LOS ANGELES – Tommy Maddox, out of football and running an
insurance agency two years ago, beamed and held the XFL
championship trophy high over his head as he trotted first to the
stands on one side, then across the field to the other.
|  | | Los Angeles' Saladin McCullough, left, gets rid of some Demons on his way to 109 rushing yards.
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The fans remaining in the Coliseum cheered Maddox after he led
the Los Angeles Xtreme to a 38-6 victory over the San Francisco
Demons in the XFL's first title game Saturday night.
"I'm going to enjoy this for a long time," Maddox, an NFL
backup from 1992-96, said after throwing for two touchdowns. "To
be the first XFL team to win a championship, it's just so exciting
I don't even know what to say.
"Mr. (Vince) McMahon gave us a chance to play in Los Angeles. I
was with UCLA, then the Rams, so to be able to play a championship
game in the historic Coliseum, I wouldn't have it any other way."
The "Million Dollar Game" drew a crowd of 24,153 to the
90,000-seat Coliseum. Attendance was some 10,000 fewer than the
Xtreme's inaugural game at home, but almost double the gate of
13,081 for Los Angeles' semifinal victory over Chicago a week
earlier.
The Xtreme's defense, led by Ron Carpenter's two interceptions,
shut out the Demons until the final 25 seconds after earlier
blanking San Francisco in the regular-season finale.
"Our defense played great; they made some huge plays," Maddox
said. "We thought it was going to be a dogfight, that the last
game was kind of a fluke.
"You never imagine a championship being 38-6, so it was a great
feeling."
Jose Cortez, who had been working as a roofer in Oregon before
the new league started, kicked four field goals, including a
50-yarder that put the Xtreme up 21-0 as time expired in the first
half.
San Francisco coach Jim Skipper was frustrated.
"It seemed like we could never get anything going," he said.
"It was the same old thing, whatever could go wrong, went wrong.
It was one of those nights.
"We couldn't catch the ball. We fumbled it. They intercepted
it, they squibbed the ball, we can't field it. We tried a quick
kick, they fumbled it and we're all running to it and 'Zoom,'
they're out the back door."
That "out the back door" was Reggie Durden's 71-yard punt
return for a touchdown as Los Angeles took control in the first two
quarters.
The Xtreme, who finished 9-3, will split the $1 million bonus 45
ways because the 38 players on the regular roster voted to include
the seven players on their practice squad. That works out to
$22,222 per man, about half what each earned for the entire 10-game
regular season.
Maddox, taken by Denver in the first round of the 1992 NFL
draft, completed 16 of 28 for 210 yards and was intercepted once in
the championship win.
Cortez, who finished the inaugural XFL season by making 24 of
his last 26 field-goal attempts, connected from 37, 34 and 50
yards. He added a 22-yarder in the third quarter.
Saladin McCullough rushed for 109 yards on 20 carries for Los
Angeles.
"I don't think if we went out and wrote a script, we could have
played better. It was a dominating effort," said Xtreme coach Al
Luginbill, whose background includes time as the San Diego State
coach and more recently as coach of NFL Europe's Amsterdam team.
The Demons, who finished 6-6, were unable to generate any
offense against the Xtreme, who had beaten them 24-0 in the final
regular-season game after losing 15-13 in the season opener at San
Francisco.
In the rematch for the title, the Demons' Mike Pawlawkski threw
for just 74 yards, completing eight of 20, with two interceptions. The
Xtreme so dominated that their first punt of the game came early in
the fourth quarter.
Until third-string quarterback Oteman Sampson ran 21 yards for a
touchdown in the final minute, the closest the Demons had come to scoring
was when Mike Panasuk's 44-yard field goal try that fell short in
the second quarter.
Durden's return came off Pawlawski's quick kick. Two Xtreme
players collided and fell as they went for the ball downfield, the
ball bounced free, and Durden picked it up and ran untouched down
the left sideline.
While small, the crowd was lively and vocal. Some fans wore
Xtreme jerseys, a few sported Demons jerseys, but even more wore
Raiders silver and black.
McMahon, whose World Wrestling Federation and NBC jointly own
the XFL, presented the championship trophy, giving fans handslaps
as he worked his way down the stands and onto the field.
Although the XFL's television ratings were poor this year and NBC likely
won't continue to televise games, McMahon says the league will be
back for a second season, telling the fans at the Coliseum, "See
you next year."
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