 and left the program, has joined the Seattle Sea Dragons; and he's joined by tight end Josh Perkins, who's on injured reserve for the Sea Dragons.

Feeney bounced around the NFL, CFL, USFL and other outlets before receiving a chance to play in this new football configuration. 

Unfortunately this hulking linebacker hit his head on the Alamodome turf at the end of his fumble runback and had to be attended to on the field and then in an injury tent. Yet he walked away from that setback and shown getting a bear hug from his coach Anthony Becht.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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