XFL Champion Arlington Renegades Return For First UFL Season
The Arlington Renegades are the defending XFL champions, but entering the 2024 season, they won't exactly have a title to defend.
With the merger between the XFL and USFL, the Renegades’ magical 2023 title run will now turn into trying to win the inaugural UFL title.
The Renegades are in the XFL Conference, along with XFL holdovers in the D.C. Defenders, San Antonio Brahmas and St. Louis Battlehawks. The Renegades also have their coach back in Bob Stoops.
Below is a recap of how the Renegades did last season and their history in the XFL.
Arlington in 2023
Stoops and the Renegades went 4-6 and finished second in the South Division. That was enough to limp into the playoffs after losing four of their last five games.
Once in the playoffs, the Renegades were unstoppable. They beat the Houston Roughnecks 26-11 in the South Division championship and beat the Defenders 35-26 in the XFL championship in San Antonio..
Quarterback Luis Perez, who led Texas A&M-Commerce to a Division II national championship in 2017, didn’t start the season with the Renegades. But he ended up being the XFL title game's Most Valuable Player.
Modern XFL History
The league rebooted itself before the 2020 season, as Alpha Entertainment’s Vince McMahon attempted to revive the football league he formed 20 years before.
The Renegades — then named the Dallas Renegades — were part of that revival in the West Division that included Houston, Los Angeles Wildcats and Seattle Dragons.
Stoops coached that team and went 2-3 before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the league and forced it to delay its next season to 2023.
That team also played its games at Choctaw Stadium, the former home of the Texas Rangers, which has been converted for football and also hosts high school football games.
The league's return came about after a group led by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Dany Garcia and Gerry Cardinale purchased the XFL for $15 million in 2020.
Legacy XFL History
Dallas-Fort Worth didn’t have a presence in the original XFL in 2001. Teams were located in New York/New Jersey, Chicago, San Francisco, Memphis, Orlando, Birmingham, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. That league only lasted a season.
DFW as a market has been dominated by the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, though the team had competition from 1960-63 with the Dallas Texans, who eventually moved to Kansas City and became the Chiefs.
UFL Provides Last Hope For Long-Term Viability
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Matthew Postins writes about baseball for Fan Nation/SI and covers Big 12 basketball for Heartland College Sports. He formerly covered the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and USports football for the College Football America Yearbook.