The XFL Is Holding A 71-ROUND Draft Next Week, Releases First List Of The 1,000-Plus Players In The Draft Pool

The XFL 2.0 is about to start making some news as Vince McMahon’s “new” football league will be holding its second inaugural draft next week on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 15 and 16.

The XFL’s 2019 draft will be unlike anything we have ever seen in sports, as it will be a whopping 71 ROUNDS.

Here’s how it will go down, according to an XFL press release.

Player selections will be announced on XFL.com, @xfl2020 on Twitter, @xfl on Instagram, and through the social media channels of the eight XFL teams.

Over the two-day draft, each XFL team will populate a 71-man roster by selecting players from a set of positional groupings. One quarterback will be assigned to each team prior to a five-phased draft, phased as follows:

1 .Skill Players (QB, RB, WR, TE)

2. Offensive Line (OT, OG, OC)

3. Defensive Front Seven (DL, LB)

4. Defensive Backfield (CB, NB, SS, FS)

5. Open Draft (all remaining players after positional drafts, in addition to P/K/LS)

The draft pool will include approximately 1,000 professional football players, all of whom accepted a Commissioner’s Invitation and passed a standard background check. In Phases 1-4, each team will choose ten players for a total of 40 players. In Phase 5, each team will choose from the pool of remaining players to complete its initial roster.

Using a “snake” format, the selection order within each phase reverses after every round: the team selecting first in the first round will pick eighth in the second round, first in the third round, eighth in the fourth round and so on. The order of selection was determined by lottery under the supervision of Commissioner Oliver Luck.

Each team will get 90 seconds to make their selection and declare their pick through a video conference with the XFL home office in Stamford, Connecticut.

A grid summarizing the pick order for each of the five draft phases, as well as all of the XFL team Twitter and Instagram handles can be viewed here.

The league has begun releasing the names of the 1,000-plus players that have accepted an invitation to participate in XFL draft. The first list of names can be viewed below with additional groups scheduled to be announced leading up to the draft. The entire XFL draft pool will be revealed by October 11.

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Among the names that are somewhat familiar to football fans in the first list are former Oakland Raiders quarterback Connor Cook, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers kicker Roberto Aguayo, former Bears and Steelers running back David Cobb, and former Green Bay Packers quarterback Joe Callahan.

One name which doesn’t appear on the list yet is perhaps the best player in the draft, 2018 first-team All-Big 12 safety Kenny Robinson Jr. from West Virginia – the first player with college eligibility remaining to enter the XFL draft pool – according to The Athletic.

Robinson decided that rather than play his senior year at West Virginia and participate in the NFL Combine, he would just show NFL brass his skills in the XFL.

“Once I looked at everything, this was a better option,” said Robinson. “This option gave me the chance to go back to school so I could take classes and play in this league while helping my family with some money.”

It will certainly be interesting to see, assuming the XFL is a success, if more college football players end up deciding to go this route in the future.