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Even if the COVID-19 pandemic had not been an issue, the league still would’ve been hustling to get things in place to run a 2021 season. It’s easy to say, “well, bring back everybody from 2020!” And yeah, that would’ve been cool to do. But the reality is it’s just not that easy.

Some players, coaches, and front office personnel have moved on. Others need to be vetted by the new ownership group, a common practice when new owners take over a company. But the turnaround on that sort of thing is not overnight. It was only recently revealed that the process to hire a Chief Football Officer (basically part of Oliver Luck’s job) has already taken about two months. While that has raised some suspicions and concerns for the length of the search, it shows how difficult and time-consuming filling this one, perhaps most important, football operations positions has been.

The behind-the-scenes negotiations like sponsorships, stadium leases, all the contracts that were either cancelled or brought over in the bankruptcy would need to be evaluated. A rush-job could’ve been done trying to cobble as many pieces from 2020 together as possible, but this league is a long-term play; rushing to get on the field in the short-term, shortcutting important tasks and dumping a bunch of money into it unnecessarily, would’ve put that long-term potential at risk.

The elephant in the room is the television contract. If one of the major networks had come to the Garcia group soon after the purchase of the league and offered $100 million to air the games beginning in 2021, the new owners would’ve had to think long and hard about jumping at it.

But there’s no evidence that happened. In fact, there’s no evidence the league was offered anything by anybody for 2021. And it’s hard to run a football league with no outlet to show the games. It’s important to get the right partner and the right dollar amount (especially with the depth and breadth of XFL programming Garica has talked about wanting), all of which takes time.