Vince McMahon exploring football ‘investment opportunities’ amidst rumors of a XFL return

As mentioned in our latest Rumor Roundup, a Twitter user named Brad Shepard created quite a stir on Friday, Dec. 15 when he claimed that Vince McMahon was planning to announce a revival of the XFL, the football league WWE and NBC launched as a competitor to the National Football League which lasted for one season in 2001.

Shepard is a new name on the scoopz scene, so it’s not something many were taking seriously when his tweet first hit. But another Twitter-er who’s broken combat sports stories before, FrontRowBrian, corroborated the report. And that was enough for respected freelance journalist David Bixenspan to reach out to WWE.

What he got in response to an inquiry asking if they could confirm or deny rumors of the XFL’s return was very interesting...

The fact that the company responded, and with something other than a denial, has added a lot of fuel to the speculative fire.

There are a few reasons why re-starting the XFL or any effort to compete with the NFL could currently be considered a smart play, but plenty more arguments for why it would be a bad move. And as Bixenspan points out in subsequent tweets, as “Alpha Entertainment” is a new McMahon project separate from the publicly traded WWE, it will need to buy the rights to the XFL name from WWE if it wants to launch under those initials.

So, there’s a long way to go before you order your new “HeHateMe” jersey from XFLShop.com, is what I’m saying.

But that there are even two dots to connect here is pretty amazing stuff.

Stay tuned.