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Let’s think back for a second to the year 2001 — which is remembered primarily for one horrific event in September, but was a rich and deep year otherwise. Specifically, let’s take a closer look at the spring of that annus horribilis.

After the tech stock bubble burst, energy giant Enron was considered one of the safest places to put your money. Steve Jobs was just one year into his tenure as Apple’s permanent CEO and the iPod hadn’t even been released yet. The word “chad” got more attention for its association with American elections than as a country in Africa.

In that environment, WWE impresario Vince McMahon launched a rival football league to the NFL, called the XFL. The league was supposed to be hyper-aggressive, and effective differences between it and the NFL were that 1) it played in the spring, 2) it changed a few rules to make the onset of chronic traumatic encephalopathy just a little bit quicker for players, and 3) the marketing was so aggressive and in-your-face that it was indistinguishable from “Mortal Kombat.”

Anyhow, for those of you who remember those days, the league flopped like a “Waterworld” remake starring Pauly Shore, but that isn’t the point here. What, precisely, did that “X” stand for? Everyone assumed “eXtreme,”........

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